In the 1940s, the family lived and worked in one of the country’s largest and most vibrant Japantowns, a section of Sacramento with 3,400 residents and hundreds of businesses.Īfter the forced evacuation of Japanese-Americans, the Japanese American Citizens League, a national group, hired James Purcell, a San Francisco lawyer, to put together a case that would challenge the government and shutter the 10 detention camps it had opened.

Her father was a salesman in a grocery store, her mother a homemaker. Mitsuye Endo was born on May 10, 1920, in Sacramento, the second of four children of Jinshiro and Shima (Ota) Endo, Japanese immigrants. Yet Endo, an unassuming woman, would never seek the spotlight, and by the time of the ruling she had never set foot in court. 18, 1944, that the government could not detain citizens who were loyal to the United States. In Endo’s case - Ex parte Mitsuye Endo - the court unanimously ruled on Dec. United States, in which the justices upheld the restrictions placed on Japanese-Americans. Three similar Supreme Court cases failed, most notably Korematsu v. Roosevelt had signed Executive Order 9066, ordering the internment of about 120,000 Japanese-Americans in camps throughout the country.Įndo, who was interned with her family, would go on to become the chief plaintiff in the only United States Supreme Court case to successfully challenge Japanese incarceration during World War II. “We were given a piece of paper saying we were suspended because we were of Japanese ancestry,” Endo said in the only interview she ever gave, to John Tateishi, for his book “And Justice for All: An Oral History of the Japanese American Detention Camps” (1984).īy then President Franklin D. Their attending Buddhist schools and their ability to read and write Japanese raised suspicions only further. Mitsuye Endo, a 22-year-old typist with the Department of Motor Vehicles, dutifully answered the questions, and that spring she was fired, along with dozens of other Nisei, or second-generation Japanese-Americans, who worked for the state.Īlthough born in the United States, Nisei were accused of holding Japanese citizenship as well, a sign to many Americans of potential disloyalty.

Ex parte mitsuye endo decision