Gordon Kiyoshi Hirabayashi (平林潔, Hirabayashi Kiyoshi; April 23, 1918 – January 2, 2012) was an American sociologist whose principled resistance to the Japanese American internment during World War II included a 1943 Supreme Court challenge decided under the caption Hirabayashi v. United States. His conviction was overturned in 1986. Hirabayashi posthumously received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.
Hirabayashi was born in Seattle to a Christian family who was associated with the Mukyōkai Christian Movement. He graduated from Auburn Senior High School in Auburn, Washington, and in 1937 went to the University of Washington, where he received his degree. At the university he participated in the YMCA and became a religious pacifist.
Resistance to internment, discrimination and war
Although Hirabayashi had originally considered accepting internment, he ultimately became one of three to openly defy it. He joined the Quaker-run American Friends Service Committee. In 1942 he turned himself in to the FBI, and after being convicted for curfew violation was sentenced to 90 days in prison. He invited prosecution with the intention of challenging the legality of internment in the appellate courts. The ACLU initially denied support, which was instead provided by an independent committee organized by Washington State Senator Mary Farquharson. When Hirabayashi's case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, the ACLU took an active part. One of his lawyers was the Philadelphia Quaker attorney Harold Evans. The Supreme Court unanimously ruled against him in Hirabayashi v. United States (1943), albeit with three Justices filing separate opinions that concurred with the Court's decision only with certain reservations.
Given wartime exigencies, officials would not transport him to prison or even pay his train fare, so he hitchhiked to the prison in Arizona where he had been ordered to serve his sentence. Once there, wardens stated they lacked the sufficient papers as he was two weeks late. They considered letting him just go home, but he feared this would look suspicious. After that they made the suggestion he could go out for dinner and a movie, which would give them time to find his papers. He agreed to this and, by the time he finished doing so, they had found the relevant paperwork.
Hirabayashi later spent a year in federal prison at McNeil Island Penitentiary for refusing induction into the armed forces, contending that a questionnaire sent to Japanese Americans demanding renunciation of allegiance to the emperor of Japan was racially discriminatory because other ethnic groups were not asked about adherence to foreign leaders.
After the war, he went on to earn B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in sociology from the University of Washington. He taught in Beirut, Lebanon and Cairo, Egypt, before settling at the University of Alberta in Canada in 1959, where he served as chair of the sociology department from 1970 until 1975. He continued to teach until his retirement in 1983. As a sociologist, he conducted studies of Jordan and the Doukhobors in British Columbia, Egyptian village political awareness, Jordanian social change, and Asian-Americans. He was an active member of Canadian Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). After retirement, he continued to support causes for human rights.
Hirabayashi died on January 2, 2012, at age 93, in Edmonton, Alberta. He had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease 11 years earlier.
Soon after retiring, Hirabayashi received a call from Peter Irons, a professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego. Irons told Hirabayashi that he had uncovered documents revealing government misconduct in justifying the relocations when challenged. These documents showed that the government knew in 1942 there was no military reason for the exclusion order but misrepresented and withheld that information from the United States Supreme Court. With this new evidence, Hirabayashi was able to reopen his case in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington, which ordered that one of Hirabayashi's two convictions be vacated. On appeal, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that both convictions were invalid and directed the issuance of a writ of coram nobis.
Hirabayashi would later say of the case, "It was quite a strong victory—so strong that the other side did not appeal. It was a vindication of all the effort people had put in for the rights of citizens during crisis periods." He also commented, "There was a time when I felt that the Constitution failed me. But with the reversal in the courts and in public statements from the government, I feel that our country has proven that the Constitution is worth upholding. The U.S. government admitted it made a mistake. A country that can do that is a strong country. I have more faith and allegiance to the Constitution than I ever had before."
"I would also say that if you believe in something, if you think the Constitution is a good one, and if you think the Constitution protects you, you better make sure that the Constitution is actively operating... in other words 'constant vigilance'. Otherwise, it's a scrap of paper. We had the Constitution to protect us in 1942. It didn't because the will of the people weren't behind it."
In 1999, the Coronado National Forest in Arizona renamed the former Catalina Federal Honor Camp in Hirabayashi's honor. The site, ten miles northeast of Tucson, where Hirabayashi had served out his sentence of hard labor in 1942, is now known as the Gordon Hirabayashi Campground.
In 2008, the University of Washington awarded Hirabayashi and four hundred former students of Japanese ancestry who were evacuated from the school honorary degrees "nunc pro tunc" (retroactively).
On May 24, 2011, the U.S. Acting Solicitor General, Neal Katyal delivered the keynote speech at the Department of Justice's Great Hall marking Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Developing comments he had posted officially on May 20, Katyal issued the Justice Department's first public confession of its 1942 ethics lapse. He cited the Hirabayashi and Korematsu cases as blots on the reputation of the Office of the Solicitor General – whom the Supreme Court explicitly considers as deserving of "special credence" when arguing cases – and as "an important reminder" of the need for absolute candor in arguing the United States government's position on every case.
U.S.D.A. Forest Service memorial
In 1999, the former Catalina Federal Honor Camp near Tucson, Arizona, where Hirabayashi was sentenced to hard labor in the 1940s, was renamed the Gordon Hirabayashi Recreation Site. Located within the Coronado National Forest, the site offers a public campground.
The United States Immigration & Naturalization Service (USINS) Chicago District Office commemorated Asian Pacific Heritage month with back-to-back observances that presented a first-hand account of the injustices suffered by persons of Japanese ancestry during World War II.
Gordon Hirabayashi, who in 1942 challenged a curfew imposed on persons of Japanese descent, was the keynote speaker for a program on June 4 at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. The program was repeated the following day in the Ceremonial Courtroom of the US District Court for Northern District of Illinois, Dirksen Federal Building, located next door to the USINS Chicago District Office.