<Begin Segment 8>

Male voice: With all of evacuation, though, besides L.A., San Francisco, Seattle, wasn't there someone who said, "Wait a minute, has got to stop," who went further than you guys did?

FO: Well, sure. Hirabayashi refused to stay home during the curfew, so he was prosecuted, and Korematsu refused to evacuate, and so he was prosecuted. So those were the cases, and those were the ones that went up, I don't think there were any others that I can remember. Now, there was another case in the Supreme Court, which shows, it shows something about our jurisprudence. Mitsuye Endo, who was a woman who was evacuated forcefully and she was in camp, and she says, "I want out. I want out of camp. Your order, 9066, Executive Order 9066 and Public Law 503 say that the military commander can kick anybody out of California or out of the Pacific zone, California, Oregon, and Washington, if he wants to. But it doesn't say that you can keep me in jail." And her case came before the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court said, "You're right." Without... the term was "loyalty." "You can't keep a loyal American in jail."

FC: Hers was a habeas corpus suit, too, wasn't it?

FO: Yeah, hers was habeas corpus. I mean, that was the way to do it, you see. And so what I was saying is, I, that gives me a pretty good deal of comfort about the Supreme Court even at that time, even though they were misled about the military necessity, said, "Hey, wait a minute. Okay, the army says you kick these people out because you think it's necessary for our defense, but you can't keep 'em in jail if they ain't done nothing." So that was good. I thought, I got a good deal of pleasure out of that Endo case.

Male voice: So, but since that was the decision, "you can't keep me in jail," how did they keep 'em in jail?

FO: They didn't. No, no, anybody, anybody really could get out, but there again is the human equation, where are they going to go? Now, there were a bunch of them, as you know, went to New Jersey, to Seabrook Farms, and got jobs. Well, that's fine, and many of 'em went to Chicago, lot of people went out, but a lot of people stayed because where are they going to go? Some of 'em went to, like, Oklahoma, and there'd be, they'd find signs, "No Japs allowed here," and that sort of thing. Well, so they had to stay in camp. They had to, they had no, couldn't get jobs, families were split and all that.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 1995, 2005 Frank Abe and Densho. All Rights Reserved.