Summary
The test case of U.S.-born Mitsuye Endo resulted in this Supreme Court ruling that authorized release of Japanese Americans from wartime incarceration. This decision was handed down in December 1944, after Japan’s eventual loss in the war was established, and made it possible for the War Relocation Authority to release all U.S.-born Japanese Americans from the wartime camps if they had properly answered questions in the Loyalty Questionnaire administered in 1943.
The Loyalty Questionnaire had required all incarcerated Japanese Americans to affirm their loyalties to the United States and their willingness to serve in the U.S. military. The questionnaire had been administered in significant part to facilitate release of Japanese Americans to serve in the U.S. military, as agricultural workers, and to study at colleges in the midwest and east coast.
Source
MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS delivered the opinion of the Court…
The history of the evacuation of Japanese aliens and citizens of Japanese ancestry from the Pacific coastal regions, following the Japanese attack on our Naval Base at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and the declaration of war against Japan on December 8, 1941, 55 Stat. 795, has been reviewed in Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U. S. 81. It need be only briefly recapitulated here. On February 19, 1942, the President promulgated Executive Order No. 9066, 7 Fed.Reg. 1407…
Her petition for a writ of habeas corpus alleges that she is a loyal and law-abiding citizen of the United States, that no charge has been made against her, that she is being unlawfully detained, and that she is confined in the Relocation Center under armed guard and held there against her will…
First. We are of the view that Mitsuye Endo should be given her liberty. In reaching that conclusion, we do not come to the underlying constitutional issues which have been argued. For we conclude that, whatever power the War Relocation Authority may have to detain other classes of citizens, it has no authority to subject citizens who are concededly loyal to its leave procedure…
