David Inoue
This past January, a long-overdue oversight was partially rectified. Mitsuye Endo Tsutsumi was recognized by President Joseph Biden with the Presidential Citizens Medal. Her case is often forgotten because it was settled law at the time of the Supreme Court’s decision in 1945 in her favor and in a repudiation of the government, albeit late.
Endo did not benefit from the notoriety that the wrongfully decided cases of Gordon Hirabayashi, Fred Korematsu and Min Yasui gained when they were reopened through the writ of coram nobis revealing the government’s lies during the trials regarding the security threat that Japanese Americans allegedly created by their presence on the West Coast, but in reality just lies to support a false case. The exoneration of Hirabayashi, Korematsu and Yasui largely coincided with the revelations of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, leading to the passage of redress.
And now we once again see the dichotomy of these cases playing out in the present day. The Alien Enemies Act has been invoked by the president to justify deportations of alleged members of Tren de Aragua, a transnational criminal drug cartel based in Venezuela. As the AEA was used against Japanese nationals during World War II, President Donald Trump is seeking to target all Venezuelans for an easier path toward deportation.
As we all now know, the exclusion zones and curfews that Hirabayashi, Yasui and Korematsu were all appealing were illegally based on race, just as the deportation orders focused on Venezuelans are similarly racially targeted. Ironically, the president likely didn’t even need to use the AEA to carry out what he is trying other than the likelihood he is targeting people who actually have no connection to Tren de Aragua.
This is the exact reason why blunt tools like the AEA and subsequently Executive Order 9066 were used during WWII. Label an entire group as a threat without any evidence against the individuals, and then you can do whatever you want to keep our country safe. We have seen the Supreme Court affirm this philosophy in Japanese American court cases during WWII and again in the wrongful decision on the Muslim Ban during the first Trump administration.
And yet, we do have the Endo case to look to as a victory against the government. Hers was the individual case of someone who had worked for the government, had minimal ties to Japan and had a brother serving in the Army. Ultimately, her case was won on the basis that her due process rights had been violated. It was not the injustice of what was done to her in being sent to Topaz or that her family had lost so much, just as many other Japanese American families had, but that the government had not proven that she individually was a threat.
And this is the threat of the AEA, that it can remove the rights of any non-U.S, citizen to due process, one of the original fundamental rights in the Bill of Rights. For all the talk of those who stoke the fears of immigrants, that these laws are targeting those who are violent criminals, without the right to due process, there is no need to prove that point. Mass deportations become possible because the individuals have had their rights stripped from them.
While I am confident that the courts will rule that the Alien Enemies Act has been invoked unlawfully, we are seeing in real time the chaos and damage that this law inflicts upon those it targets. Just as the AEA followed by EO 9066 paved an easy path toward mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII, we must rely upon the due process that defined Mitsuye Endo’s case to prevent our government from trampling our constitutional rights.
David Inoue is executive director of the JACL. He is based in the organization’s Washington, D.C., office. Click here to read past columns.
