On December 18, 1944, 22-year-old Mitsuye Endo Tsutsumi’s case in the U.S. Supreme Court led to the unanimous decision that the Japanese American community could not legally be removed from their homes and incarcerated without cause…A young lawyer, James Purcell, was working with the Japanese American Citizens League during the war to challenge the entire incarceration. He set his sights on finding the perfect plaintiff: Mitsuye Endo was a 22-year-old Christian woman who could not speak or write in Japanese, had never visited Japan, and had a brother who was in the army.
Purcell filed a habeas corpus petition in July of 1942 which was denied a year later. As her case was pending before the Supreme Court, Endo was offered an immediate release from the camps. If taken, that release would have led to her case being dismissed.
In an act of courage and sacrifice for the greater cause, Endo denied the offer and remained incarcerated for another one-plus years. Endo was one of four cases, and the only female plaintiff that was brought to the Supreme Court to challenge the Japanese American incarceration. As detailed by Endo Presidential Medal of Freedom Committee co-chair Peggy Nagae, in an interview with AsAmNews, “They [the Supreme Court] upheld unanimously in the Endo case that Japanese Americans could not be imprisoned without cause… her case played a significant role in closing the concentration camps and the return of Japanese Americans to the West Coast in ’45 and ’46…”
Source: This woman led the fight to end incarceration camps – AsAmNews





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