Ex Parte Endo - Petition And Appeal Stretch Over 21 Months

In July of 1942, through lawyer James Purcell, who had worked with Japanese American lawyers in Sacramento and who was appalled at the treatment the U.S. citizens received, Endo filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus (relief from unlawful confinement) in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. She asked for her liberty to be restored. One year passed. The petition was denied in July of 1943. In August, Endo appealed to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Next, Mitsuye Endo was moved to the Central Utah Relocation Center at Topaz, Utah. It took the Circuit Court of Appeals until 22 April 1944, to decide that it needed to apply to the U.S. Supreme Court for instructions on some questions of law. The Supreme Court promptly demanded the entire record of the Endo case, so that it could "proceed to a decision as if the case had been brought to the Supreme Court by appeal." Thus the case became identified as Ex parte Endo (ex parte being a legal way of saying that the case came from one side only).