Ex Parte Endo Trial: 1944

The Supreme Court soon learned that Mitsuye Endo:

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.

The court also learned, from one of General De Witt's reports, that:

Essentially, military necessity required only that the Japanese population be removed from the coastal area and dispersed in the interior.… That the evacuation program necessarily and ultimately developed into one of complete Federal supervision was due primarily to the fact that the interior states would not accept an uncontrolled Japanese migration.

---

---

The military's argument, noted Justice William 0. Douglas in the opinion handed down December 18, 1944, was that "but for such supervision there might have been dangerously disorderly migration of unwanted people to unprepared communities" and that "although community hostility towards the evacuees has diminished, it has not disappeared and the continuing control of the Authority over the relocation process is essential to the success of the evacuation program."

Justice Douglas wrote:

We are of the view that Mitsuye Endo should be given her liberty. 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.

Loyalty is a matter of the heart and mind, not of race, creed, or color. He who is loyal is by definition not a spy or a saboteur. When the power to detain is derived from the power to protect the war effort against espionage and sabotage, detention which has no relationship to that objective is unauthorized.

If we assume (as we do) that the original evacuation was justified, its lawful character was derived from the fact that it was an espionage and sabotage measure, not that there was community hostility to this group of American citizens.

"Mitsuye Endo," concluded the Justice, "is entitled to unconditional release by the War Relocation Authority."

By this time, the War Relocation Authority, aware that no military need existed for barring Japanese Americans from the West Coast, had quietly begun permitting selected evacuees to return home. The Supreme Court decision effectively ended the detention program, as the Western Defense Command announced that "those persons of Japanese ancestry whose records have stood the test of Army scrutiny during the past two years" would be released from internment after January 2, 1945.