JAPANESE AMERICAN NATIONAL MUSEUM NOTES PASSING OF GORDON HIRABAYASHI, CIVIL RIGHTS ICON

The leadership, staff, volunteers and supporters of the Japanese American National Museum extend their sympathies to the family of the late Gordon Hirabayashi, who passed away on January 2, 2012.

Gordon Hirabayashi will forever be known as a civil rights icon, who followed his conscience and fought against the United States Government’s unconstitutional forced removal and false incarceration of thousands of people of Japanese ancestry during World War II. Like many of his Nisei generation, Gordon believed in the Constitution and sought his day in court by facilitating his own arrest for refusing to register for exclusion. As an American-born citizen, Gordon felt his rights would be upheld and the discriminatory acts against his family and his community would be struck down. As in the cases of Minoru Yasui and Fred Korematsu, Hirabayashi v. United States proved to be a continuation of the prejudicial treatment against people of Japanese ancestry when the Supreme Court upheld his conviction.

Forty years later, Hirabayashi was able to have another day in court when law historian Peter Irons uncovered evidence that the government had withheld vital information. Through a legal procedure known as writ of error coram nobis, Hirabayashi, Yasui and Korematsu had their convictions were vacated. These cases were influential in the fight for redress for Japanese Americans, and ultimately led to the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, providing for an official government apology and reparations to thousands.

A professor of sociology at the University of Alberta in Canada for many years, Hirabayashi never considered himself a civil rights leader. But, Gordon Hirabayashi set an example for others to follow, and for that, he will never be forgotten.