Ethical Resistance
When the Army began drafting camp inmates to fight in WWII, nearly 300 refused.
Some U.S. judges convicted resisters, handing down prison sentences of over 3 years. Other judges felt alarmed. When Judge Louis E. Goodman heard the case of 27 resisters, he concluded that it was “shocking to the conscience” to imprison a citizen on suspicion of disloyalty, try to draft him, and then punish him for refusing. Goodman dismissed the charges.
As with resistance to the draft, resistance to incarceration was uneven. Most Japanese American organizations and people encouraged cooperation, but some refused. Four Japanese Americans – Gordon Hirabayashi, Fred Korematsu, Minoru “Min” Yasui, and Mitsuye Endo – famously challenged the orders, taking their cases all the way to the Supreme Court. At the time, these actions did not garner support from other Japanese Americans, who felt that these arrests and lawsuits reinforced doubts about Japanese Americans’ loyalty.
In 1946, President Harry S. Truman pardoned all of the Nisei draft resisters. Even so, within the Japanese American community, those who challenged or resisted the incarceration resisters bore the stigma of 35 their wartime choices for decades. Today, however, they have been recognized as “resisters of conscience.” Korematsu, Hirabayashi, and Yasui all received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor, for their acts of courage in defying the government’s orders.
