Licensing

Guest curator: Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga (1)

Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga (1)

Gift of Hannah Tomiko Holmes (deaf WWII internee) 88.4.1B (photo)

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April 20, 1987, when this photograph was taken, was an historic day for Japanese Americans. The Supreme Court held a hearing of William Hohri et al., v. U.S.A., the class action lawsuit for redress filed by the National Council for Japanese American Redress (NCJAR).

Left to right: Fred T. Korematsu, Gordon K. Hirabayashi, Michi N. Weglyn, William M. Hohri, Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga, and Harry Y. Ueno.

Korematsu and Hirabayashi were convicted by the Supreme Court during World War II for disobeying military orders. Forty years later, their wartime sentences were vacated due to irrefutable evidence of government wrongdoing. Weglyn authored the influential book, Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps, which presented authentic documentation of egregious actions taken by the highest civil and military authorities against Japanese Americans. Hohri, as NCJAR chairperson and the primary named plaintiff, successfully carried out the organization’s goal to bring the cause for redress into the judicial arena. Herzig-Yoshinaga participated in the search for evidentiary documentation in the Korematsu and Hirabayashi coram nobis cases and served as researcher for Hohri v. U.S.A. Ueno, who challenged injustices in the camps, was condemned by authorities as a troublemaker, confined in isolation camps, and was one of several named plaintiffs in Hohri v. U.S.A.

Hannah Tomiko Takagi Holmes, incarcerated at Manzanar and also a NCJAR plaintiff, is one of many victims of the camps whose contributions to the redress movement is among the lesser known stories of those who confronted the government in the courts for deprivation of constitutional rights.