Sunday, July 2, 2017

“We Hold These Truths”: The Story of a Japanese American Quaker Who Resisted Injustice, with Some Lessons for Today

A
number of Orange Grove Friends went to the Pasadena Playhouse to see “We Hold
These Truths,” a powerful play about Gordon Hirabayashi, a Quaker who
challenged the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII. Many of us were
thrilled that the play began with Hirabayashi describing and celebrating George
Fox and Quakerism. This play seems especially relevant today in light of
Trump’s “Muslim ban,” that lumps together refugees and immigrants from Muslim
countries as potential terrorists just as Civilian Exclusion Act of 1942
treated all Japanese Americans as if they were potential spies and traitors.

After
Pearl Harbor, Americans on the West Coast became paranoid about their Japanese
American neighbors. Presidential Executive Order 9066 forced 120,000 Japanese
Americans living on the West Coast to be
relocated in places like Manzanar, Tule Lake and other sites in bleak
locations. Over 70,000 of them were
American citizens. Many lost their homes and businesses, as well as their
liberty. But very few resisted. Most went out of their way to prove their
loyalty. Some joined the military, risking their lives for a country that had
incarcerated them. Only a handful refused to comply with this unjust law.

The
play portrays Hirabayashi as someone who cared more about principles than
conforming to the standards of his culture. “The nail that sticks out gets hit
by the hammer,” is what his Japanese father often told him. Conformity and
loyalty were prized among Japanese American. What drew Hirabayashi to Quakers
was the fact that they were willing to not go along with the crowd if it meant
supporting injustice. After refusing to comply with Order 9066, Hirabayashi was
arrested and jailed, much to the embarrassment and shame of his family. He
received support from Quakers (but not the ACLU!) and took his case all the way
to the Supreme Court in 1943, and lost. The government claimed they had
evidence that the Japanese Americans posed a threat to national security, and
therefore needed to be interned. The Supreme Court agreed.

In
1985 evidence surfaced showing that the government lied to the Supreme Court,
and there was no national security threat from the Japanese Americans. Hirabayashi again took the case to court and
this time he won. The government settled the case at the district level, and decided
to give reparations to Japanese Americans who'd been interned illegally. (The
amount was far less than the damage caused: $20,000) This win for justice is a
powerful story, one that we need to hear at this time when our liberties are at
risk. However, we also need to be aware that the Supreme Court never reversed
its original decision that the rights of citizens could be curtailed in warfare.
So it could happen again.

Following
the play, Phil Way along with others gave an after talk in which he discussed
how his parents ran Quaker school in Temple City and helped the Japanese
Americans in many ways during this dark period when Japanese Americans were
being scapegoated. He remembered the pain he felt as a little child when he saw
Japanese Americans being forced to live in horse stalls.

Phil
has maintained a keen interest in the cause of Japanese Americans, and also of
Muslim Americans who have been threatened with the same kind of xenophobia. Phil and I are both members of Interfaith
Communities United for Justice and Peace (ICUJP), which has taken a strong
stand against Islamophobia. Several members of ICUJP, including myself, used to
visit Abdul Jabar Hamdan, a Palestinian Muslim who was
incarcerated on Terminal Island in San Pedro. Hamdan was jailed on trumped up
charges dating back to when he was a student 30 years ago and failed to report that
he became part-time for a semester when he was sick. Even though he had raised
a family and never broke any laws, he was detained and threatened with
deportation to Jordon, where it was likely he would be jailed and tortured. ICE
hoped that this threat would lead him to incriminate other Muslims.

I
can’t begin to describe how much joy it gave me to visit Hamdan in detention.
He was a kind and deeply spiritual man with a wonderful family I came to know
and appreciate. His daughter was in law school and aspired to be a Civil Rights
attorney. I also had the joy of
worshipping with Hamdan when he was found innocent and released a couple of
years later. I expect that my experience was similar to what Quakers felt when
they visited Japanese held in detention during WW II.

Ironically, Terminal Island is where the
first Japanese Americans were rounded up and taken to relocation camps sixty
some years ago. There is a monument on Terminal Island commemorating the one
thousand Japanese fisherman and their families who were taken from their homes
and locked up. When I visited this detention center, I often thought of Hirabayashi
and other Quakers who resisted this injustice.

Hirabayashi
had close connections with Friends in Whittier that I knew personally and
deeply admired. Helen O’Brien, who was clerk of Whitleaf Meeting in Whittier,
was mentioned in the play. Her husband Bob taught Gordon when he was a student
at the University of Washington in Seattle. Gordon joined University Meeting in
Seattle, where Helen and Bob were members. These dedicated Quakers worked
tirelessly to help Japanese Americans during WW II. They helped Japanese
students in the camps to get scholarship to study in East Coast colleges. Along
with other Quakers, they also organized the purchase of Japanese homes and
businesses so they could be sold back at the same price to their owners after
the war. This prevented many Japanese Americans from having to sell their
property to unscrupulous buyers who took advantage of their misfortune and paid
them as little as possible.

During
the play Hirabayashi spoke a lot about Esther Schmoe, whom he married during
the War. The story of how Gordon met and married Esther is told with humor and
pathos during the play.

Floyd Schmoe with Hiroshima home

I
interviewed Esther’s father Floyd Schmoe in 1999, just before he died. He was
104 years old, and still sharp as a tack. Floyd was a Quaker with a deep love for the
Japanese people. During the interview he shared his remarkable story, which was
published in Friends Bulletin.

During World War I, Floyd was aconscientious objectorand
became a stretcher bearer. During World War II he reached out to Japanese
Americans. After the War, he went toHiroshima, Japan, and
helped rebuild houses that were destroyed by theatomic bomb. He
built 21 homes from 1949 to 1953 in Hiroshima financed by funds from the US.He exchanged letters withEmperor Hirohito. He
traveled all over the world promoting peace and built theSeattle Peace Park.. In 1988 Floyd received the Hiroshima Peace Prize
and was made an honorary citizen of Japan. This is the remarkable Quaker family
that Gordon married into!

At the end of the play, Phil reminded us that we
need to reach out to our Muslim neighbors, just as Quakers reached out to
Japanese Americans during and after WWII. The play also reminds us that we need
to stand by our principles, just as Hirabayashi did. At the end of the play, he
told us another saying of his father, “If the nail is bigger than the hammer,
then the nail doesn’t have to worry.”

These
articles about Gordon Hirabayashi appeared in The Western Quaker
Reader (2000).

uring the war years I was never
referred to as a citizen. I was always considered a “non-alien.” I was an
undergraduate student at the University of Washington at the time, training for
an occupational career and practicing to be a first-class citizen. As a conscientious
objector and member of University Meeting in Seattle, I was not an enthusiastic
supporter of our entry into war, but neither was I bent on obstructing
“national security” measures. I could not support an unwarranted
violation of our constitutional guarantees. As a result, I refused to
cooperate with the Western Defense Command order. I needed to be given
more relevant reasons for my removal than the fact of my ancestry.

With the supportive counsel of
Friends/friends, and the legal advice of Arthur Barnett, a member of my
meeting, I reported to the FBI the day following the removal of all
Japanese. Later, a Gordon Hirabayashi Defense Committee was formed, and
the legal battle for citizens’ rights began. Without this committee, composed
of Friends and a few others like them, mine would have become an obscure
wartime case gathering dust in the archives.

It was not easy to secure competent
legal counsel; mine was not a popular case during the war. Arthur Barnett
contacted many of his colleagues, but although some were willing, their firms
would not consent to their participation. We finally found an able young lawyer
from a prestigious firm, but when his name and that of his firm appeared in the
press following my arraignment, the Teamsters threatened to withdraw their
legal work from his firm if it persisted in defending “that Jap.”
Needless to say, we had to begin a new search. Fortunately, we were able
to secure a man with a relevant background: a Republican member of the American
Legion who was keenly interested in defending the Constitution.

Our court battles were neither easy
nor successful. Some funds were raised locally, but mainly they were
raised with assistance from Clarence Pickett and Homer Morris, using the
American Friends Service Committee mailing list and through a sympathetic
foundation known to them. We did not win in the district court when the
presiding judge ruled that the prevailing law was the Western Defense Command
Proclamation, which in effect suspended my constitutional guarantees in spite
of the fact that martial law had not been invoked.

When our appeal eventually reached
the Supreme Court, we thought we would have our day in court. Not so.
We found that the Supreme Court had gone to war, too. Instead of
demanding evidence for the suspension of constitutional guarantees to citizens
regardless of race, religion, creed or national origin, the Supreme Court
accepted the government’s position on the word of government officials and
military officers….

Although we never relinquished the
hope that some day in some way the records would be corrected, my case and that
of two others, Fred Korematsu and Minoru Yasui, remained dormant for more than
40 years. In 1980-81, using the Freedom of Information Act, Peter Irons,
a legal historian, was investigating the conduct of lawyers on both sides of
the Japanese-American constitutional cases. He discovered in the musty,
old files of the federal archives that the Western Defense Command had on its
desk FBI, Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), and Federal Communications
Commission (FCC) reports denying danger of espionage or sabotage at the very
moment it was stating in its brief that the removal action was “militarily
necessary.” Western Defense Command had knowingly withheld from the
Supreme Court the FBI, ONI, and FCC reservations for a mass, forced
uprooting. (During the war the government continued to use the
humanitarian euphemism, “evacuation.”)

Peter Irons contacted Dale Minami, a
San Francisco lawyer, and through him, some other Asian-American lawyers on the
West Coast to explore the possibility of appeals. This group of lawyers
then contacted Fred Korematsu, Minoru Yasui, and me and asked if we would
consider becoming petitioners through a rarely used procedure called “writ of
error coram nobis.” Although the seven-year statute of limitations had
long since expired, coram nobis allows opportunity to petition for a hearing on
the grounds of government misconduct. Thus, three sets of legal teams,
maintaining close liaison, were established to launch simultaneous petitions
for coram nobis in the respective federal district courts of San Francisco,
Portland, and Seattle. In January, 1983, a major press conference was
held in San Francisco to launch the three cases, and a public education group,
the Committee to Reverse the Wartime Japanese-American Cases, became busy and
has remained active ever since….

Why revive Japanese-American wartime
cases? Certainly to erase the convictions recorded against me, but there
is more. As a test case, my case can help to remove the dark cloud
hovering over 120,000 Japanese-Americans who were mistreated and who continue
to wonder to this day about their citizenship.

When the unprecedented uprooting of
U.S. citizens occurred and our people were confined to internment camps, enough
safeguards and principles existed in our Constitution to have protected
us. Missing, however, was the will of the people, including the Supreme
Court, to uphold constitutional guarantees.

During the war my hopes were constantly
buoyed by the Friends/friends who visited me in jail, and by others who
supported the G. H. Defense Committee. These activities were definitely
not popular then. Today, citizen vigilance is expressed on many fronts,
for example, Central America, remembrance of the Holocaust, the continuing
problems in Southeast Asia, as well as social issues at home. My petition is
another area in which such vigilance is demonstrated.

I am privileged to witness and be
part of this demonstration for human rights supported by a strong citizens
committee and by my legal team. It serves us well to remember that our
constitution and the increasing number of human rights laws are mere scraps of
paper unless active citizen vigilance ensures they are upheld.

“Remembering
Gordon Hirabayahi” by Floyd Schmoe

[Floyd Schmoe was teaching at
the University of Washington when Hirabayashi and others were arrested. One of
the founding members of University Friends Meeting, as well as the first
executive secretary of the AFSC in Seattle, Floyd not only befriended Gordon,
he ended up becoming his father-in-law. The following oral history, taken
from interviews conducted by Rose Lewis in 1974, [2] should
be read for its human interest, not for its precise historical detail.]

G

ordon Hirabayashi and some of the
other students at the University decided they should do something about [the
new curfew law]. They were American citizens and had certain rights, and some
of them felt that some protest should be made, so Gordon decided quite early to
deliberately refuse the curfew. Later he refused the evacuation and turned
himself in, that is, went to the FBI and told them he was not going to conform
or abide by the curfew. We were quite well acquainted with Gordon in that
group, and we supported him, as we do COs now, with affidavits or letters
or whatever is needed. They threatened him, of course, told him that if he was
found on the streets he would be picked up. Actually he never was picked up by
the FBI or the police….He turned himself in and said that he had violated and
would not comply with either order, the curfew or the evacuation order.
He was held in the county jail first, and [my daughter] Esther and the rest of
the kids visited him there. Some of the Japanese who resisted the orders,
were not COs. They were objecting on other grounds. Gordon’s objection
was that this was a civil rights issue; being a citizen, his civil rights were
being violated….

It was an interesting thing about
his prison experience. Because of the evacuation, and the restrictions on
the West Coast, his trial in federal district court was held in Spokane. He was
held in the county jail in Spokane during the trial and after the trial and his
conviction. He was there for several weeks, and a county jail is much
worse than a federal prison usually, as far as living conditions are
concerned. So he objected to that and said that since he had been
sentenced for a federal crime, he insisted on being sent to a federal prison;
he was tired of the county jail. The local sheriff, or US Marshal perhaps it
was, said, “All the federal prisons are full. There is no place to send
you.” But after several protests, he said, “There is a federal prison work camp
in the mountains of Arizona. But,” he said, “I couldn’t send you down
there because I don’t have anyone free to go with you” Gordon said, “Why
not let me go on my own? I’ll give you my word that I’ll go.” The sheriff
or marshal was pretty well acquainted with Gordon by then and said, “OK, I’ll
trust you.” He gave Gordon bus fare to Phoenix, Arizona; the camp was
near there.

Gordon, perhaps also to defy the
evacuation order, to try it out—or perhaps just to visit on the West Coast, I
don’t know—came by way of Seattle, Portland and San Francisco, which was another
violation. He was inside the restricted zone; not only that, but he
thought he’d need the bus money, so he hitchhiked. But he got down there
within the time limit that they gave him, and wasn’t picked up anywhere along
the road.

He spent most of a year there in the
work camp. He came back to Spokane and there were a lot of Japanese in Spokane
and we had a sort of center over there. We’d rented a house, a hostel for
people who had gone from the West Coast and hadn’t been able to find places to
live over there, and Esther helped there. Someone asked Esther to take a
truck from Bainbridge Island to the camp over at Minidoka near Twin Falls,
Idaho. She went by way of Spokane and she picked up Gordon or Gordon
picked her up, I don’t know which, and they went together from Spokane. When
she came back she asked Ruth and me—”What would you think if Gordon and I got
married?” We said, “Well, what do you think?” She said,
“Well, we’ve decided we will.” We liked Gordon very much, we had no
serious objection, so they were married….

Before Gordon was released from the
prison camp in Arizona he was drafted and refused to cooperate with the draft
board, so he was tried again and convicted and sent to McNeill Island for a
year. It was while he was there that Esther gave birth to twins, and this
drew a lot of publicity. They were about a month old before she took them
down for a visit and the guards at McNeill Island wouldn’t even let him touch
them—he had to see them through a wire barrier. They had pictures in the
paper and a good many of these stories were friendly. It was mentioned
in Time once, and in newspapers all over the country. A
Boston daily, I’ve forgotten which one, had a front-page picture when the twins
were born—a picture of Esther and the two kids. It was a two or three
column picture on the front page of one of the sections, but the headline was
rather insidious. It says “Jap Sires Twins” or something like that, but
the story wasn’t bad. Esther was with us all the time he was in prison.
The babies were six to eight months old when he got out of prison.

[1]Friends Journal August 1985: 4-6.
According to this article, “Gordon Hirabayashi has taught in the United States,
the Middle East, and Canada, and has been emeritus professor of sociology at
the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, since 1983. He was a
co-recipient of the 1983 Earl Warren Civil Liberties Award, and he received a
Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, from Haverford College in 1984.” Gordon became a
member of UFM in November 28, 1941, and transferred to Edmonton in January 13,
1961.

[2]For biographical information, see p. 92. During the
course of interviewing Floyd, Rose accumulated over 274 pages of material that is currently stored in
the Quaker archives in Whittier under the title Floyd and Ruth Schmoe:
Idealism, Service and Commitment in Two Quaker Lives.

About Anthony Manousos

I am a Quaker peace activist, teacher and author, my most recent book being "Transformative Quakers" and "Howard and Anna Brinton: Reinventors of Quakerism in the 20th century." I serve on the board of directors for several organizations, including the Friends World Committee for Consultation and Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace. I love biking, hiking in the mountains, going to museums and art galleries, Classical music, jazz, and being with friends. For twelve years I edited a Quaker magazine called "Friends Bulletin" (now called "The Western Friend") and edited four books and wrote several pamphlets for Quakers. I have taught at numerous colleges and universities, including Carleton College, Rutgers, Pepperdine, UC San Bernardino, San Bernardino Valley College, etc. I am a certified spiritual director through a spiritual direction program called "Stilpoint." I reside in Pasadena with wife Jill Shook, who has published a book on affordable housing (makinghousinghappen.com). We have a lovely garden, citrus and fig trees, a grape arbor, cats named Miss Rosie and Dr. Pepper, and three Arucana chickens.