Honoring Mitsuye Endo
During WWII, Mitsuye Endo was one of four Japanese American US citizens who challenged the constitutionality of Executive Order #9066 and the incarceration of 125,000 Japanese Americans citizens and legal Japanese residents. Fred Korematsu, Min Yasui, and Gordon Hirabayashi were the other three Supreme Court cases; these were unsuccessful in the highest court in the land. The only case successful was Ex parte Mitsuye Endo. Though Endo’s case won at the Supreme Court level, it is less known than those of Hirabayashi, Yasui, and Korematsu. These three men all have Presidential Medals of Freedom, the highest US civilian award. Endo does not.
Finally in January 2025, Mitsuye Endo was posthumously awarded the Presidential CItizens Medal, the second-highest civilian award in the US, by outgoing President Joe Biden. The Presidential Citizens Medal is awarded to citizens of the US who have performed exemplary deeds of service for their country or their fellow citizens. Why she didn’t get a Presidential Medal of Freedom like the others, I can only speculate 1) her case was lesser known and 2) she was a woman. But more importantly, I want to honor Mitsuye here and make her story known!
“...Undaunted, she challenged the injustice and reached the Supreme Court. Her resolve allowed thousands of Japanese Americans to return home and rebuild their lives, reminding us that we are a Nation that stands for freedom for all.” (White House News Release, 1/2/2025)
On December 18, 1944, a divided Supreme Court ruled 6-3 defeating the Korematsu case—stating that the detention of West Coast Japanese Americans was a “military necessity” not based on race, upholding the government’s action to incarcerate Japanese American citizens. Ironically, the same court on the same day, unanimously declared this incarceration unjust when hearing Ex parte Mitsuye Endo. Mitsuye and her legal team were successful in proving the injustice of incarcerating loyal Japanese Americans! The contradictory rulings of these two Supreme Court cases announced on the same day are confusing and appear to be some type of political compromise to justify the actions of the president’s Executive Order.
Mitsuye, a native of Sacramento, California, was a young woman working a clerical job at the California Department of Employment when Pearl Harbor was bombed. In the aftermath and fear, she was dismissed from her job because of her Japanese
ancestry. Interned with her family at the Tule Lake, California, camp, she was contacted by the Japanese American Citizens League’s (JACL) attorney to challenge the incarceration of loyal Japanese American citizens in the courts. She reluctantly agreed,
as she didn’t want to bring attention to herself. However, in her words, she did it “knowing it’s for the good of everybody.”
Mitsuye was selected by the JACL because she was seen as the ideal plaintiff: an American citizen who had never been to Japan, didn’t speak Japanese at all, and a Protestant with a brother who had served in the Army. The petition was filed on July 13, 1942, in the San Francisco federal district court. Subsequently, she was moved to the Topaz, Utah, camp while her suit went through the court system. Though she was offered the opportunity to leave the camp early (an offer the government made with the hope of negating her court case), she opted to remain in camp as leaving would nullify the lawsuit.
A year and a half went by as the case slowly progressed to the US Supreme Court. Her case, Ex parte Mitsuye Endo, was finally ruled in her favor on December 18, 1944, a unanimous court decision. This meant that the government could not detain or incarcerate citizens who were loyal to the United States.
After her case was decided, she left the Topaz incarceration camp in May 1945 to live with her sister in Chicago. Mitsuye got a job as a secretary for the Mayor’s Committee on Race Relations. She married Kenneth Tsutsumi, a fellow camp incarceree, and had a family of three children. She always wanted to maintain a low profile; even her own daughter didn’t know of her Supreme Court case until she was in her twenties! MItsuye lived in Chicago until her death by cancer on April 14, 2006.
Kindness is…sacrificing your freedom to fight
for the freedom of the whole community.
pg.109 The Kindness of Color
I honor Mitsuye Endo as a true American hero who fought injustice for the good of her fellow 125,000 Japanese American citizens and residents. The victory of Ex parte Mitsuye Endo led to the 1945 release of our Japanese American families after 3-4 years of incarceration. It gave our Japanese American families back the hope of freedom and starting life all over again. Thank you, Mitsuye! I will never forget what you did for us!
For more information on Mitsuye Endo:
This 3 minute video, “Mitsuye Endo: A Tenacious Hero of Justice” from the California Museum provides a good overview of her life and the case.
Article about Mitsuye Endo and the Presidential Citizens Award:
In the Press
Follow us on Facebook, Instagram & LinkedIn as we cultivate kindness together