The story of Gordon Hirabayashi, the Japanese American civil rights pioneer who defied curfew to take a stand against the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, is being told in his own words, reports Rafu Shimpo
Gordon’s brother James and nephew Lane Hirabayashi have published his prison diary and war time letters in a new book from the University of Washington Press, “A Principled Stand, the Story of Hirabayashi via United States.”
Gordon’s conviction was upheld on appeal, but later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1987.
“I never look at my case as just my own, or just as a Japanese American case,” he once said. “It is an American case, with principles that affect the fundamental human rights of all Americans.”
His brother James was the dean of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University and Lane Hirabayashi is a professor of Asian American studies at UCLA.
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You can read a review of the book in Rafu Shimpo.
