Bringing New Life to Japanese American Hero Gordon Hirabayashi's Story

Three men, Fred Korematsu, Gordon Hirabayashi and Minoru Yasui, defied President Franklin Roosevelt's order to 110,000 West Coast Japanese to submit to evacuation and imprisonment during World War II. Among their stories, Gordon Hirabayashi's has always struck me as the most dramatic.

Convinced that Executive Order 9066 was unconstitutional, he possessed the moral courage to defy it. He ignored a curfew placed on targeted Japanese, refused to post bail that would have sent him to a prison camp, and challenged the government on the constitutionality of the Order. Upon conviction, lacking the funds to get himself from Seattle, where he had been at senior at the University of Washington, he hitchhiked to Tuscon, where he was to serve out his sentence, sleeping in ditches along the way.

Forty-three years later, Hirabayashi's conviction (upheld by the Supreme Court in 1943) was overturned by a San Francisco federal appeals court. Earlier this year, President Obama posthumously awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

So I was excited to hear that actor and playwright Jeanne Sakata's play about Hirabayashi, Hold These Truths, was coming to New York's Epic Theater. Last night Sakata spoke at a meeting of JAJA (an informal group of Japanese Americans and Japanese living in New York) at the Manhattan loft of Tamio Spiegel and Julie Azuma.

It was fascinating to hear the story of how Sakata's initial curiosity about Hirabayashi turned into a driving passion, inspiring her to try her hand at play writing for the first time. She forged a relationship with Hirabayashi, and immersed herself in his correspondence and papers at the University of Washington library. She lucked out, meeting Hirabashi when he was in his early 80s, his memory sharp and his naturally sunny personality on full display. Hirabayashi died in January after suffering from Alzheimer's disease for a number of years, at 93.

Hirabayashi's personality was so positive in fact, that pinpointing those moment of self-doubt and anguish that Sakata  knew she needed to give her one-man play dramatic tension proved to be one of the challenges of the project. Even though Hirabayashi gave her licence to "just make up" what she lacked, she preferred not to; luckily she came across enough early primary source material to illuminate those desperate moments. One  such discovery came when she learned that when Hirabayashi's parents were brought from their prison camp to Seattle to testify against him, the government refused to put them up in decent lodgings, instead making them stay in his prison cell with him. Hirabayashi swore he would never forgive the U.S. government for doing that to his parents. He was also, Sakata told the audience, deeply anguished over the pain he caused his mother by his actions, which she feared would separate him from the family forever. 

Asked how she felt about a non-Japanese, playing the role of Hirabayashi (Filipino American Joel de la Fuente stars), Sakata noted that the theaters at which Hold These Truths has been staged all conduct open auditions, and that all the leading Japanese American male actors who might have fit the part were busy working, which for any actor is  "a good thing."

From all reports this latest incarnation of the play is moving, beautifully acted and powerful theater; I'm looking forward to seeing it.

Hold These Truths

By Jeanne Sakata

Starring Joel de la Fuente

Epic Theater

344 E. 14th St.

New York, NY 1009

Through November 18

Confession of Error: Justice Department Finally Admits it was Wrong in Hirabayashi v. United States

 In May 2011, Neal Katyal, then Acting Solicitor General of the U.S., issued a “confession of error” on behalf of his office for defending the mass government roundup and imprisonment of U.S. citizens and immigrants of Japanese descent during World War II.

Last night Katyal, who is now a law professor at Georgetown University and a partner in the firm Hogan Lovells, LLP, spoke about this confession of error in a talk at Fordham Law School. He described how in 1943 Solicitor General Charles Fahey had to defend the government’s actions when the appeal of conscientious objector Gordon Hirabayashi, who had been convicted of violating curfew during the earlier forced roundup, reached the Supreme Court. Although Fahey was aware of intelligence reports that found that the vast majority of Japanese Americans did not pose a security threat, he papered over that evidence, leading to the Court unanimously uphold  Hirabayashi’s conviction in June 1943. You can read a blog post Katyal wrote on the confession of error here.

In a way, Katyal’s talk was a tribute to Justice Department lawyers Charles Ennis and John Burling, who fought hard to “challenge the system from within” and urged Fahey not to fight Hirabayashi’s appeal and those of Fred Korematsu and Minoru Yasui, even as Fahey made “arguments that were products of their time.” After Assistant Attorney General and Columbia law professor Herbert Weschler drafted a footnote to the government’s brief fudging Justice’s position in order to prevent any accusations of suppression of evidence, Ennis and Burling reluctantly signed their names to it.

   

Katyal told the audience his “greatest regret” was that Hirabayashi did not receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom during this life time, as Korematsu was able to do. Since posthumous awards are sometimes given, Katyal added, “I would very much like to see that.”

The talk, directed at a hall full of law students and law professors, was a footnote to the story of the World War II incarceration, yet poignant and relevant as well. Katyal’s advice to current Justice Department officials prosecuting the war on terror: “Because the courts lack institutional competencies in war matters [Justice Department lawyers] have to make the most accurate briefs and have to explain their reasoning…their duty of candor means they have to be absolutely sure to tell every part of the story.” Let’s hope that the current staff in Washington heeds Katyal’s message.