Coram nobis plaintiffs Gordon Hirabayashi, Min Yasui and Fred Korematsu. (Photo by Steven Okazaki. For permission to reprint, please go to our press room)

In 1942, after the Pearl Harbor attack, Fred Korematsu refused to report to the government’s “assembly centers” for Japanese Americans. In Washington and Oregon, respectively, Gordon K. Hirabayashi and Minoru Yasui defied the curfew imposed on Japanese Americans. In 1943, Hirabayashi and Yasui were wrongfully convicted and denied justice by the United States Supreme Court. Similarly, Korematsu lost his Supreme Court case in 1944.

Korematsu, Hirabayashi, and Yasui each took a principled stand at great personal sacrifice in protesting government-sanctioned discrimination based on racial heritage and ancestry.

In 1982, with newly-discovered evidence found by Peter Irons, a legal historian and attorney, and Aiko Yoshinaga-Herzig, a researcher, Korematsu, Hirabayashi and Yasui made the decision to reopen their 40-year old convictions by petitioning for a writ of error coram nobis to have the wrongful convictions vacated. The task of retrying legal cases based on events 40 years past was complicated and novel, but three pro-bono legal teams, composed mostly of Sansei (third generation Japanese Americans), were determined to undo the injustice perpetrated on the three plaintiffs and their own family members, who were imprisoned as well.

The writ of error coram nobis has been extremely limited in application, but has been used by courts once an individual has been convicted and released in order to correct a court’s fundamental error or to reverse a manifest injustice. For Korematsu, Hirabayashi and Yasui, the fundamental errors at the Supreme Court level were the US government officials’ suppression, alteration, and destruction of evidence that Japanese Americans were not disloyal nor were they predisposed to espionage and sabotage, as had been argued by the government, and that no facts warranted the issuance of the military orders and Executive Order No. 9066. Thus, the legal teams argued that a fraud on the Supreme Court had been committed, resulting in the original convictions.

After litigating for nearly a year in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, Fred Korematsu and his legal team emerged triumphant on November 10, 1983, when Judge Marilyn Hall Patel announced from the bench her decision granting the petition for the writ of error coram nobis to overturn Fred Korematsu’s conviction. The written decision was published on April 19, 1984.

The decision by Judge Patel influenced petitions for writ of error coram nobis in the United States District Courts of Oregon and Washington, where Minoru Yasui and Gordon K. Hirabayashi successfully filed to have their wrongful convictions vacated. The coram nobis decisions in these cases impaired the precedent of the original Supreme Court cases, which validated the curfew and exclusion orders. In addition, the decisions influenced Congress’ passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988.

Korematsu Legal Team: click here

Hirabayashi Legal Team