During World War II, Gordon Hirabayashi chose to fight the internment of thousands of Japanese Americans. He spent more than two years in prisons for violating exclusion and curfew orders. He cleared his name four decades after his 1942 arrest and, in the process, helped prove the US falsified the reasons for the mass incarceration.
The American Friends Service Committee mourns the passing of Gordon Hirabayashi, a civil rights icon, Friend, and former AFSC staff member, on January 2, 2012.
His deep convictions made him challenge the authority of a military decree to intern Japanese Americans on the West Coast during World War II - thus raising the most profound issues that can be raised concerning American citizenship.
