SPOKANE, Wash. – April 23 is Gordon Hirabayashi’s birthday. The civil rights advocate fought against Japanese internment orders during World War II and had a long history in Spokane.
Hirabayashi was born in western Washington in 1918. He was deeply influenced by the Quaker spirituality of his family, particularly the dedication of Friends to Gospel-inspired social justice principles.
He attended University of Washington (UW) throughout the early 1940s. In 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, ordering Japanese Americans living on the west coast to be sent to concentration camps for the remainder of the war.
Order 9066 is widely regarded by legal scholars as one of the most dangerous and racist uses of executive power in modern American history.
Hirabayashi refused to report to a camp during his senior year at UW. He was arrested and arraigned in a King County court in June 1942 for failing to comply with the order. He pleaded not guilty and argued that the military demands for Japanese Americans to vacate the region were unconstitutional.
The young man spent nine months in King County Jail until his case went to trial. His parents also spent several days in jail in the days before the proceedings.
While the case was appealed to the US Supreme Court Hirabayashi worked for the American Friends Service Committee in Spokane. In a letter to a friend from UW, he described his experience in the Lilac City.
“Sometime soon you should come over to Spokane to visit the new Fellowship Center,” Hirabayashi said.
While in Spokane, he helped community members confront racism. An early 1943 letter written by Hirabayashi to the service committee described an incident in which a Japanese American family from Idaho had trouble moving to Spokane.
It was difficult for them to secure a bank loan and they were attacked with racial epithets by their white neighbors after moving in.
“Japs purchased this place? Well, they can’t move in. My name’s Burke and I represent the Union Park district and we don’t want Japs moving in,” a neighbor told the family.
Hirabayashi’s work in Spokane came to a close on June 21, 1943 when the US Supreme Court ruled that his internment was constitutional, effectively allowing the Executive Branch to racially discriminate against citizens during wartime.
He was told that he would have to serve out the remainder of his jail term in Spokane County Jail. Not wanting to spend more time behind bars, he requested to be sent to a work camp instead.
US Attorney Edward Connelly in Spokane told Hirabayashi that the government wouldn’t pay for him to be transported to serve a nine month sentence at a federal work camp in Tucson.
Hirabayashi spent two weeks hitchhiking all the way from Spokane to Tucson to serve his sentence.
After completing his time in federal custody, Hirabayashi traveled back to the Lilac City and got married to a fellow Friend at a local church. He spent an additional year in jail after his marriage for refusing to fill out a “loyalty survey” sent to Japanese Americans across the west coast.
Hirabayashi obtained a PhD in sociology following his final prison term and taught in Alberta for decades. In 1983 his conviction was overturned after investigators found that the federal government had knowingly falsified information to justify Executive Order 9066.
President Ronald Reagan signed an official legislative apology for the internment orders that offered a small amount of cash to surviving former residents of the camps in 1988.
The US Supreme Court did not definitively rebuke the relocation of American citizens to concentration camps until 2018.
Hirabayashi’s legacy is a critical component of American civil rights case law and the history of Washington State. Playwright Jeanne Sakata wrote a renowned play recounting his life and he posthumously awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in 2012.
His life is a reminder that racial discrimination and civil rights advocacy are both unavoidable components of Spokane’s past and are still relevant today.
