Mitsuye Endo Tsutsumi didn’t set out to be a civil rights hero. And she didn’t promote herself as one. But she played a key role in ending the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans – many of them U.S. citizens – during World War II.
“Mitsuye was an ordinary person who was caught up in an extraordinary circumstance,” explains writer Frank Abe, who was part of a team who first told the personal story of Endo Tsutsumi in print, in the graphic novel, We Hereby Refuse: Japanese American Resistance to Wartime Incarceration, published in 2021.
Endo Tsutsumi was recently honored, nearly two decades after her death, for her role in ending the Japanese incarceration camps. She was awarded a Presidential Citizens Medal earlier this month by former U.S. Pres. Joe Biden.
But Endo Tsutsumi’s story is much less known than, say that of the late civil rights activist Fred Korematsu – another U.S. citizen ordered to the incarceration camps amid U.S. hysteria following the attacks on Pearl Harbor. Instead of defying orders, Endo Tsutsumi reported to her camp, but became part of lawsuit after she and her colleagues were illegally fired by the state of California. The lawyer who took on the case, James Purcell, ended up not only challenging the firings of the Japanese Americans, but also their entire incarceration – a story Abe and his team tell in engaging and compelling detail and imagery in We Hereby Refuse.
“What attorney James Purcell was doing was what attorneys do today, which was cherry picking his clients. He cherry-picked Endo, because she was a ‘perfect plaintiff,’” explained Abe.
She checked all the necessary boxes needed for a time of intense hatred of Japanese. She was Christian. She had a brother in the U.S. Army. She did not attend Japanese language schools.
But, in the end, perhaps just as important, she persisted for the greater good of the more than 120,000 other Japanese Americans also forced to the prison camps in the Western U.S. She refused an offer to leave that would have allowed her to go home months earlier but also prevent her from continuing her case.
“She was presented with the opportunity, by an attorney, who, with a conscience, wanted to bring a case against the government to contest this injustice,” said Abe. “She was reluctant at first, but she eventually agreed, and that agreement is what makes her worthy of recognition today, of honor today.”
Because of Endo Tsutsumi’s battle, in December of 1944, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down an order that effectively ended the incarceration of the Japanese Americans because there was no proof they were disloyal to the U.S. (The decision came at the same time period as Korematsu’s loss in the court.)
But despite her role in U.S. civil rights history, Endo Tsutsumi is – outside of the West Coast – a rather obscure figure. Her presidential recognition, in fact, came nearly 80 years after the fact.
“The history books had told the outlines of her biography, but not her personal feelings, motivations, experiences and journey – her personal journey from working for the state of California, in Sacramento, to a series of incarceration camps and her eventual case in the Supreme Court,” said Abe. “That story had not been fully explored, I think.”
Abe explains that part of the reason why is her personality. “She was shy and self-effacing. She didn’t feel she did anything special.”
The other reason is her family didn’t promote her legacy.
But after a campaign from the Japanese-American community last year to have Pres. Biden award her the Medal of Freedom, she ended up getting, posthumously, the Presidential Citizens Medal.
But even though her case had led to the eventual closing of the camps, Abe warns the story of Japanese incarceration is “not some isolated historical incident.”
He draws parallels to the 1940s and the family separations of undocumented immigrants at the southern border with “kids in cages and persecution of immigrants” during the first Trump Administration. And he fears it could happen again after threats of mass deportations and with increasing rhetoric demonizing China.
“I would encourage people to look at this history of Japanese Americans for a precedent of what can happen when these things get out of control.”
Abe will discuss “We Hereby Refuse” at Wellesley College on April 22 from 4:30-6 p.m. ET. Abe was contacted for this interview through the help of the nonprofit group Densho.
This story, which appears in the Lunar New Year Issue of Sampan, is part of a collection of stories on various types of activism. If you would like to suggest a person to profile, please email asmith@sampan.org.
