Public relations materials disseminated by the U.S. government in the 1940s emphasized that the Nikkei obligingly went into confinement to prove their loyalty to America. In reality, individuals and groups protested their loss of freedom and deprivation of rights. Protest took several forms. Several Nisei challenged the government-imposed curfew and exclusion orders, and four people had their cases heard in the U.S. Supreme Court: Gordon Hirabayashi, Minoru Yasui, Fred Korematsu, and Mitsuye Endo. The first three were convicted for defying government orders, and while Endo’s case led to the camps closing, the Court never declared the incarceration to be unconstitutional. Nikkei workers called strikes, demonstrated, and submitted petitions to improve unsafe and unfair labor and living conditions, leading to violent conflicts at Poston, Arizona, and Manzanar, California. In 1943, thousands objected to a mandatory loyalty registration; opposition to the badly conceived loyalty questionnaire led to Nikkei being declared disloyal and sent to the repressive segregation camp at Tule Lake, California. In another form of protest, hundreds of Nisei men demanded that their civil rights be restored and their parents freed from confinement before they complied with draft orders. Judges disregarded their principled stance and sentenced over 300 young men to prison terms in federal penitentiaries for simple draft evasion.
Trial of the Heart Mountain draft resisters（1944）
Cheyenne, Wyoming
Courtesy of Frank Abe
Excerpt from Densho Archive
When I got my draft notice I wasn't happy at all. I said, "How can they do this?" They take away our rights, punish us for being Japanese, having a different-looking face. That's the only reason. The Germans and Italians, some of them, the aliens maybe were moved out of certain areas, but the citizens weren't put into concentration camps. It's just plain racism. Anybody could see that. White America denies it, but it's true. The facts speak for themselves. And while we fully understood that we had to try our best, like my brother says, "We'll go along with the draft because the government requests it. Maybe that's the only way that we could become American citizen." But I said, "No. We are American citizens and we don't have to go out there and sacrifice ourselves just to please white America." I said, "Why can't we go after we get our rights back?" and that we should fight for return of our constitutional rights before we go into the army. I said, "That's only the right thing to do."
at age 19 refused to be drafted from the Heart Mountain, Wyoming, incarceration camp, served 2 years in federal prison for draft evasion