Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds

by Pamela Rotner Sakamoto

in December 1944, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Ex parte Endo that the government could not hold “concededly loyal” persons against their will. In January restrictions against resettling on the West Coast would be stricken and general release from the concentration camps, including Gila River, would commence. This decision was a vindication, but it was not unequivocal. In another case, Korematsu v. United States, the Supreme Court had upheld the constitutionality of the original exclusion order. A wave of vigilante incidents shook the West Coast to discourage ethnic Japanese from returning to their hometowns; in one incident, the American Legion removed the names of sixteen nisei soldiers from its county honor roll in Hood River, Oregon.