Mitsuye Endo

Mitsuye Endo

Japantown, Sacramento, 1942, Mitsuye Endo,

Mitsuye Endo, was born on May 20th, 1920 in Sacramento and grew up going to Sacramento Senior High School. After graduation she attended a secretarial school which allowed her to get a job for the state working at the Department of Employment. After the Bombing of Pearl Harbor many Japanese who worked for the state were laid off and Mitsuye was one of 63 state workers who proceeded to file charges against their unlawful dismissal. Going through the Japanese American Citizens League Mitsuye hired James C. Purcell to help with her case.As the Japanese were forced to relocate to the camps Mitsuye was sent to Tule Lake Relocation Center and then to Topaz Relocation Center with her family. While the internment was going on Purcell looked to challenge the legality of the forced relocation through habeas corpus Mitsuye was an ideal candidate to use as the basis for the case against the government due to the fact that she had never been to Japan had a brother in the army and was a Methodist. Because of her petition against the legality of the internment led to the United States Supreme Court ruling in her favor in December 1944. Soon after the army allowed the Japanese to leave the camps and come back to the west coast. After leaving the camp Mitsuye went to Chicago and lived with her sister and her husband. Eventually Mitsuye took a job as a secretary for the Mayor's Committee on Race Relations and married Kenneth Tsutsumi who she had met in the camp in 1947. For the rest of her life Mitsuye Endo avoided the spotlight and rarely discussed her actions in helping to end the internment and died from cancer on April 14, 2006.

The Japanese American Archival Collection. MSS-94/01. California State University, Sacramento. Library. Dept. of Special Collections and University Archives.

1942

The Japanese American Archival Collection. MSS-94/01. California State University, Sacramento. Library. Dept. of Special Collections and University Archives.