Title
A MOTION commemorating and condemning the imprisonment of Gordon Hirabayashi in the King County Jail for defying the forced removal of Japanese-Americans and Japanese immigrants during World War II, on the seventy-fifth anniversary of his imprisonment.
Body
WHEREAS, Gordon Hirabayashi was born in Seattle on April 23, 1918, to Japanese immigrant parents, Shungo and Mitsuko Hirabayashi, and
WHEREAS, after moving as a child with his family to the White River valley in south King County, Gordon Hirabayashi graduated from Auburn High School in 1935, and
WHEREAS, Gordon Hirabayashi enrolled at the University of Washington as a part-time student in 1937, and
WHEREAS, following the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, an executive order signed by the president of the United States ordered the forced removal of all Japanese-Americans and Japanese immigrants living on the west coast of the United States, and
WHEREAS, Gordon Hirabayashi refused to register for incarceration or to subject himself to the curfew that had been applied to people of Japanese ancestry, and instead presented himself to the Federal Bureau of Investigation with a statement objecting to incarceration and curfew, and
WHEREAS, on May 13, 1942, in preparation for his resistance and expected imprisonment, Gordon Hirabayashi wrote a letter entitled, "Why I Refused to Register for Evacuation," in which he stated, "This order for the mass evacuation of all persons of Japanese descent denies them the right to live... This order limits to almost full extent the creative expressions of these subjected. It kills the desire for a higher life. The very qualities which are essential to a peaceful, creative community are being thrown out and abused. Over sixty per cent are American citizens; yet they are denied on a wholesale scale without due process of law the civil liberties which are theirs," and
WHEREAS, Gordon Hirabayashi was then arrested and confined in the King County Jail, Tank 3C,...
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