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Asian Americans and U.S. Law

United States v. Fujii (1944)

In the days following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the FBI arrested almost 1,300 "Issei," first-generation Japanese immigrants who could not be naturalized as U.S. citizens because of their race.  Their children, "Nisei," had been born in this country but were also discriminated against by the exclusionary and detention orders. 

On January 20, 1944, the War Department announced that the Nisei would be reclassified by their Selective Service Boards and drafted if they physically qualified.  However, in March 1944, at Heart Mountain, an internment camp, young men began to refuse to get on the bus for the pre-draft physicals. Two indictments were filed, one of which resulted in the mass trial of 63 draft resisters.