documents, Court Documents for Tadayasu Abo et. al vs. William P. Rogers, San Francisco in California, 03/10/1958
date: label: date made
content: March 10 1958
notes: label: Description
content: Hideo Kaneshiro was a Japanese American citizen of the United States who was imprisoned in Hawai'i and Mainland Japanese American prison camps during World War II.
label: Description
content: Kaneshiro was sent to the Topaz Relocation Center in Utah on March 14, 1923 and was then transferred to the Tule Lake Relocation Center in September of 1943 after he answered “no” to questions 27 and 28 in the loyalty questionnaire. Tule Lake segregated prisoners based on who was considered disloyal or disruptive, and Kaneshiro was considered to be disloyal. The Tule Lake records listed Kaneshiro as a renunciant of US citizenship by the United States Army.
label: Description
content: Question 27 on the loyalty questionnaire asked if Nisei men were willing to serve on combat duty wherever ordered, and question 28 asked if individuals would swear unqualified allegiance to the United States and forswear any form of allegiance to the Emperor of Japan. These questions caused unrest because citizens resented being asked to renounce loyalty from the Emperor of Japan, especially when they had never sworn loyalty to the Emperor. Not only that, Japanese immigrants were barred from becoming U.S. Citizens on the basis of racial exclusion, so renunciation of their Japanese citizenship was problematic. Not only that, young men worried that answer “yes” to Question 27 would mean they had volunteered to join the Army. Individuals who said “no” to both questions were considered disloyal to the United States and were labeled as such; most of these people were segregated from the “loyal” and sent to the Tule Lake camp.
label: Description
content: Kaneshiro was one of the four thousand plaintiffs in the suit Abo v. Clark in 1946, a lawsuit that overturned the forced renunciation of American citizenship by the plaintiffs. Kaneshiro’s renunciation of his American citizenship was declared null and void, and his American citizenship was fully restored.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: California, San Francisco
topic: label: Subject
content: Court Cases
label: Subject
content: World War II
label: related event
content: Japanese American Internment
label: related event
content: World War II
setName: label: See more items in
content: Military and Society: Armed Forces History, Japanese American
label: See more items in
content: Executive Order 9066
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Gift of Hideo Kaneshiro
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 2015.0248.01
label: catalog number
content: 2015.0248.01
label: accession number
content: 2015.0248
objectType: label: Object Name
content: documents
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: paper; ink (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 12 5/32 in x 8 13/16 in; 30.861 cm x 22.352 cm