Heart Mountain: Conscience, Loyalty and the Constitution
When your government takes away your rights as an American citizen and detains you and your family in internment camps without any due process, do you prove your loyalty to the United States by being drafted to fight in World War II or do you resist the draft and challenge the constitutionality of the government’s actions?
Special thanks to David Weinberg of JuryGroup for creating the slide presentation that accompanies the script.
SCRIPT EXCERPT
NARRATOR 1: In an opinion written by Judge Walter Huxman, the Tenth Circuit rejected Menin’s arguments and affirmed the resisters’ convictions.
JUDGE HUXMAN: Fujii’s entire appeal is predicated on the argument that his confinement behind barbed wire in the relocation center without being charged with any crime deprived him of his liberty and property without due process of law — and therefore, he should not to be required to render military service until his rights were restored. Fujii was a citizen of the United States. He owed the same military service to his country that any other citizen did. Neither the fact that he was of Japanese ancestry nor the fact that his constitutional rights may have been invaded by sending him to a relocation center cancel this debt. The judgment convicting the 63 Heart Mountain draft resisters is affirmed.
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Photos from the 24th Annual NAPABA National Convention including AABANY members
in the reenactment of the Heart Mountain trials on Nov 16-17, 2012, JW Marriott, Washington, DC
VIDEOS
On Feb. 3, 2018, the Harvard Asian Pacific American Law Students Association (APALSA) performed “Heart Mountain: Conscience, Loyalty and the Constitution,” a reenactment of the trials and the events surrounding the internment and drafting of Japanese-Americans during the Second World War.
We Flourish: Celebrating Asian and Asian American Alumni
at Princeton University Conference, October 15-17, 2015
Performed at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP, New York, July 11, 2013
PERFORMANCES BY AABANY
New York Hilton Midtown, New York, NY, August 10, 2017
NY Historical Society, New York, NY, May 16, 2015
Cadwalader, New York, NY, July 11, 2013 (SEE VIDEO, ABOVE)
NAPABA Annual Convention, Washington, DC, November 16, 2012
PERFORMANCES BY OTHER ORGANIZATIONS
Columbia APALSA, New York, NY, February 28, 2024
Santa Teresa High School, San Jose, CA, September 23, 2020
Harvard Law School, MA, February 3, 2018
University of Hawaii at Manoa (William S. Richardson School of Law), Honolulu, Hawaii, October 18, 2016
Georgia State Bar Association, Amelia Island, FL, June 17, 2016
Fordham Law School, April 6, 2016
Alumni Conference: We Flourish: Celebrating Asian and Asian American Alumni at Princeton University, Princeton University, NJ, October 17, 2015 (SEE VIDEO, ABOVE)
National Consortium on Racial and Ethnic Fairness in the Courts, Cody, WY, June 26, 2014
Chicago Japanese American Historical Society, et al., Chicago History Museum, Chicago, IL, February 16, 2014