Portal:Oregon/Selected article/26
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Yasui v. United States, 320 U.S. 115 (1943) was a United States Supreme Court case regarding the constitutionality of curfews used during World War II as applied to citizens of the United States. The case arose out of the implementation of Executive Order 9066 by the U.S. military to create zones of exclusion along the West Coast of the United States where Japanese-Americans were subjected to curfews and eventual removal to relocation centers. This Presidential order followed the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 that brought American in to World War II and inflamed the existing anti-Japanese sentiment in the country. In their decision, the Supreme Court held that the application of curfews against citizens is constitutional. As a companion case to Hirabayashi v. United States, both decided on June 21, 1943, the court affirmed the conviction of Oregon-born Minoru Yasui who had violated curfew in Portland. The court remanded the case back to the United States District Court for the District of Oregon for sentencing as this lower court had determined the curfew was not valid against citizens, but Yasui had forfeited his citizenship by working for the Japanese consulate. The Yasui and Hirabayashi decisions, along with the later Ex parte Endo and Korematsu v. United States decisions determined the legality of the curfews and relocations during the war. In the 1980s new information was used to vacate the conviction of Minoru Yasui.
