Hirabayashi medal comes home

By Sue Misao
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY

From left, Susan Carnahan, widow of Gordon Hirabayashi, along with his children Marion Oldenberg, Sharon Yuen, and Jay Hirabayashi, ceremoniously donate Hirabayashi’s Presidential Medal of Freedom to the University of Washington. Provost Ana Mari Cauce, Ph.D, right, accepted the medal for the university. (Photo by Sue Misao/NWAW)

Gordon Hirabayashi’s heroic journey began at the University of Washington, where he was attending classes when the U.S. government ordered him and thousands of other Americans, singled out for their Japanese heritage, to obey curfews and be imprisoned in internment camps during World War II. He refused.

“Ancestry is not a crime,” he later explained in an oral history to Roger Daniels, Charles Phelps Taft Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Cincinnati. Daniels was on hand to share what he knew of Gordon Hirabayashi as a young man.

Gordon Hirabayashi’s Presidential Medal of Freedom

Student, prisoner, activist, professor, and, finally, recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the symbol of Hirabayashi’s heroism found a permanent home on Saturday, Feb. 22, when his family donated his Medal of Freedom to the University of Washington. He had been given the award by President Obama in 2012, four months after his death. On Saturday, his family gathered at the UW for a day-long symposium called “Courage in Action: A Symposium on the Life and Legacy of Gordon K. Hirabayashi,” during which more than 200 people watched as UW Provost Ana Mari Cauce accepted the medal from Hirabayashi’s family.

“He would be pleased to have it at the University of Washington,” said Hirabayashi’s widow, Susan Carnahan, who was joined by Gordon’s son Jay Hirabayashi and nephew Lane Hirabayashi in sharing details about Gordon’s life and legacy.

Judge Mary Schroeder, who, in 1987 authored the opinion in Hirabayashi v. United States that vacated Gordon Hirabayashi’s conviction, called him courageous and gutsy. “He was thoroughly American,” she said. (end)

Sue Misao can be reached at editor@nwasianweekly.com.