Mitsuye Endo  Mitsuye Endo Tsutsumi (May 10, 1920 – April 14, 2006) was an American woman of Japanese descent who was placed in a internment camp during World War II. Endo filed a writ of habeas corpus that ultimately led to a United States Supreme Court ruling that the U.S. government could not continue to detain a citizen who was "concededly loyal" to the United States. Mitsuye Endo was born on May 10, 1920, in Sacramento, the second of four children of Jinshiro and Shima (Ota) Endo, first generation Japanese immigrants. Her father worked in a grocery store, her mother a housewife. She grew up in an English-speaking Methodist home. Her older brother Kunio, was drafted into the U.S. Army. By 1940, they resided in one of the largest Japantowns in the country, a neighborhood in Sacramento, California that was home to 3,300 residents and hundreds of ethnic businesses. After graduating from Sacramento High School, Endo completed secretarial school and secured a civil service position as a clerk with the California State's Department of Motor in Sacramento, as it was one of the very few professions Japanese Americans could enter at the time due to rampant discrimination. Following the on December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, compelling the forced evacuation of Japanese-Americans from the west coast along with the incarceration of Japanese Americans, German Americans, and Italian Americans in U.S. concentration camps. As a result, Endo was fired from her position as a stenographer at the California Department of Motor Vehicles. She was then incarcerated, along with her entire family, first transported to the Tule Lake War Relocation Center 300 miles north of Sacramento. Endo met her future husband, Kenneth Tsutsumi, after she was moved to the Topaz War Relocation Center in Utah. In response to the Pearl Harbor attack, the California Legislature adopted Senate Concurrent Resolution 15 on January 19, 1942, which effectively barred qualified U.S.-born employees of Japanese descent from obtaining civil service employment with the State. By February 27, 1942 (eight days after Executive Order 9066 was signed and issued), the California Board of Equalization as directed by the State Personnel Board (SPB) had terminated all of California's civil servants of Japanese descent, totaling over 314 employees, including Mitsuye Endo. The State's cause for termination of each of its Japanese American employees were based on a blanket of false charges ranging from being a Japanese citizen to subscribing to a Japanese newspaper.