Kawakita v. United States

Kawakita v. United States, 343 U.S. 717 (1952), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled that a dual U.S./Japanese citizen could be convicted of treason against the United States for acts performed in Japan during World War II . Tomoya Kawakita, born in California to Japanese parents, was in Japan when the war broke out and stayed in Japan until the war was over. After returning to the United States, he was arrested and charged with treason for having abused American prisoners of war . Kawakita claimed he could not be found guilty of treason since he had lost his U.S. citizenship while in Japan, but this argument was rejected by the courts (including the Supreme Court), which ruled that he had in fact retained his U.S. citizenship during the war. Originally sentenced to death , Kawakita's sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, and he was eventually released from prison, deported to Japan, and barred from ever returning to the United States.

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**Kawakita v. United States **

Kawakita is currently one of the last people to be convicted of treason in the United States. One other person, John David Provoo , was convicted of treason in 1952. However, Provoo's conviction was overturned on appeal. As such the distinction instead goes to Herbert John Burgman , who was convicted of treason in 1949.

Contents

• 1 Background

• 2 Trial and appeal

• 3 Opinion of the Court

  • 3.1 Dissent

• 4 Subsequent developments

• 5 See also

• 6 References

• 7 External links

Background

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Tomoya Kawakita (川北 友弥, Kawakita Tomoya) was born in Calexico, California , on September 26, 1921, of Japanese-born parents. He was born with U.S. citizenship due to his place of birth, and also Japanese nationality via his parents. A former high school classmate of Kawakita, Joe Gomez, recalled him as quiet and serious, but sadistic in nature.

After finishing high school in Calexico in 1939, Kawakita traveled to Japan with his father (a grocer and merchant). He enrolled in Meiji University in 1941. In 1943, he registered officially as a Japanese national. : 141 

Kawakita was in Japan when the attack on Pearl Harbor drew the United States and Japan into World War II. In August 1943, with the assistance of a family friend, Takeo Miki , Kawakita took a job as an interpreter at a mining and metal processing plant. Shortly after Kawakita started working there, British and Canadian POWs arrived. Kawakita was tasked with interpreting for them. The POWs were sometimes forced to work in the mine.

In 1944 and early in 1945, approximately 400 American POWs, many of whom were captured in Bataan in 1942 and had survived the subsequent death march , arrived in the camp. Kawakita brutalized multiple American POWs during this time.

The work done at the mine by the American prisoners consisted of digging nickel ore from the face of the mountain side, and loading it onto cars which were emptied into hoppers. The prisoners also performed other general labor in the mine area, including such duty as carrying logs to be used for construction and maintenance work.

After Japan's surrender, Kawakita's attitude towards American POWs reportedly changed entirely. After the end of the war, Kawakita renewed his U.S. passport, explaining away his having registered as a Japanese national by claiming he had acted under duress. He returned to the U.S. in 1946 and enrolled at the University of Southern California . : 142 

In October 1946, a former POW, William L. Bruce saw Kawakita in a Los Angeles department store and recognized him from the war. Bruce reported this encounter to the FBI , and in June 1947, Kawakita was arrested and charged with 15 counts of treason arising from alleged abuse of American POWs. : 140, 141 

In an interview shortly after the arrest, Bruce described his reaction to seeing Kawakita:

"I was so dumbfounded, I just halted in my tracks and stared at him as he hurried by. It was a good thing, too. If I'd reacted then, I'm not sure but that I might have taken the law into my own hands--and probably Kawakita's neck."

Trial and appeal

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Nearly 100 ex-POWs said they were willing to testify against Kawakita. At Kawakita's trial, presided over by U.S. District Judge William C. Mathes and prosecuted by James Marshall Carter , over 30 ex-POWs testified that Kawakita had brutalized American POWs. He was said to have beaten prisoners, forced them to beat each other, and forced them to run until they collapsed from exhaustion if they finished their work assignments early. In one case, Kawakita was accused of causing the death of Einar Latvala, an American POW (he was later acquitted of that charge after two Canadians said Latvala had been killed by another guard). Two of the treason charges against Kawakita were later dropped.

One of the witnesses in Kawakita's defense was his childhood friend, Meiji Fujizawa. Fujizawa had also worked in Camp Oeyama, but wasn't prosecuted due to American POWs having overwhelmingly favorable opinions of him; they said Fujizawa had done the best he could to help them and get them medicine. Fujizawa said he never saw Kawakita beat anyone. He said beatings did happen in the camp, but those were done by military officials.

The defense conceded that Kawakita had acted abusively toward American POWs, but argued that his actions were relatively minor, and that in any event, they could not constitute treason against the United States as Kawakita was not a U.S. citizen at the time, having lost his U.S. citizenship when he confirmed his Japanese nationality in 1943. : 145  The prosecution argued that Kawakita had known he was still a U.S. citizen and still owed allegiance to the country of his birth—citing the statements he had made to consular officials when applying for a new passport as evidence that he had never intended to give up his U.S. citizenship. : 146 

Judge Mathes's instructed the jury that if they found Kawakita had genuinely believed he was no longer a U.S. citizen, then he must be found not guilty. He reminded them that Kawakita was on trial for treason, not for war crimes. During their deliberations, the jury reported several times that they were hopelessly deadlocked , but the judge insisted each time that they continue trying to reach a unanimous verdict. In the end—on September 2, 1948—the jury found Kawakita guilty of 8 of 13 counts of treason, and he was sentenced to death .

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