Kawakita v. United States

Kawakita v. United States,, is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled that a dual U.S./Japanese citizen could be convicted of treason for acts performed in Japan during World War II.

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

Kawakita was in Japan when the attack on Pearl Harbor drew the United States and Japan into World War II. In 1943, he took a job as an interpreter at a mining and metal processing plant which used Allied prisoners of war (POWs) as laborers. By early 1945, the population of the POW camp included about four hundred captured American troops. 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.

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

Trial
At Kawakita's trial, presided over by U.S. District Judge William C. Mathes, the defense conceded that Kawakita had acted abusively toward American POWs, but not only were his actions (according to his lawyer) relatively minor, but they could not constitute treason against the U.S. because Kawakita was not a U.S. citizen at the time (having lost his U.S. citizenship when he confirmed his Japanese nationality in 1943). The prosecution, on the other hand, 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.

Judge Mathes's instructions to the jury included a statement that if the jury found Kawakita had genuinely believed he was no longer a U.S. citizen, then he must be found not guilty of treason. During the course of their deliberations, the jury reported several times that they were hopelessly deadlocked, but the judge insisted each time that they needed to continue trying to reach a unanimous verdict. In the end—on September 2, 1948—the jury found Kawakita guilty of eight of the thirteen counts of treason that had been brought against him, and he was sentenced to death. As a consequence of his conviction for treason, Kawakita's U.S. citizenship was also revoked. In passing sentence, Mathes said: "Reflection leads to the conclusion that the only worthwhile use for the life of a traitor, such as this defendant has proved to be, is to serve as an example to those of weak moral fiber who may hereafter be tempted to commit treason against the United States."

Kawakita's conviction was appealed to a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which unanimously upheld the verdict and sentence imposed by the trial court. A request for certiorari was granted by the United States Supreme Court, and oral arguments before the Supreme Court were heard on April 3, 1952.

Opinion of the Court
In a 4–3 decision issued on June 2, 1952, the Supreme Court upheld Kawakita's conviction for treason, and also upheld his death sentence. The opinion of the court was written by Associate Justice William O. Douglas; he was joined by Associate Justices Stanley F. Reed, Robert H. Jackson, and Sherman Minton.

The Court's majority held that the evidence in Kawakita's case was sufficient to support the finding of the jury that he had not renounced or lost his American citizenship. Despite his holding dual nationality and having resided in Japan, the majority concluded that Kawakita owed allegiance to the United States and could be punished for treasonable acts voluntarily committed; and, indeed, that an American citizen owed allegiance to the United States wherever he might reside. Further, the majority found that Kawakita's actions were so flagrant and persistent that it could not be said that the death sentence imposed by the trial judge was arbitrarily severe.

Dissent
Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson, together with Associate Justices Hugo Black and Harold H. Burton, delivered a dissenting opinion in which they concluded that Kawakita, "for over two years, was consistently demonstrating his allegiance to Japan, not the United States. As a matter of law, he expatriated himself as well as that can be done." On this basis, the dissenting justices would have reversed Kawakita's treason conviction.

Subsequent developments
On October 29, 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower commuted Kawakita's sentence to life imprisonment plus a $10,000 fine. Ten years later, on October 24, 1963, President John F. Kennedy—in what would be one of his last official acts before his assassination—ordered Kawakita released from prison on the condition that he leave the United States and be banned from ever returning. Kawakita flew to Japan on December 13, 1963, reacquired Japanese citizenship upon his arrival, and is believed to have remained in Japan until his death in the mid-1990s. In 1978, Kawakita sought permission to return to the United States to visit his parents' grave, but his efforts were unsuccessful.