Yasui V. United States - Aftermath

Aftermath

Once the case returned to Judge Fee, he revised his earlier opinion to strike out the ruling that Yasui was no longer a United States citizen. Fee also removed the fine and reduced the sentence to 15 days, with the time already served. Yasui was released and moved into the Japanese internment camps.

Korematsu v. United States was decided the next year and overshadowed both the Yasui and Hirabayashi cases. None of these cases have ever been overturned by the Supreme Court. The decisions were questioned by legal scholars even before the war had ended. Criticism has included the racist aspects of the cases and the later discovery that officials in the United States Department of Justice lied to the court at the time of the trial.

On February 1, 1983, Yasui petitioned the Oregon federal district court for a writ of error coram nobis due to the discovery of the falsehoods promulgated by the Department of Justice. This writ is only available to people who have already completed their imprisonment, and can only be used to challenge factual errors from the case. Yasui claimed in his writ that the government withheld evidence at the original trial concerning the threat of a Japanese attack on the United States mainland. The court dismissed the original indictment and conviction against Yasui, as well as the petition for the writ on request by the government. Yasui, then appealed the decision to dismiss the petition, but the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the appeal on procedural grounds. However, the Ninth Circuit ultimately did vacate Hirabayashi's conviction, thereby impliedly vindicating Yasui as well. In 2011, the U.S. Solicitor General's office publicly confessed the Justice Department's 1943 ethical lapse in the Supreme Court. Minoru Yasui died on November 12, 1986.