January 1983
Fred Korematsu, Minoru Yasui and Gordon Hirabayashi file a petition to reopen their wartime cases on a rarely used writ of error, coram nobis.
Peter Irons, professor of political science from the University of California, San Diego, and Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga, a researcher hired by CWRIC, worked together and uncovered original unaltered government documents (the "official" documents on file with the Supreme Court were sanitized), that clearly indicated officials had suppressed, altered, and destroyed documents by the War Department. These unaltered documents directly contradicted General John DeWitt's claim of espionage, sabotage and disloyalty among Japanese Americans on the west coast. In short, there was no "military necessity" as claimed by General DeWitt. With these "smoking gun" documents, Irons and young Asian American activist lawyers (Dale Minami, Peggy Nagae, Kathryn Bannai, Donald Tamaki, Dennis Hayashi, Karen Kai, Lorraine Bannai, Bob Rusky and others) filed for a writ of coram nobis cases in San Francisco, Portland and Seattle, arguing governmental action resulted in fundamental error or manifest injustice.
