[4] On January 2, 2024, she was awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal for her role in the case challenging the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans in concentration camps.
[10][11][12] Following the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, compelling the forced evacuation and incarceration of Japanese-Americans from the West Coast in concentration camps.
[13][14][15] She was then incarcerated, along with her entire family, first transported to the Tule Lake War Relocation Center 300 miles north of Sacramento.
[15][16] Endo met her future husband, Kenneth Tsutsumi, after she was moved to the Topaz War Relocation Center in Utah.
[17] 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.
[7] As the employment lawsuits against the California State Personnel Board were pending in court, Purcell’s clients were "evacuated" out of Sacramento to incarceration camps.
[4][7][18] Endo and her family were later transferred to the Tule Lake War Relocation Center 300 miles north of Sacramento in Newell, California at the Oregon border on June 19, 1942.
Anticipating that Endo would file an appeal, the War Relocation Authority sent an officer to offer to release her family, contingent that she and they never return to the West coast or her former home.
[21] Looking back at her decision to reject the opportunity to leave the incarceration camps, Endo wrote:The fact that I wanted to prove that we of Japanese ancestry were not guilty of any crime that we were loyal American citizens kept me from abandoning the suit.
[4][15] Following the filing of the writ, the government moved Endo and her family to the Topaz War Relocation Center in Utah, in order to avoid the jurisdiction of the California court.
[24]The Supreme Court also unambiguously stated that “the government had no legal right to confine people who had been screened and found to be loyal, but though it referred to the detention of Japanese-Americans as “racial discrimination,” it stopped short of defining the constitutional limits of wartime detention based on factors like race.”[17] In Endo's case—Ex parte Mitsuye Endo—the court unanimously ruled on Dec. 18, 1944, that the government could not detain citizens who were loyal to the United States.
In January 2025, President Joe Biden posthumously honored her with the Presidential Citizens Medal which was accepted on her behalf by her son, Wayne Tsutsumi.
Her resolve allowed thousands of Japanese Americans to return home and rebuild their lives, reminding us that we are a Nation that stands for freedom for all.