The Case of Fumiko Takei

In 1944, Congress passed the Renunciation Act to encourage Japanese Americans to give up their American citizenship. The carrot they were offered was that doing so would allow them to leave their internment camps. Fumiko Takei did not fully understand the political situation. She assumed it would be hard for the United States government to remove people like her. Yet as soon as she renounced her citizenship, she learned that she was to be sent to Japan as part of a prisoner swap deal. Immediately, she regretted her decision. Norman feared that the whole family would be forced to go to Japan with her. Attorney Wayne Collins had been working with Ernest Bessick of the American Civil Liberties Union, or