While Hold These Truths takes us through the story of Gordon's remarkable story of resistance, here is a closer look at pivotal moments of his life and journey to seek justice for Japanese Americans. 

  • April 23, 1918 - Gordon Kiyoshi Hirabayashi was born in Seattle, Washington.

  • 1937-1942 - Gordon attended University of Washington in Seattle. While enrolled, he became an active member of the campus YMCA, joined the Society of Friends (Quakers) and registered as a conscientious objector.

  • December 7, 1941 - Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.

  • February 19, 1942 - President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, setting in motion the forced evacuation of Japanese Americans on the U.S. West Coast.

  • March, 1942 - Gen. John DeWitt issued Curfew and Exclusion Orders.

  • May 16, 1942 - Gordon presented the Seattle FBI with a four-page written statement entitled “Why I Refused to Register For Evacuation” and was arrested. He spent five months in King County Jail awaiting district court trial.

  • October 21, 1942 - Gordon was tried and Convicted of wartime curfew violation, and sentenced to prison for 90 days. His case was taken to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, where the court declined to rule and passed the case on to the Supreme Court.

  • June 21, 1943 - The Supreme Court ruled unanimously upholding the earlier conviction that the curfew order was justified by military necessity and allowable in a time of war.

  • July 1943 - Gordon was made to pay his own way to prison. He was allowed to hitchhike to a Tucson, Arizona federal work camp where he served his 90 day sentence.

  • July 1944 - Gordon married Esther Schmoe shortly before he was convicted and jailed for failing to comply with Selective Service orders.

  • 1946-1952 - Gordon continued his education at University of Washington and completed his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees in sociology.

  • 1959 - Gordon joined the faculty at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, where he was sociology chair for seven years.

  • 1981 - Dr. Peter Irons, a legal historian and civil liberties attorney, uncovered documents that proved that key government officials engaged in the purposeful deception of the Supreme Court and Congress during Gordon's case through the alteration and destruction of crucial evidence.

  • 1987 - Gordon agreed to have a team of lawyers re-open his wartime case and file a coram nobis petition stating that the government, during World War II, had suppressed, altered, and destroyed material evidence. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of his case, vacating his previous conviction.

  • January 2, 2012 - Gordon Hirabayashi died at age 93.