Civil rights figure. Hirabayashi was a pacifist Japanese-American native of Seattle, Washington and a senior at the University of Washington when the United States declared war on Japan following the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. On February 19,1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 1066-ratified by the Congress on Mary 21, 1942-which not only provided that persons of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast be apprehended and placed in internment camps, but also and prior to internment the affected persons be subject to a curfew requring such individuals be at their home during the hours of 8:00 PM to 6:00 AM. Hirabayashi refused not only to conform to the requirements of the curfew, but declined to register for internment camp processing, and further refused to post bail, claiming that the Executive Order was racially discriminatory and therefore violated equal protection provisions of the U.S. Constitution.. After being found guilty of violating the curfew and internment , Hirabayashi appealed his case to the United States Supreme Court in the landmark constitutional law case Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U.S. 87 (1943). In that case the Supreme Court upheld Hirabayashi's conviction and declared that the provisions of Executive Order 1066 were a legitimate exercise of the War Powers authority in the onsitution. Later, Hirabayashi refused induction in the U.S. armed forces for which he was sentenced to federal prison. In 1987, Hirabayashi, along with convictees in related cases Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu (Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944)and Minoru Yasui (Yasui v. United States, 320 U.S. 115 (1943) had their convictions overturned. After the end of World War II, Hirabayashi earned advanced degrees (MA, 1948-thesis: A Sociometric Study of University of Washington Sstudents of Japanese Ancestry, Spring Semester, 1948; PhD, 1951-thesis: The Russian Doukhobore of British Columbia: A Study of Social Adjustment and Conflict) from the University of Washington and pursued a career as a college sociology professor. Along with Fred T. Korematsu, Hirabayashi was awarded the American Civil Liberties Union 2001 Roger N. Balwin Medal of Liberty for lifetime contributions to the advancement of civil liberities. On May 29, 2012, Dr. Hirabayashi was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.