14. The Kawakita treason case led to a Supreme Court decision that dual citizenship does not offer protection from treason charges.
Tomoya Kawakita was born in California to Japanese parents, thus automatically being a United States citizen by virtue of his place of birth, and Japanese because of his parents’ citizenship. He completed his schooling through high school in California before going to Japan with his father in 1939. He was still in Japan when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and during the war, Kawakita worked as an interpreter at a metal processing facility which used prisoners of war as forced labor. When the war ended Kawakita returned to the United States, claiming that his actions during the war were likewise forced upon him by the Japanese government. In Los Angeles Kawakita was recognized by a former POW and arrested, charged with multiple counts of treason based on the abuse of American prisoners.
He was convicted on 8 of the 13 counts against him, and his appeals were based on his argument that he did not know he was still an American citizen when he participated in the abuse of prisoners of war. Under a death sentence, the appellate court rejected his appeal and the case moved to the Supreme Court. In June 1952 the Supreme Court upheld the conviction and the death sentence, finding that as an American citizen who did not formally renounce his citizenship he owed fealty and loyalty to the United States, no matter where he was in the world. The following year President Eisenhower commuted the sentence to life in prison, and in 1963 President Kennedy – a veteran of the Pacific War – ordered his release from prison and his banishment from the United States. Kawakita returned to Japan.