Three days exploring the Coronado National Forest

Gordon Hirabayashi Recreation Site, including Gordon Hirabayashi Campground both hold important historic significance and is a meaningful civil rights site. Gordon Hirabayashi was a Japanese American who had resisted the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. In 1942, he intentionally did not report for forced relocation and instead turned himself in to the FBI. He was then sentenced to a term of hard labor at the Catalina Federal Honor Camp. Hirabayashi, and other prisoners who came before and after him, built the Catalina Highway, which was completed in 1951.

After serving his prison sentence, Hirabayashi was later incarcerated for refusing to be inducted into the armed forces. He resisted because all Japanese Americans who were drafted were forced to fill out a questionnaire denouncing their allegiance to the emperor of Japan. Hirabayashi argued this was more racial discrimination, as other groups were not asked about their allegiance to foreign leaders.

Hirabayashi’s efforts eventually led to a Supreme Court case in 1943, where he argued that mass incarceration of Japanese Americans was racially discriminatory and unconstitutional. The Supreme Court ruled against Hirabayashi, but his conviction was eventually overturned in 1987. 

The camp later served as a juvenile prison camp and a youth rehabilitation center before it was closed and the buildings intentionally destroyed in 1973, although you can still see remnants of the structures today. The camp, now a campground, was renamed in Hirabayashi's honor in 1999. Barack Obama posthumously awarded Hirabayashi the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.