Lincoln Kanai

Lincoln Seiichi Kanai (1908–1982) was a social worker who was one of several

Japanese Americans to bring a legal challenge against the exclusion of people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast during World War II

.

Kanai was born December 5, 1908, in the small town of Koloa in what was then the Territory of Hawaii. He received his B.A. in English from the University of Hawaiʻi in 1930, and in 1935, after his return from an extended trip to Japan, he began working for the Lihue, Kauai YMCA. In 1937, Kanai moved to California to take a job at San Francisco's Buchanan Street YMCA, where he remained until the war.

After the

Heart Mountain

concentration camp in Wyoming on February 6, 1943, two months early for good behavior.

In October 1943, Kanai was granted leave to move to Milwaukee, where he took a job working with under-resourced boys. He moved to Battle Mountain, Michigan in 1950, where he remained until his death.

References

Kyna Herzinger. "Lincoln Seiichi Kanai / ex parte Kanai," Densho Encyclopedia (accessed 25 July 2014).