Manzanar Survivor's Lifelong Crusade for Japanese American Equality

In November 2025, the legal legacy of Frank Chuman, a pioneering Japanese American lawyer, continues to inspire. Chuman, who passed away in May 2022 at the age of 105, spent decades fighting for the rights of his community after experiencing the trauma of WWII internment.

Born in 1917 in California, Chuman faced little discrimination growing up, but that changed after the Pearl Harbor attack. In 1942, he and his family were forced to relocate to the Manzanar internment camp, a searing experience that motivated his lifelong crusade for justice.

After the war, Chuman became a leading figure in challenging discriminatory laws and practices. He helped overturn restrictive covenants that barred non-white residents, and supported landmark Supreme Court cases that struck down laws preventing Japanese Americans from owning land or obtaining fishing licenses. Chuman also built bridges between the Japanese American civil rights movement and the broader fight for racial equality, filing amicus briefs for the NAACP.

Chuman's abiding cause was the legality of Executive Order 9066, which had led to the internment of over 120,000 Japanese Americans. Though he could not find plaintiffs willing to file a lawsuit, his testimony before a government commission in 1980 helped pave the way for the successful coram nobis cases that overturned the convictions of internment resisters like Fred Korematsu in 1983.