In Endo’s case — Ex parte Mitsuye Endo — the court unanimously ruled on Dec. 18, 1944, that the government could not detain citizens who were loyal to the United States.

Yet Endo, an unassuming woman, would never seek the spotlight, and by the time of the ruling she had never set foot in court .

Mitsuye Endo was born on May 10, 1920, in Sacramento, the second of four children of Jinshiro and Shima (Ota) Endo, Japanese immigrants. Her father was a salesman in a grocery store, her mother a homemaker. In the 1940s, the family lived and worked in one of the country’s largest and most vibrant Japantowns, a section of Sacramento with 3,400 residents and hundreds of businesses.

After the forced evacuation of Japanese-Americans, the Japanese American Citizens League , a national group, hired James Purcell, a San Francisco lawyer, to put together a case that would challenge the government and shutter the 10 detention camps it had opened. In looking for the ideal plaintiff to represent the group, he distributed a questionnaire to internees. In a stack of 100 or so responses, one stood out.

Endo had never visited Japan, had attended a Sacramento public school and was Protestant. To top it off, her brother had served in the Army. On paper, she was perfect.

“They felt I represented a symbolic, ‘loyal’ American,” she said in “And Justice for All.”

The Endo family had been moved to a temporary relocation facility near Sacramento, then 300 miles north to the remote Tule Lake Segregation Center, near the Oregon border.