Nishikawa v. Dulles

Nishikawa v. Dulles
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued May 1–2, 1957 Reargued October 28, 1957 Decided March 31, 1958
Full case name	Mitsugi Nishikawa v. John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State
Citations	356 U.S. 129 (more) 78 S.Ct. 612; 2 L. Ed. 2d 659; 1958 U.S. LEXIS 1285
Case history
Prior	235 F.2d 135 (9th Cir. 1956); cert. granted, 352 U.S. 907 (1956).
Holding
Citizenship may only be forfeited by a voluntary act; the Government must prove voluntariness by clear, convincing and unequivocal evidence.
Court membership
Chief Justice Earl Warren Associate Justices Hugo Black · Felix Frankfurter William O. Douglas · Harold H. Burton Tom C. Clark · John M. Harlan II William J. Brennan Jr. · Charles E. Whittaker
Case opinions
Majority	Warren, joined by Black, Douglas, Brennan, Whittaker
Concurrence	Black, joined by Douglas
Concurrence	Frankfurter (in result), joined by Burton
Dissent	Harlan, joined by Clark
Laws applied
Nationality Act of 1940

Nishikawa v. Dulles, 356 U.S. 129 (1958), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled that a dual United States/Japanese citizen who had served in the Japanese military during World War II could not be denaturalized unless the United States could prove that he had acted voluntarily.^[1]

Mitsugi Nishikawa, born in California to Japanese parents, went to Japan to study, and he was conscripted into the Japanese military in early 1941. After the end of the war, Nishikawa was informed by US officials that he had lost his citizenship because he had served in a foreign army. His case was eventually reviewed by the Supreme Court, which decided that the burden of proof must be on the government to prove that Nishikawa's Japanese military service was undertaken voluntarily before he could be stripped of his citizenship.