The connection between the Mendez family and the farm they managed during the war years is not merely biographical context. It is structural to understanding who the Mendez family was, what resources they had, and why a farming family in Westminster found itself at the center of a federal civil rights case.
Seima Munemitsu had arrived in the United States from Japan and established himself as a strawberry farmer in rural Orange County. The family grew roots in the community over roughly a decade, building a 40-acre operation that became their livelihood. Because California’s Alien Land Law of 1913 prohibited first-generation Japanese immigrants from holding title to agricultural land, the farm was legally registered in the name of Tad — Seiko Munemitsu — who had been born in the United States and therefore held citizenship. This legal arrangement was common among Japanese American farming families in California during the early twentieth century, a workaround for a law specifically designed to prevent the economic advancement of Japanese immigrants.
When the federal government issued Executive Order 9066 in February 1942, authorizing the forced removal of Japanese Americans from the West Coast, it disrupted the lives of more than 120,000 people. The Munemitsus were among them. Seima was arrested and held in Department of Justice internment camps — first in New Mexico, then in Colorado. These DOJ camps were distinct from the War Relocation Authority camps: they were used primarily for community leaders, Buddhist priests, Japanese-language school teachers, and others whom the government classified as potentially dangerous. The rest of the Munemitsu family — Masako, Tad, Saylo, and the twins Kazuko and Akiko — were sent to the Poston War Relocation Center in Arizona.