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Inspired by Prof. Rose Cuison Villazor’s law review article, “Rediscovering Oyama v. California: At the Intersection of Property, Race, and Citizenship,” 87 Wash. U. L. Rev. 979 (2010), the reenactment deals with the California Alien Land Law which prevented “aliens ineligible from citizenship” – i.e., Japanese – from owning land. The case explored the ways in which denial of property rights also served to promote racial discrimination against the Japanese in California. In the case, Kajiro Oyama, a Japanese immigrant who was ineligible for United States citizenship at the time, bought a parcel of farm land which he deeded to his minor son Fred, who was born in the United States and was thus a citizen. Under the Alien Land Laws, this transaction was deemed a fraud and the State of California brought suit against Fred Oyama to escheat the property. The case went all the way up to the United States Supreme Court, where the statute’s constitutionality was placed before the Court for its review.

Using actual trial transcripts and a reconstruction of the argument before the United States Supreme Court, illustrated with photos from the time, this reenactment brought back to life an important but nearly forgotten case in the annals of the civil rights struggle in the United States and the part played by Asian Americans in that movement. The doctrines and alliances formed in litigating the Oyama case laid the groundwork for later cases that dealt with equal rights and equal treatment under the law, including Brown v. Board of Education.