William M. Marutani

William M. Marutani (March 21, 1923 – November 15, 2004) was the first Asian-American male judge in Pennsylvania. Marutani was the only Japanese American commissioner to sit on the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC).

Early life Marutani was born in Kent, Washington in 1923. While he was attending the University of Washington in Seattle in 1942, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 authorizing the mass incarceration of all people of Japanese ancestry along the West Coast of the United States.

Following his release, Marutani served as a member of the U.S. Military Intelligence Service, participating in the postwar occupation of Japan. Following his discharge, he attended the University of Chicago Law School and graduated in 1953. The subsequent ruling was a landmark civil rights decision in which the Court ruled that laws banning interracial marriage violate the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

During the early 1980s, Marutani sat on the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC).

Legacy The Judge William M. Marutani Fellowship is awarded every year to current first-year and second-year Asian Pacific American law students attending law school in Pennsylvania and the Greater Philadelphia Area.