Eikichi Nakashima, Tadao Wakabayashi, and Jitaro Tanaka were three Japanese Canadians who were facing the loss of their properties to the Canadian government after spending time in internment camps. They were selected by their community to represent the fight against the sales by suing the Canadian government and the Crown. Their case was slow-moving, but with the assistance of their lawyer, J. Arthur MacLennan, they were able after some delay to secure a court date on May 29th, 1944. The opposing lawyer, Fredrick Percy Varcoe, Deputy Minister of Justice, argued in front of Judge Joseph Thorarinn Thorson that the sales followed from the “emergency of war.” Also he argued that “the Custodian was not the Crown,” so Japanese Canadians, on this logic, had named the wrong defendant. Further, Varcoe argued that “the relevant orders created no trust”, emphasizing that it was well within the rights of the Custodian to sell the property of Japanese Canadians without defying order 2483. Finally, Varcoe argued that the animosity of white British Columbians toward Japanese Canadians made the sale of only some properties unfeasible because he claimed that white buyers would refuse to purchase if Japanese Canadians were expected to return to live alongside them.