Gordon Kiyoshi Hirabayashi was born on April 23, 1918 to Shungo and Mitsuko Hirabayashi. Shungo Hirabayashi immigrated to the United States in 1907 from a farming community in Nagano prefecture, Japan. He and Mitsuko married in 1914 when she traveled to the United States for their arranged marriage. One year later they moved and farmed on the shore of Lake Washington in the Sand Point area of Seattle, where Gordon Kiyoshi Hirabayashi was born in 1918. The family moved to Thomas, Washington in the White River Valley near Auburn where Gordon and his four siblings, Edward, James, Esther Toshiko, and Richard, were raised. Gordon Hirabayashi graduated from Auburn High School in 1935 and started at the University of Washington in 1937.

Hirabayashi began his studies as a part-time student at the University of Washington in the fall of 1937. He worked throughout college and was an active member of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) on the University of Washington campus in Eagleson Hall. Through the YMCA he received room and board for tending the furnace in the building. In 1940 Hirabayashi was awarded a fellowship to attend a YMCA and YWCA sponsored leadership conference at Columbia University. He was influenced by many Christian leaders and his experience at the conference broadened his awareness of isolationist and pacifist arguments against United States involvement in the growing conflicts in Europe and the Pacific. He returned to Seattle in the fall of 1940 and registered for the draft as a conscientious objector and became a Quaker and member of the Religious Society of Friends.

After Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 those of Japanese ancestry were subject to harsh restrictions on basic freedoms. On February 19, 1942, Executive Order 9066 was signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorizing the mass forced removal and incarceration of all West Coast Japanese Americans. Many business and home owners were forced to leave a majority of their belongings behind as they were removed first to temporary assembly centers and then to relocation camps. Many would lose their land and belongings while incarcerated. Hirabayashi was among the American Friends Service Committee volunteers who assisted families with the relocation, including arranging storage of their belongings. Hirabayashi's parents and family in Thomas, Washington were uprooted from their farm and moved to the Pinedale assembly center, California and then to Tule Lake Relocation Camp, California.

Instead of registering for relocation, Hirabayashi turned himself in to the FBI with the objective of testing the relocation and incarceration order's constitutionality without a due process of law. He was charged with violating the curfew and exclusion orders and was represented by Arthur Barnett, and was supported by a defense fund - the Gordon Hirabayashi Defense Committee. The committee was organized by Mary Farquharson, lawyer for the University District of the ACLU, and law partners Arthur Barnett, John Geisness, and later Frank L. Walters. Hirabayashi was indicted on May 28, 1942 and was arraigned on June 1, 1942, at which time he entered a plea of "not guilty," stating that both the exclusion law and curfew were racially prejudiced and unconstitutional. His trial was on October 20, 1942 before Judge Lloyd D. Black. He lost his case and was sentenced to 90 days at the Dupont road camp outside Tacoma. His case was taken to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, where the court declined to rule and passed the case on to the Supreme Court. On May 10, 1943 the court did not tackle the constitutionality of the exclusion order as Hirabayashi had hoped but instead the heard arguments pertaining only to the violation of the curfew order. On June 21, 1943 there was a unanimous ruling in Hirabayashi v. United States, (320 U.S. 81) upholding the earlier Hirabayashi conviction and that the curfew order was justified by military necessity and allowable in a time of war. Hirabayashi was to serve his sentence at the Tucson Federal Prison in Arizona but was required to provide his own transportation there. He hitchhiked 1,600 miles in the fall of 1943 from Spokane, Washington to Tucson, Arizona where he had to convince officials at the Catalina Federal Honor Camp he had a legitimate order that authorized his acceptance into the prison. The prison had yet to receive his papers and confirmation that he was to serve his sentence there so they told him to go to a movie and return later. Upon his return they had indeed found his papers and he was admitted to the prison. He was released in December 1943 and returned to Spokane.

Gordon Hirabayashi married Esther Schmoe in a Quaker ceremony in Spokane, Washington on July 29, 1944. They had met while studying at the University of Washington. In 1945 they had twin daughters, Sharon and Marion and in 1946 they had a son, Jay. Hirabayashi continued his education at the University of Washington, completing his B.A. in 1946 and then his M.A. in 1949, and Ph.D. in sociology in 1952. Hirabayashi took a position in the Sociology Department at the American University in Beirut, Lebanon in 1951 and then at the American University in Cairo where he taught and was assistant director of the Social Research Center until 1959. The family moved to Edmonton, Canada where he continued to teach sociology and became the Chair of the Department in 1963. He retired 20 years later.

Shortly after retirement, Hirabayashi was contacted by Peter Irons, a civil rights attorney who while conducting research for a book on the Supreme Court's dealings with the Japanese Internment cases, discovered a document revealing government wrongdoing. Other documents and reports were found, among them General John L. DeWitt's Final Report draft on Japanese Incarceration. Hirabayashi agreed to have a team of lawyers re-open his wartime case and file a coram nobis petition stating that the government, during World War II, had suppressed, altered, and destroyed material evidence. In 1987 the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Hirabayashi's case, vacating his previous conviction.

Gordon Hirabayashi met Susan Carnahan of Edmonton, Alberta at a Quaker meeting where he was a long time member. Hirabayashi and his first wife, Esther, had divorced in the early 1970s and in 1986 he married Susan Carnahan, a free-lance writer and photographer. Hirabayashi toured and spoke at universities and other venues about his experiences, including participating in a panel discussion in Japan in 1988. He was honored with many awards such as the University of Washington's Distinguished Alumnus Award and the San Francisco Certificate of Honors as well as honorary degrees from University of Lethbridge, Michigan State University, and Hamline University. The Tucson Federal Prison site where Hirabayashi had served his sentence for refusing the curfew and exclusion order become a part of the Coronado National Forest and a recreation site and was named after him in 1999. Hirabayashi died on January 2, 2012. In May he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama, the highest civilian honor awarded.