Curfew

Gordon Hirabayashi, who was convicted for defying the evacuation and internment of Japanese Americans on the West Coast during World War II and, four decades later, not only cleared his name but helped prove that the government had falsified the reasons for the mass incarceration, has died. He was 93. Hirabayashi, who had Alzheimer's disease and other ailments, died Monday in Edmonton, Alberta, where he had lived for many years, said his son, Jay. The elder Hirabayashi was one of only three Japanese Americans who refused to comply with Executive Order 9066, signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in February 1942.

I feel that the issue of volume, not curfew, should be raised concerning the Pacific Amphitheatre. Many concerts, especially those of heavy metal bands, are extremely loud and are capable of injuring a person's hearing. A curfew will not help control the noise the residents of the area are complaining about. JOSH DeWITT Westminster

Sir Paul McCartney or no Sir Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen and the ex-Beatle were told “you can't do that” when they ran past the curfew time imposed on concerts in London's Hyde Park, causing organizers of the festival they were playing Saturday to pull the plug  on the closing minutes of their performance. Springsteen and the E Street Band were headlining the Hard Rock Calling Festival at Hyde Park, where Springsteen played in 2009 in a show released last year on DVD, and after a three-hour set, he called  McCartney up for an encore of “Twist and Shout/La Bamba” and “I Saw Her Standing There.” Here's some video footage before the audio was cut. But before they could finish, festival officials cut the power, citing a 10:30 p.m. curfew on Hyde Park events.

A teenage rite of passage--hanging out at the mall on weekend nights--ended when the Mall of America began enforcing a curfew for kids under 16. Officials at the nation's biggest shopping and entertainment complex hope to cut down on rowdy behavior by requiring youngsters to be accompanied by someone 21 or older after 6 p.m. on Friday and Saturday.

The final vote is expected Monday on a Newport Beach ordinance that will move the curfew on city beaches an hour earlier to 11 p.m. The move is to help reduce noise and traffic that oceanfront residents blame on late-night beach-goers. All 6 miles of city-owned beach now close at midnight.

Re "No One Caved on Airport," Aug. 29. Your editorial continues the bias which The Times has long shown in favor of the expansion of Burbank Airport. You mention that the noisy Stage 2 jets will be phased out over the next five years. This is not due to the airport's benevolence. It is because it will allow the airport to at least double the number of commercial airline departures from 80 to 160 or more while retaining the same calculated noise impact area. You correctly note that the proposed closure of the terminal at night is a de facto curfew.

The argument goes that because the Van Nuys Airport creates jobs, we should leave it alone, let it continue to pollute the air with noise, especially that of helicopters and older jets. We should even allow it to expand, increasing the assault on our ears. By this logic, let's have a steel mill or two, perhaps a meat-packing plant with adjacent feedlots, or how about a paper mill? A nuclear waste dump? An open-pit mine? All these things create jobs, but would any one of them be given a permit to locate in the middle of our densely packed community?