<Begin Segment 15>

AI: Now, at that point, all this time you were in jail, you and the other resisters, draft resisters, were going to be represented by a lawyer. What were you hearing about your lawyer and what was going to be coming up for you?

MK: I didn't hear too much about our lawyer. It's, all we knew was that he was an ACLU lawyer. But somebody told me that, who was familiar with the Fair Play Committee leaders, that this Samuel Menin, the lawyer, he didn't talk too much about the case. All, all he was interested in was getting paid, where the money was coming from. [Laughs] So I think our parents had a hard time paying him. But, well, I'm glad he represented us, anyway.

AI: And while you were waiting there in the Cheyenne jail, waiting for the trial date, what did you think was going to happen? Did you, in talking to the other fellows, how did you think the trial was going to go? Did you think you had some chance?

MK: Well, the first day we went to trial, the judge called us "Jap boys." So when we came back, a lot of the other guys in our group said, "You know something? Things don't look too good. Why would a judge call us 'Jap boys'?" This shows that he's very prejudiced. And they were right.

AI: Well, tell me about the trial. It ran for, from June 12, 1944, to June 19th.

MK: Yeah.

AI: Your actual case was called United States v. Shigeru Fujii.

MK: Shigeru Fujii, yes.

AI: And your judge was T. Blake Kennedy.

MK: Uh-huh.

AI: Tell me about how the trial went, what you remember about it.

MK: Oh, I don't remember too much about the trial. I, like I told you one time, I, I just remember the funny parts of the trial. Since we were young, we, we were brave enough to sit on the front row. I, I remember at one time the prosecutor was rocking back and forth in his chair like this, and all of a sudden he just flipped over backward, lost his balance, and we just heard a big bang. We looked, and we just said, "What's going on?" Here this guy was just waving his arms and legs, and it was so funny. We just laughed, "Ha, ha-ha-ha." Well, you know that prosecutor got up and said, shook his finger and said, "You won't be laughing when you hear the verdict." He gave himself away. They were, they knew the verdict was guilty already. He, he realized he might have made a mistake, so he shut up right away and went and sat down on his chair. And the judge was still sitting there like nothing happened. [Laughs] Strange, but that's the kind of court people we had, prosecutor and the judge. Looked like they were actually in cahoots. [Laughs]

AI: Now, your attorney, Menin, Samuel Menin, was trying to make the case that because you had been discriminated against...

MK: Yeah.

AI: ...and put into the camps on a discriminatory basis, that that was the reasoning for your wanting to have your citizenship rights cleared up before reporting for draft, for your physical.

MK: Yeah.

AI: And he was making that argument, but it didn't sound like he was too persuasive.

MK: No. Well, no matter how eloquent you are, if the judge don't want to listen to it, you can't make your point. The judge just didn't want to, just didn't want to listen to it. He didn't want to listen to any constitutional issues. All he said was, he just took a narrow vision of the case -- either you went for your physical or you didn't. That's all he was interested in. He didn't care whether you were kicked out of California. You couldn't be trusted. You couldn't be trusted, but you could be trusted to carry a rifle on the front line. That's about it. That's a double standard. And I don't like that. I, more and more I listened to these judges and prosecutors, I says, "Boy, I'm really glad I, I'm a resister." Some day the people will, would realize how wrong these people are, that we are good Americans. If we were left alone, we were free citizens, we would be glad to go. This is, I don't how many times we presented that to the case. None of us wanted to go to jail. Like a lot of people think that, even among Japanese Americans, they think that we were happy to go to jail, but that's not true. Nobody's happy to go to jail. They just don't understand. They don't want to understand. That's why.

AI: Well, during the time that your trial was going on, were, was there anyone you knew or in your family who was able to come observe the trial?

MK: No. But I know of wives and children of some of the resisters, they came to the trial. I really felt sorry for them. They tearfully said goodbye to their husbands. It was sad. Well, I never want to get into arguments between the vets and the resisters because, you know, lot of veterans did die. That's the saddest part of it. If there was no casualties, we could have a good argument. But I don't want to argue when people have died, and people said we were showing dis-, disrespect and stuff like that. We, we would never show any kind of disrespect or anything like that. We just want to make a point that we want a return of our constitutional rights before we go into service, just as plain as that. And keep saying that's not asking too much. Shouldn't you be enjoying the very rights you're supposed to protect? That's, keep asking all the time. And the people that's against us, they're never trying to answer that kind of question. All they do is say, "Oh, look at the poor people that died," or something like that. Theirs is a persuasive argument. You can't argue with that kind of argument because nobody wants to say, oh, talk about people that died and stuff like that. All I say is that, all we wanted was our rights before we went in the army, that's all.

AI: Those ideas and principles were the main thing in your mind...

MK: Yeah.

AI: ...and then after that was cleared up, you would be happy to go and do your duty.

MK: Oh, yeah. Well, look, there was about maybe eight or nine people in our group that went to the Korean War because when they came out, they were free people. They're willing to go because they were free. People have to understand that. They weren't, instead of locked up in the concentration camp, they were free. Now, I just wonder why people can't see that.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2001 Densho. All Rights Reserved.