<Begin Segment 16>

AI: Well, I'll take you back again, once again, to the trial in June of 1944. And the trial finished, and you and the other resisters were taken back to the jail to wait for the sentencing.

MK: Yes.

AI: What was in your mind then when you knew that the judge had ruled against you and you were going to be sentenced?

MK: We all, I think most of the people were resigned to the fact that the judge was very prejudiced. And he says, they said that we have to take it to the higher court. Well, they had their hopes high, but I think deep inside most people said this is going to be a tough case. I, myself, thought, oh, like I said, I was pretty naive at that time, I thought that we had a very good case. Locked in the concentration camp and drafted out of our concentration camp. I thought we had a very good case.

AI: So when you lost your case, were you kind of shocked?

MK: Yeah, I was. I was really hurt. I said, "Gee, what kind of country is this?" I says, they say one thing... they teach you one thing in school about equal rights and all that, deny us equal rights and punish us if we don't cooperate with them. I said, "This is unfair." At that time, I, I never was what you call a, oh, eloquent speaker or anything. I couldn't go up and say something like Patrick Henry, "Give me liberty or give me death," or something like that. I, I just said it like it was. "Give me my rights. I don't want to go to jail. I'll go in the army if you'd only give me my rights and release my family from the concentration camp. That's all I ask."

AI: But it didn't happen because you lost your case.

MK: Yeah.

AI: And then you and the other resisters were brought back into the courtroom for sentencing.

MK: Yeah.

AI: And that was June 26th of 19...

MK: Twenty-sixth.

AI: ...'44.

MK: 1944.

AI: And I want to read from Judge's, Judge Kennedy's memorandum. He winds up his memorandum by saying that "this Court feels that the defendants have made a serious mistake in arriving at their conclusion. If they are truly loyal American citizens, they should embrace the opportunity to discharge the duties of citizens for our national defense. It has been seen that the discrimination exercised by the government on account of their Japanese ancestry was legitimate, justified, and legal as being within the power of Congress and the President in the war emergency." And he cites the case of Hirabayashi. "Therefore, it is the verdict of the Court, must find the defendants and each of them guilty as charged in the indictment. It will be the sentence and judgment of the Court that you and each of you committed to the custody of the attorney general for confinement in such institution as he may select for a period of three years."

MK: Uh-huh.

AI: So when you heard that and you knew you were sentenced to three years, what were you thinking?

MK: It was a kind of a shock, and it took a little while to sink in. But we said, "Well, we, we'll give it our best shot." We'll try the higher courts. I think, I think lot of people were very disappointed. I know I was. Like I said, I really believed that we had a chance. But, all depends on the judge. Like the Tule Lake case, draft resisters, they were set free. Poston there was over a hundred. They were fined one cent and set, set free. We just had, unfortunately, we just had the wrong judge, who, who never understood the Constitution. Never once, he talking about constitutional laws, and that, it was unfortunate that we were tried in Wyoming. That's all it was.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2001 Densho. All Rights Reserved.