<Begin Segment 10>

TI: So, it sounds like you got quite a bit of support and encouragement, especially in those early days, for the redress movement, the coram nobis, so that was all positive for you.

DM: Actually, yes and no. It was a supported forum 'cause the JACL did agree to pass the resolutions but they didn't do anything. And Edison was always after 'em to do something. Form a committee, do something, which they finally did, but the committee didn't do a whole lot. And they formed successively stronger committees, as I remember. So we actually didn't get a lot of support, not for redress. But I remember in 1974, Edison said, "Can you do a legal analysis on redress? Because we want to see if we could file a lawsuit." This was in '74. In 19-, just as a little backdrop, in 1970 there was a project at Boalt Hall, Berkeley, where I went to law school, run by a Professor Sato, a Japanese American, one of the tenured professors, which was highly unusual. And they had a project going on to examine the legality of the incarceration of Japanese Americans. And I went to volunteer for him. He goes, "Oh, we don't need volunteers." He was not known as one of the more progressive professors, although he was a nice man, good family, too. But he said, "No, we don't need any more volunteers." He goes, "We're not gonna be able to challenge this in courts." And in some ways he was right. But then, so I had some incipient interest in this Korematsu case, and in the Hirabayashi cases, 'cause when I read 'em they made no sense. They made no sense from a personal point of view. From a legal and logical point of view they were terrible cases. Poorly written, poorly argued, so, when, in '74 when Edison asked me to do an analysis, I looked at this stuff, and we looked at the precedents from the German reparations to the Jews. I had a law clerk assigned during the summer to look at everything they could find about the issue of international reparations. And being skeptical of the court system as I was at the time, I think my answer was probably predetermined anyways. I remember, I can't, I don't, have the memo anymore but I gave Edison this memo, I said, "This case, rather than fight this case in the narrow halls of a courtroom they should be brought to the open forum of the American public and we should try for legislation." And so, and not and so, but Edison took that for what it was worth and started arguing for legislation, too, at the same time. He was always arguing for that but that just confirmed the path that he was on and we were all on at that time; that we need to get a bill here.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.