<Begin Segment 16>

MC: You talked earlier about studying Korematsu in law school. So I assume that you read it for your constitutional law class, and do you remember anything? Besides the fact that you thought that the opinion was really poorly written and difficult to follow in its reasoning. Were there any other reactions that you had?

DM: Yeah. You know, the first reaction I had was, this is bullshit. I mean really. That was the specific reaction. I said, "This is bullshit." They're talking about my mom and dad and my brother. My brother wasn't a threat. My parents were not a threat. And then the logic and reasoning... I wasn't as attuned to legal thinking in those days since I wasn't going to class enough to train to get there, in some ways, but I could tell bullshit when I saw it. And that was clearly... so I --

MC: So did you get angry?

DM: Yeah, no, I was really upset. That's why I volunteered for this project. I just thought this is -- and I kinda thought, half of me was like, "Oh, I guess this is the way things are." The other half was, "This is bullshit. We should do something about this." But the other half says, "Well, we can't, it's 1943, '44, how are you ever gonna do anything like this?" But what it did to me is... so I had to come away with that conflict. And what I came away with is that the law is, the rule of law as absolute justice or absolute values is a total myth. The rule of neutral impartial arbitrators, like judges, is a myth and that there are values beyond law that drive justice.

MC: Uh-huh. Would you describe your attitude towards law as being cynical, or cautiously optimistic?

DM: I am cynical, but I'm not cynical to the point of despair. You know, there's levels of cynicism and the worst level is the worst kind of cynicism you could ever be, 'cause then you're giving up on everything, I think. And you should never be that cynical. If you have to be that cynical there's, you really are gonna be a pretty negative person overall. I think skeptical would be a better way to describe it. Because I'm really skeptical about anything that deals with legal decisions now. And that's been reinforced from being a lawyer. You know that when you start practicing law, you're advocating positions that perhaps you morally don't believe in. You prefer not to but you see that happening all the time. And you, you're saying things that are kinda like massaging the truth, but that's all acceptable 'cause, you know, law is like poker. You're allowed to bluff. That's part of the rules. But unfortunately many lawyers take that that over the personal lives, which then creates another host of problems that we're, take too long to talk about. But I do feel that it helped me get a true understanding of the law, but you know, it wasn't structured. It's not like you critical legal thinkers now, or critical race theorists who are really trying to structure what this all means, which I think is wonderful. Because I didn't have a framework then, there weren't critical legal, critical race theorists or legal theorists at those times that I knew about. Well, no, there were but they weren't called that.

MC: But you recognized, even then, for example, from reading Korematsu that law served as sort of a window dressing for power --

DM: Exactly.

MC: -- or deployment for power, right.

DM: See, the thing that helped me was, I was, I was a political science major, too. So I understood the way we were taught political science in USC was kind of interesting. The idea, it was not traditional. The notion of what is power was a really interesting concept to me 'cause it's not just fifty-one percent people voting. And it doesn't even matter how many people vote, generally speaking. If the losing group is willing to not riot in the streets, kinda thing. There's all these different theories they have in politics that were really exciting to me because they helped me understand the reality of what the world was like. And it was more realistic about what the world was like, and what the United States was like. So I understood power and I... there's been an evolving realization that it takes so many different forms. Power comes out of the barrel of a gun. Power comes from voting. Power comes from moral authority like black Americans have which is why Trent Lott had to step down. You know, nobody threatened him. Blacks couldn't vote him out of office. But there was a moral authority they had that translates into power. And so I understood that. And I learned and understood these later on, but the intuitive part of it tells me that the Korematsu case was a case about power and it wasn't a case about justice and law. And so, later on I was able to put that in a better framework and explain it; where before I thought, "This is screwed up, this is bullshit." That was about as far as I can get then.

MC: That's interesting. And was it about that time when you were in law school that you also were working with the JACL, or did the Bay Area JACL stuff start after that?

DM: No. I was in law school from '68 to '71 and '72 was when I started, I joined the Bay Area JACL.

MC: So it was right after you had graduated?

DM: Right after I graduated. 'Cause in 1970, Edison, I think, put his first resolution forward. 1972 was the second, '74... well, they did it every year. '74 was the third which I participated in.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.