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MC: So then you, after you finished teaching those classes, at the end of that semester, that fall semester, is that when you started practicing then?

DM: Once I got past the bar.

MC: Uh-huh.

DM: Which was in January 2nd, I got my license. Or, around January 12th, let's say, of 1972. I started practicing law with Ken Kawaichi, the mentor we had that wanted to form the Asian Law Commune. We continued to meet over the period of time to try to, try to find our bearings on this. I started writing proposals and so I wrote proposals for foundations to give money to help start this Asian law group which was unnamed at the time. And because of the nature of the foundations we were after, I had to change the name of our organization. So, and once I got -- and I had, now I had friends in the San Francisco community through my draft counseling and some volunteer work. So I had enough people that I could use help from. They let me call myself Japanese Community Services Legal Outreach. Another group was the Chinatown Law Project. And we were phony. Those were phony organizations. But the money all came into this one group. And it wasn't very much money. And so, as we met toward summertime I was practicing law, I was doing criminal defense which is, I'd do anything. But I did criminal defense 'cause that was the easiest way to work with Ken, who was doing some of that. And we got paid in all kinds of different things.

MC: Now --

DM: But we made a little bit of money to put together to start the actual Asian law group we were gonna start.

MC: Was your decision motivated at all by prejudice or discrimination against Asian American lawyers at that time by the firms? Or was it more motivated by a positive need to, or desire to work with the Asian American community?

DM: I think there were mixed motives as anything, they were probably mixed motives. I mean, the fact that I got rejected from every firm I... well I only sent out about six letters, but I got rejected by every firm, meant that I was not going to get a job. But I didn't really kinda care at that time because I was starting to teach and I kinda saw... I started moving toward this path. So, part of it was that. Part of it that, you know, I think, looking back, and knowing now there's a residual rage that happens to you when you learn your true history and learn of how the rhetoric of the United States that I bought into so much, was phony. The idea of equal protection. Or it could be phony in many occasions especially like the incarceration of Japanese Americans. So there's the rage. There's the anger that Asian Americans are not getting the respect they deserve. They're getting poor treatment. They don't have legal resources. And there's a positive interest in trying to empower them to make a change. So, like all of those, I think were factors in starting our group.

MC: So you were one of the co-founders along with Ken --

DM: Right. Right.

MC: -- of this group and did you just stay as a two-person unit for a while?

DM: Not really. We went through, it was a little bit more torturous than that. So, in the summertime we, we finally found a name. Ken's idea was we were gonna all live together in this big house and have a commune and practice law. And I thought, "That's ridiculous. I would never live with some of these people. We're gonna kill each other." 'Cause there were personalities that you didn't quite get along that came and went. Most of them went. So they were not even, they weren't even involved with the actual Asian Law Caucus when we finally formed it. But in the summertime an interesting thing happened. I, they, one of the students that I had gotten into law school, a guy named Garrick Lew, who is still my partner, didn't have a summer job because he was so committed to starting this organization. And he's a real hustler. He always had summer jobs. Always had nice clothes, good cars, 'cause he was such a scammer. But he actually wanted to scam for good this time. This was for the Caucus. So he and I spent the summertime working together, found an office. He actually physically built the furniture. He hustled other furniture from Kaiser, used furniture that they were gonna throw away. We, we had bricks and board library. When we do the depositions of some of these people with these big firms would come in and go, "Oh, my God, where are we?" So it was just he and I.

And so before, just before then, a guy named Mike Lee who was one of the real, soul of the second-year law students that in fact got me involved in things, a Chinese American guy from Hawaii, called me up. We were trying to get lawyers because the whole idea, is a wonderful lawyer. Dale will be our lawyer then we'll have other lawyers coming over. Hell, nobody else stepped forward. Except Garrick. There was only two of us. And so it was Garrick and I, and so then Mike calls up one night and he's, he's had a few to drink. And he's, but it didn't diminish his ardor or his sincerity 'cause he said, "You know what? I gotta do this. I can't go back to Hawaii." 'Cause he, his, he was a famous family. His uncle was Judge Fong who's really well-known and he goes, "I can't do this. I'm gonna, we need to do this, we need to do this for the future." The guy has a lot of heart. He still does. So he signed on. But he had to take the bar, so he couldn't help at all during the summer. So, now it was me, myself as the only attorney, Mike was there, Garrick was a law student and we thought Ken was gonna join us. We were just young. We didn't know that this guy, he was married, he had a mortgage. We had no money, how could he join us? We just were so out there we didn't, we thought he would. So we told him, "You gonna join us?" And he kind of put off the decision, and then we kinda gave him an ultimatum because we were really disappointed. I sent this long letter saying how disappointed we were. But he didn't even respond. But he still kept helping us. And then we kind of finally grew up and figured out this guy can't join us. He's in a law firm. He's gonna drop his firm to join this rag-tag outfit of misfits? So during the summertime then it was just Garrick and I, working at this thing that we started calling the Asian Law Caucus. Garrick took these papers in to get us incorporated which he did in September. Some of the students dropped by to help us occasionally over the summer. Then they came in in September to help us. Mike had finished the bar so Mike joined us in September. Ken was still helping us out all the time. He was --

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.