<Begin Segment 25>

CS: And one of the cliches that comes to mind initially came out of the Holocaust, but it is applicable to the incarceration of Japanese Americans: "Never again." And if we take the mistakes of history, it has been said we're doomed to repeat them unless we are aware of them. And so we take the mistakes of history and determine for ourselves that in our lifetime, it will happen "never again." What does that mean, then? It means to become aware of the reality behind historical experiences, as opposed to some writer's imaginative approach to it. To know what the actual experience of people has been, rather than some writer's impression of what they think people's experience has been. In my own case, every time I read an article about me, I have to laugh because it depends on the orientation of the writer, and different writers will make certain assumptions, and it comes out and it's published, and technically, it becomes a matter of fact. A newspaper article can be used as proof of fact in a court case, simply because it was published. Now, I read these various articles about myself, and I'm aware of the inconsistencies and the inaccuracies, and the untruthfulness of many of them. And for example, when I was retiring from the Supreme Court, there was a young woman writer who was determined to give the impression that I was fighting retirement. I had planned my retirement for three years -- [laughs] -- I knew I would be seventy-five years old, and I knew that the Constitution says, "You'll give it up when you're seventy-five." Under no circumstance did I want to stay on the court after I reached the age of seventy-five years. And I was on for nearly a year because of the way the calendar operated, but this newspaper article, with a big picture of me across the front page, "He doesn't want to retire." And I kept telling her, "But I do want to retire." And she was determined to make it appear that I was fighting retirement.

Well, this is the kind of thing that we have to be wary of, and it is interpretation by persons in the media. The New York Times and the Washington Post have, in the last several days, come to criticize themselves for their inappropriate coverage of the period prior to the entry into the Iraq war. Why did they wait for so long? They should have been aware of what they were doing at the time they were doing it. And we members of the public need to be critical of the media on a day-to-day basis rather than waiting until a study is made, or waiting until an ombudsperson for the newspaper comes up with a critique, or waiting until some academic comes up with a critique. We are the people who sustain the media in this country, whether it is the print media or the electronic media, and we are not as participatorily aware as we ought to be. And I'm one of those persons. I, I don't think I've written a letter to the editor in years, and I'm not inclined to write one even now. But I do have platforms, and whenever I have a speech to make, I could say whatever I want to say, and I'm no longer bound by the code of judicial conduct, so I could criticize whomever I wish to criticize. It doesn't matter whether I am encroaching on some sensitive code of judicial conduct, because I'm no longer governed by the code of judicial conduct.

<End Segment 25> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.