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LB: So this is Lori Bannai. I'm taking over the interviewing now. One thing I wanted to establish before, though, was you already established your relationship with Dale, how you knew Dale through the Caucus?

TI: No, we haven't.

DT: Not too much, now.

LB: Okay, just wanted to clarify that. Okay, so we were talking about how you were executive director of the Caucus, and then heard about the Korematsu case. Can you recall when you first heard about the possibility of reopening Fred Korematsu's case, and what you thought at the time?

DT: Well, the context of it was that when you read these, the cases in law school, you basically think all these guys are long gone, they're not around, and they're just, they're just historical names. And so when Dale calls and he says, "How would you like to represent Fred Korematsu?" My reaction was, "He's still alive? Is he around?" And Dale said, "Oh, yeah. And Peter Irons, professor, has found these Justice Department secret documents, which may give us some reason to be able reopen it." And I said, "Sure, I'd be interested," but I didn't, I was highly skeptical that anything like that could be done, but I was definitely interested.

LB: How did you know Dale? How did Dale end up calling you?

DT: I had heard about Dale when I was doing community work as a college student at Cal, and then when I went to law school, I started volunteering at the Asian Law Caucus. They had an office across the street from my old high school, Oakland High, the storefront. And the desks, I'll never forget this, were made out of doors bought at, like, the Home Depot kind of thing, Ace Hardware, whatever, on sawhorses. And that was the firm, that was the public interest law firm. And I met Dale in that capacity.

LB: And you became friends?

DT: Yeah. Friends, he's hilarious and funny, and a tremendous leader, people gravitate toward him, tremendous amount of charisma, great vision. I thought this was a really unusual person. Dale has a way of pulling people in, getting them to believe they can do things that they would never have thought they were capable of doing. And he had this tremendous audacity, fearless, really. And so, yeah, I wanted to work with them.

LB: So Dale called you because of your friendship, because of your position with the Caucus?

DT: Yeah, he knew me, and I was director of the Asian Law Caucus, and we could focus a certain amount of the resources of the organization in support of these cases.

LB: So Dale told you about how Peter contacted him about these documents. Did you then end up meeting Peter?

DT: I met Peter, I think shortly, it could have been the day before we went over to the Korematsu family residence.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.