<Begin Segment 15>

LB: Can you tell me about any specific moments in working on the case that stand out in your mind, in particular, were you present when Judge Patel issued her ruling in court?

EY: Oh, yes, I was definitely present. That's a moment that will sort of last forever in my mind.

LB: Set the stage for me. Tell me what it was like when you came to the courtroom, what was there, who was there.

EY: Well, I'll set the stage going back about a week before that. And this was the week before the November hearing. And so we had, I had participating in drafting the evidentiary documents and filings with the court and doing the research. And I recall spending a lot of time in Bob Rusky's office there, and Margie Barrows and Leigh-Ann. And we worked really hard, but then joke around. So after all the documents were filed and the government responded, and so there was nothing left to do, but we were just kind of cleaning up. And I remember being in Bob Rusky's... Bob had his firm, Hanson Bridget, donate all this time and space and incredible resource, that was so essential, money. But we were done, but Bob had still reserved the room, 'cause we had met there. So we're just sitting there, and Margie and I got so giddy, and we started playing baseball with wadded up papers -- you know, this is in the conference room of this big law firm, we're throwing this thing around and laughing, because we had so much pent-up energy and anxiety, but also hopefulness. And so that only built for the hearing.

And so I recall for the hearing, all of us congregating in the big ceremonial courtroom. So not the ordinary courtroom, but the big ceremonial courtroom with the big marble columns, very, very grand. And hundreds of people, three, four, maybe five hundred people. And the back was just packed with the Japanese Americans who had been interned, as well as media. And then we the attorneys got to go inside the gate, we sat on a bench there. Then the table, and there was Fred and Dale. Maybe Don was at that table, too, and then Victor Stone on the other side. So it was very intense to be there for this occasion. And no one knew how Patel was going to rule. So it really was this sense of anxiety and of hope. Of fear, too, because what if she, the most forward-looking progressive judge, and if she said no, I mean... so it was very, that kind of hopeful anxiety. And then when Dale got up and he did his opening statement, argument, he was so articulate and so wonderful, the way that only Dale can be so concise and so to the point but in a larger way, and what this is really about and who's being impacted and why. And that's part of Dale's genius. He's able to take the legal arguments but weave in the bigger narrative about why this should come out the way it's going to come out. I don't remember anything about Victor Stone's discussions, because he was kind of lost and half apologizing, half arguing.

And then Fred got up. And I remember this. When Fred got up -- there'd been this mild murmur, but when Fred got up, it got quiet. And with Fred, as you know, as we all know, he's such a wonderful person, and can be a wonderful speaker. But you never know when he's gonna ramble around or when he's gonna just get to the heart of it. He always got to the heart of it, but you didn't know if he's gonna take twenty minutes to get there, and here he only had about two minutes. But he just got right to it, just right to it. And ultimately, he's doing this because he doesn't want it to happen again to anyone. You could hear that he meant not just Japanese Americans, he meant anyone in society, to be treated badly, to have their civil liberties subverted under the false mantle of national security. To be scapegoated just because the government officials thought it would be a neat thing to do and a popular thing to do to sacrifice the civil liberties of particularly a racial group, but any kind of group. He said that in such a powerful way. You could just feel the room go, like, oh, that feeling, you know.

And then it was quiet, and Judge Patel shuffled her papers, and then you could tell she was gonna, she had something prepared, so she's gonna rule from the bench. So we weren't sure what exactly she would do. And then it got super quiet again. And I swear I could feel, at that moment, I could feel the intense energy in the room. It felt to me like everything was vibrating, the walls and the air were having this energy like this. And she was quiet, and then she started to read her opinion from the bench. And as you know, after about three sentences, we knew that she was gonna grant Fred's petition. And then she went on, and then it became better and better and better, and then she read that statement the role of the courts in times of crisis and the importance of standing up and being vigilant, accountability, all this wonderful... so she got what Fred was saying and was reflecting it back. This was about Fred, it was about Japanese American internment, it was about American society and the judiciary's role. It was, couldn't have been better.

And at that moment, the room, I could hear people starting to cry in the back. You can feel the energy, and it was just vibrating back and forth, people starting to cry. I could feel my eyes water, I could see everybody on the legal team and we just had that same feeling. And it was so cute, that I learned later from Dale, in the midst of all of that, then finally Fred turns to Dale and says, "What happened?" [Laughs] "Fred, you won." And so that was, that was a really magical, magical moment, beyond what I think anyone could have really hoped for, and it turned out to be quite wonderful.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.