<Begin Segment 11>

TI: Tell me a little bit about Mr. Collins. What kind of man was he? How would you describe Wayne Collins?

TN: Oh, he was Irish; he had a hot temper. [Laughs] And I remember joining with him, going to Santa Fe, New Mexico, to see all these renunciants in Crystal City, Texas. And he would tell, in front of the Justice Department official, you know, to all the clients there in Santa Fe, he said, "These people are denying people access to an attorney, because they're not supposed to be eavesdropping, you know, violating attorney-client relationship. "And I'm going to," he even approached these people and said, "What's your name? I'm going to sue you." [Laughs] You know, perk up all the people, you see, get up all the people to stand up for their own rights.

TI: Oh, so in front of people, he would confront the government officials there, and that showed the people there that, "You have rights."

TN: Yeah, and "violating your rights of attorney-client relationship."

TI: And when you saw that, what was your role at these meetings?

TN: Well, a lot of times, I was, I went with him because there were a lot of people that couldn't speak English at all, understand English. So I did a lot of interpreting, explaining to them in Japanese. And there we found, in internment camp, other problems. We ran into people, the Issei people that picked up by Alien Enemy Act, some of those were scheduled for deportation. So we said, Mr. Collins said, "We've got to protect these people, too. We want to show that the government didn't have the right to deport you Japanese." And then we ran into the Peruvian Japanese. They asked us for protection, too. So we ran into all kinds of problems, and then we found a lot of people that was, in Tule Lake, the wetbacks, the Japanese, people who didn't have visas, proper visa, and they were all called up. We had to protect them, too. We filed suits all over the United States.

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