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TI: So when you think about those five thousand, this happened over a time period of years. What was the impact on those people when they got their citizenship back? Once they found out they had their citizenship back --

TN: Well, there was all kind of people. They figured that "the government was generous enough to give us citizenship back," some people figured that way. And some would never admit they were wrong. And naturally, there was friction among the five thousand people, you know. Some were contributing and some were not. If they couldn't afford it, that was another story, but they could afford it, but they were opposed to same thing. So I learned a lesson, too. You try to help the people out, and they fight you in the back. But, so that's one thing Mr. Collins always told me: "You help these people try to get their citizenship back." Once you start practicing the law, they'll never come back for you, to your office for advice. Because you know too much about their past history.

TI: Interesting. I would have thought the opposite. That because you helped them in the past already, they would return --

TN: I know the background, see. I know what they did. They renounced their citizenship, okay, so they would never come back to me for attorney advice. They go to other lawyers.

TI: And was that the case, pretty much?

TN: Oh, yeah. Some were very loyal, they come back to me. There were all kinds of people. There were a lot of good people, too. I remember Shimizu.

BT: Iwao Shimizu.

TN: His father was Iwao, he was one of our committeemen. And there was another, Iwao Namakawa, he was an editor in a San Francisco newspaper, he was one of our committeemen. And I had all these people in the newspaper like Rafu Shimpo, Yano-san, Nozawa, they were all newspapermen.

TI: So all these years that Mr. Collins did these cases, how well compensated was he? How much money did he make off of this?

TN: He got nothing. He lasted twenty years, you know. And all the overhead, we had to hire girls to keep the office going. It cost us around fifty thousand a year, those days. So, you know, in ten years, happening, twenty years, he didn't get anything.

TI: And so this was almost all pro bono.

TN: Pro bono, yeah.

TI: So in that time, there must have been some people who were very appreciative of his work. Can you remember any example of a person or family being very appreciative to Mr. Collins?

TN: Well, they never expressed anything. But I suppose a lot of people still remember what they went through and how he helped people.

TI: Well, how did it make you feel? Because you're Japanese American, he helped so many people in our community. Do you feel like he was acknowledged enough or thanked enough?

TN: Oh, there was a lot of other publicity from the JACL group, you know. [Laughs] JACL group, figuring that these were "troublemakers" and tried to ignore them. They tried to ignore them, Tule Lake people. They were the ones that fought for the civil liberties, for all these cases. And the Japanese American Citizens League should have supported a case like this. Because that was a big civil liberties issue. They missed the boat in that respect, I thought. That's my, that's none of my opinion now.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.