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MN: Now, I think you mentioned this earlier, but I'm gonna ask you again. You graduated from law school, you were offered a job with the U.S. Attorney's office as a prosecutor but you turned it down. And why did you turn it down?

RO: They were prosecuting -- well, no, I didn't pursue it, they suggested that I apply. Because they were prosecuting Vietnam draft-dodgers, and that's not, not my calling.

MN: You graduated in '72 and then you received a Reginald Heber Smith Fellow.

RO: Fellowship.

MN: Fellowship. How competitive is that, to get that?

RO: I imagine it's very competitive, but you have to be very committed to want it, because as I said, it's only ten thousand dollars, full year salary.

MN: And then you graduated in June of '72, you took the bar exam in August, you were a trainee in September '72, and then you became involved in this huge Supreme Court case, Serrano vs. Priest. Can you share about this landmark Supreme Court case?

RO: Yeah. You know, it's an interesting thing about life. I had been a schoolteacher, and now Terry Hatter, who was my professor in Race, Racism and American Law, was now the director of the USC Western Center on Law and Poverty. And they had handled the case when it was a Supreme Court case on the legal issues. And that was resolved, and now it was scheduled in December for trial for the factual issues. And so here I am in East L.A. Legal Aid, and they were getting ready for trial, and they said, "I want Rose Ochi. She used to be a schoolteacher. Get her to help prepare for trial." And that's how I came to Western Center. I had an opportunity to do two very, very significant contributions to the case. And I'm kind of away from the legal issues right now, but the case is challenging the state's system of school finance. And what you're essentially saying is the way the state collects and distributes the money contributes towards the disparity of equal educational opportunities. And anyway, you have on one side, Beverly Hills, Baldwin Park, you have the State of California, the county of California, the school district, and you have, and hired guns from the top law firms, and here you had Western Center, not for the Supreme Court, but now for trial. You had one young man who tried some small cases, a very smart young man named McDermott, and myself, and I had done some juvenile and some landlord-tenant. And here we're preparing and whatever else and all, and Beverly Hills, they demurred, essentially a legal step to say, "You don't have a case."

And so I had to go and research and find a way to overcome that, or they would dismiss the case. I don't know what I was doing, and I was shepardizing, it's a process, forward, backwards, up and down. In any event, I ended up finding a case that is cited now on cases having to do with demurrers. But if you use regular research techniques, you would have never found it. I knew so little, I did it upward, downward, backward, sideways. I found a California case right on point. And, and so we would move forward on the trial. But even so, it was kind of like David and Goliath. You have this big battery of the top lawyers, and here's John and me. And I barely got to come invited to the table in December when my bar results came out. I took the bar in August. And one day, the key day of the trial, we had we had the educational finance expert of the state on. And John, our lead counsel, has this yellow pad of questions. And each question he asks is objected to. And the judge affirmed it. And he went through his yellow pad. "What if..." "Objection." And now, this is, hours pass, and he's down to his last page, and all objections sustained. And so what happens? I looked up, and I see the judge, and I see the bailiff and the court reporter. I look over here and I see the whole defense, and I look to the right, and there's John, laying prostrate on the table.

[Interruption]

MN: Now, you were, you're in the courtroom...

RO: We were finished. We were finished. We didn't get any of our witnesses' testimony about how the State's formula for distribution of educational monies are affected by the assessed evaluation. And I leaned over to John, who was laying prostrate on the table and I said, "John, ask a hypothetical question." And he rose up, started at the top of his tablet, went through, several hours later, we got in all our testimony and ultimately won the case. Several years after, I was attending a funeral service for Judge Bernard Jefferson, he was a wonderful African American judge who presided over our six month trial. And at this service, no one mentioned Serrano, and this is a landmark case. So my friends elbowed me and says, "Up." So I went up and told this story, and then I said, "You know, I'm a new lawyer, I don't know anything." I said, "Judge Bernard Jefferson had written this treatises on evidence, and I bought this red book and put it on the table to impress him. And I had my hands on the cover, I said, 'Maybe it was osmosis.'" And so it sort of made his family and everyone laugh, and then I said, "Oh, I don't know. You know, he might have felt so sorry for us that he just sent it to me by mental telepathy." And they roared, and finally I said, "I don't know." I said, "It was meant to be." And I said, "I think I just reached out and grabbed universal intelligence." And everybody clapped. But it's a remarkable victory, not only for Serrano, Los Angeles Unified School District children, but the legal principles have been used across the country in a number of states making the same challenges. So the outcome is that you're going to have improved educational offerings to all students.

MN: Now, this took two years of your life.

RO: Two years of my life, ten thousand dollars. Tommy used to make peanut butter sandwiches and hand 'em out as I go walking out the door. There is no life.

MN: You had a very understanding husband. Now, from Serrano, Serrano's victory, you did not go continue in legal practice. You went to go work for City Hall, and why did you choose to go to public policy?

RO: You're talking about two years, like, huge days, you know. I may have six, four to six hours to myself of personal time. And it's exhausting. After you prevail, you still have to go to the legislature to create enabling legislations to change the laws, and I thought, "Well, heck, this takes too long. I'm gonna learn how to make policy." So Terry Hatter, my professor from Race & Racism, took a job in Bradley's administration, new administration, and he recruited me to do legislative work in his criminal justice office. And it was perfect. It was a perfect place for me, not only for criminal justice, juvenile justice policy, but being involved in Japanese American community issues, whether it's redress, establishment of Manzanar, and the like.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.