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TI: But going back to that change, putting the onus on distributing the money on the government and not on Japanese Americans who were incarcerated, if that change had not been made, what do you think the difference would have been?

RD: That a lot of people would have never gotten the money.

TI: And do you think it's because they would not have known to get the money, or do you think they would not have gone through the process to collect?

RD: Well, it depends on what kind of a process they made, but some people don't have papers to prove who they were, etcetera. The renunciants in Japan, what were they going to do? Most of those people were not really very well off. But no, I think it was utterly proper that it was their responsibility to do so, and I think it made it a lot simpler. People didn't have to apply, didn't have to ask for anything. The other service I did, I also was one of two persons who was asked to go over the draft report and make suggestions.

TI: And this is the report that eventually was named Personal Justice Denied?

RD: Yes, that's right. Angus Macbeth wrote most of that, but I had a great number of corrections and suggestions, many of which they took. Bill Hosokawa had a copy; I don't know what he did. I'm trying to find his papers and haven't had any success in doing so.

TI: So when you said two people, it was you and Bill Hosokawa?

RD: Yes, we're thanked. It's not a secret.

TI: You mentioned Angus Macbeth, who was the primary author of this. Tell me a little bit about what you know of Angus Macbeth and how you worked with him.

RD: Well, he wasn't there all the time; he came in late. And it was very important, because I think there were experts on the committee, on the Commission, who were very unhappy about the public hearings. I remember one lawyer who said, "They're all freak shows," didn't have any understanding. I mean, this guy knew what was wrong and what was right, but found the personal expressions and the hysteria and the tears, he found that offensive. He thought that should be, it should be nothing like that. And Macbeth understood that that was important. So he was a man of... one of his predecessors had a good legal knowledge, but I think did not have a good human understanding. You've interviewed him, haven't you?

TI: Yes, we have.

RD: What was your impression?

TI: I thought he was, as you say, very real, very much... not only in terms of very bright and conscientious work, but a sense that what he was doing was going to be historic in nature as he got into it. So he understood the importance of the work.

RD: I would agree to that; that's a good analysis. Have you done Aiko?

TI: Yes, I was going to ask, she's on my list, too, Aiko and Jack Herzig. And I've interviewed Aiko.

RD: You didn't get Jack?

TI: I didn't get Jack. So, again, I interviewed her many, many years after what happened, and I'm guessing you worked with her during this time period.

RD: Yes.

TI: And in particular, because of your experience and knowledge of working in the archives, and that's something that Aiko was doing very much, I wanted to get your sense of her work.

RD: Well, it was very important. And I certainly don't want this released while she's alive, but I'm convinced that the story she tells is in part a fairytale. If you look at her testimony in the second Hirabayashi case, she says that what happened, how she found out this stuff, was that she was sitting by the desk of an archivist who was away from his desk to get something. And she happened to reach into his bookshelf, and just happened to pick up the one undestroyed copy -- there's a certificate I've seen that all copies were destroyed, but one wasn't, and it's in this archivist's desk. And happened to open it just to the right page, and she admitted that he wasn't there, to see the statements that were done. Well, I am convinced that what happened was she a good archive rat, and archivists really appreciate people like that. And I'm sure there were people there, or there was someone there who knew about this, maybe the person who had actually somehow managed to filch it from a group to be destructed. In other words, I think she was given it by an archive employee, and her story of finding it herself, not for personal glory -- I've written a couple of emails trying to get her to talk to me about this, she doesn't want to talk about it -- but I'm convinced that that's the case. I had not realized this until I actually read her testimony in doing The Japanese American Cases book, and research often lets you find things you didn't know. So I'm convinced that that's what happened. The result's still the same.

TI: Do you think she was trying to protect someone?

RD: Oh, of course.

TI: So the archivist who actually leaked it to her, essentially, protecting this person.

RD: That's right, sure. That's what happened, I mean, because I'll tell you, not the leak, but his failing to comply with orders to destroy that copy was a criminal offense.

TI: So you think Aiko knows how that copy survived.

RD: I think that he gave it to her. Because the story is not... Aiko is not a person to intrude herself into somebody's personality, grab into his books. And she has to see -- I know what those desks are like, they usually have little bookcases on them. They're facing, you have to be sitting in the seat, not in the visitor's seat, but in the seat behind, to see that. A person would never see that there was a copy of a book that said this.

TI: And we should mention, for people who are reading the transcript and looking at this interview in the future, that we're talking about General DeWitt's Final Report, and that initial report showed John DeWitt's racist tendencies in terms of how he viewed the Japanese American community, and that was... what's the right word? Edited out before -- well, it was first published, and then when the War Department saw that, they wanted that destroyed.

RD: John J. McCloy saw it. The War Department doesn't have any eyes, and McCloy is the one who saw it and who insisted on that.

TI: And so he ordered all of them destroyed, and so that the report could be edited and then redistributed. Fascinating Because that was a key piece, especially in the second Gordon Hirabayashi case with coram nobis. I'll have to see if I can ask Aiko off the record if she'll tell me that story. That's a good one.

RD: Don't.

TI: Okay.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2013 Densho. All Rights Reserved.