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TI: It's interesting how having done interviews with many of the people we've talked about, how there are these differences in terms of how... but I guess that's part of history, right?

RD: That's right. And then there are many of these things you just can't decide.

TI: Well, and especially about something as eventful as redress, coram nobis, and how important it is to the community, and how many players were involved, and how everyone has a story about how they were involved and their role, and how they think about it. It is interesting. I mean, as a historian, how do you deal with that when there are -- a simple example is how the redress bill eventually got the number H.R. 442, House Resolution 442. I think in the archives we have three different stories of how that came about. And it's always kind of interesting, as an oral historian, how I deal with something like that.

RD: What kinds of differences are there?

TI: Well, there was one from Senator Inouye, and from then Representative Norm Mineta, I can't remember the third one. It might have been from Grant Ujifusa.

RD: I wouldn't trust that one farther than I could throw it. I've got a document that I want to show you of his. I keep forgetting to bring it.

TI: But I think Norm talks about it was all a timing issue, that he had to be there because they said they were done sequentially, and he knew the significance of 442, which is the...

RD: It's a put up deal. You arrange with the clerk beforehand.

TI: Well, so he said he had to be there, and then when that sequence was there, that's when it was placed.

RD: No, no, you've got to make the arrangements in advance.

TI: Versus the senator said that was just something that was requested.

RD: If Inouye requested it, it was going to happen. But the first time that happened, where people started doing this, was for Lend-Lease. And they got that one, that was H.R. 1776. I mean, that number comes up, well, if there are enough bills, that number comes up every Congress. So now there are all kinds of things that are doing them. And then they developed this whole business of making the initials say something. But for years and years and years that wasn't done. That's a recent innovation.

TI: I guess the question I'm asking, as a historian, you've interviewed lots of people. And when there are differences --

RD: Sometimes you can't tell. You have to just say what you know... like I wouldn't say that Bill Marutani was the first person to do it. Everybody wants to make coram nobis a lot more mysterious and arcane than it actually was. Because where most people should have heard of it at that time, was the fact that Alger Hiss's memoir is actually his coram nobis petition. And it went absolutely nowhere; it's not an example anybody wanted to use, because first of all, it didn't succeed, and secondly, who wants to say we're doing something that Alger Hiss for god sakes talked about? So all these statements about how arcane it was...

TI: Well, and I seem to recall from our interview with Peter Irons, he used the writ of coram nobis personally in his case of, I think, draft resistance in the Vietnam War.

RD: Without success.

TI: I can't remember how successful it was, but he talks about a personal sort of use of the writ of coram nobis.

RD: He didn't talk about that in the book; I didn't know that.

TI: So again, it's interesting how much comes out of these interviews. Something I forgot to ask about, we talked about Aiko Yoshinaga Herzig, her husband Jack Herzig -- who passed away years ago but was also a significant player during this time period -- did you work with Jack? Did you know Jack?

RD: Yes, I knew Jack. The most important thing that he did... well, he ran interference for her. He was a very soft spoken guy, but he was a former intelligence officer, and he had a commanding presence. His most important role, testimony, was he helped shoot down this nonsense about MAGIC, which wasn't really before the court, because the judge... well, it's a long story, we don't need to go into that. But no, there are things... history is a debate without end. That's a phrase from a great Dutch historian.

TI: Well, so my understanding is that the MAGIC cables were not included in the initial draft of Personal Justice Denied.

RD: They had no relevance.

TI: So that, from your perspective, it was known but it just was not part of it. But then later on it was inserted...

RD: Well, when they tried to shoot it down, I forget his name, this turkey who had been hired to supervise the declassification of them, which was sort of routine. First of all, nobody in the Western Defense Command knew anything about MAGIC. Didn't go down to that level. Many of the top generals didn't know anything about MAGIC. It was a very closely held proposition. Secondly, there's nothing in MAGIC, not an iota, that identifies any subversive Japanese Americans. What we have is that fact that -- which we already knew from Ringle's break-in to the Japanese consulate in Los Angeles -- we already knew that Japan was asking them to find Nisei. But in fact, most Japanese espionage in the United States was conducted by Caucasians, mostly Germans, for obvious reasons. Can you imagine anything more suspicious than a Japanese face at a camera at Boeing? [Laughs] But it's one of these wonderful red herrings that was dug up, but it had no relevance.

TI: And that was one of the valuable things that Jack Herzig did, because with his intelligence background, he essentially did this analysis of the data, essentially.

RD: You didn't have to have intelligence background to do it, but the fact that an intelligence officer was saying this seemed important in the press. I don't think it had any real value, it was nice that he could do that, but this Lowman had nothing to offer, and under cross examination he admitted he had nothing to offer. He would say things like, "Yeah, but it's very interesting to think." There was nothing there. It's like what the dog did in the night, in The Hound of the Baskervilles, which was nothing. Which was important, because it meant that the person who did it must have been something the dog liked, which meant his master was the guilty person. But the extent that people, politicians and others, will go to to discredit a popular claim is pretty obscene.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2013 Densho. All Rights Reserved.