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BF: This is a Densho interview of Angus Macbeth. The interviewer is Tetsuo Kashima and Becky Fukuda. This is September 11, 1997, and we are actually on the campus of UCLA at the redress conference.

TK: And my name is Tetsuden Kashima. Mr. Macbeth, good evening.

AM: Good evening.

TK: Perhaps we could start by having you talk a little bit about yourself, say where you were born, when you were born and what your education was like?

AM: I was actually born in Los Angeles in 1942, and I grew up here. I left in 1957 and have not lived on the West Coast since then. I've lived in Washington for the last twenty years. I am a lawyer. I took my law degree at Yale and have practiced law in New York and Washington since 1969 (...).

TK: Well, we're obviously talking about Japanese Americans, so I wonder, during your childhood years and up through law school, what kind of acquaintances or interactions you've had with persons of Japanese ancestry?

AM: I knew a number of Japanese Americans when I was in public school here in Los Angeles. They weren't particularly close friends, but you know, they were classmates and friends. I will say that -- this is probably no surprise to you that the exclusion and the camps were something that was never, never mentioned in any of our conversations; and I think before I left California, I had some dim knowledge that something of that sort had happened, but not a very clear one. At law school I read the Japanese American wartime cases and certainly from that had a basic understanding of what had happened legally. (...) Before that at college, (from) American history classes I had a very basic knowledge, but nothing very intimate or very extensive.

TK: And do you remember at what particular time you became interested in, or knowledgeable about Japanese American cases or the Japanese American experience?

AM: I think it really is when I started the work as the counsel to the commission. I came to Washington in 1977 to, at that point, be in charge of EPA's outside litigation in the Justice Department and....

TK: EPA as in Environmental Protection Agency?

AM: Exactly. And the general counsel of the EPA at that time was Joan Bernstein, and obviously later she became chairman of the commission. And in the late summer, early fall, of 1981, asked me if I would serve as the counsel to the commission, which I did. And I, at that time, (...) plunged into this full time. But before that, frankly, you know, I had the kind of knowledge that I think a moderately well-educated American would have, but nothing in terms of any specialized or in-depth knowledge. I mean, take some of the very basic books like tenBroek or Daniels or Michi Weglyn's book; I hadn't read any of those at the time I became counsel for the commission.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.