<Begin Segment 22>

TI: So, Flo, we just took a short break, and we were just getting into how you started at the ACLU. But before we do that, I realize the ACLU of Northern California was the Bay Area. So you graduated, or you were finishing up at UCLA, how did you get back up to the Bay Area?

FD: Well, because I had, there was one prerequisite for my degree, and I wasn't able to take it at UCLA because it was offered at the same hour and day that another prerequisite for my degree was offered. So, in order to get my degree, I had to take that course. And instead of attending UCLA for another semester just to take this one course, I decided... well, I learned that it was offered at the UC Berkeley summer session. So I decided to take it at the summer session at UC Berkeley.

TI: So that got you back up to the Bay Area.

FD: Up to the Bay Area, and then I got together with my former friends that I had known when I was attending UC Berkeley. And after I finished school, I didn't know exactly what to do, and I didn't want to go back to Southern California because the climate was so hot and I was sick and tired of heat after my years in Poston. I thought, I've had it with heat, so I want to stay where it's nice and cool. And Berkeley seemed to be a nice places, so I stayed there for a while. And then my roommate, who had been one of my friends when I was at UC Berkeley, and I, shared an apartment, and she got a job in San Francisco and said she worked for the Council for Civic Unity, which is defunct now, I think. But anyway, she said, across the street, there's an office of the American Civil Liberties Union. And I had heard about the ACLU, that they had been the only, one of the very few organizations that had stood up and complained about the Japanese being incarcerated. And so I thought, well, I think I'd like to work there if possible, so I went and applied and it turned out that I was the only applicant who was willing to take low pay. Because at that time they were offering only two hundred dollars a month, which was not much. But I figured, well, I guess that's enough, it'll pay my rent and food. And then, too, I thought, well, I don't have any experience in office work so I guess it's better than no job at all. And then it turned out that I had taken a semester of shorthand 'cause I thought I might need it if I couldn't get a job doing something else, whatever I wanted to do. And so he was dictating letters and stuff.

TI: And when you say "he"...

FD: Oh, that's Mr. Besig, was dictating correspondence to me, and affidavits and things like that. And I had such a hard time keeping up, and then that was bad enough, then I couldn't read some of my scribbling. And so after a while, he says, "You really don't know shorthand, do you?" [Laughs] Oh, that's true. And so he bought dictation equipment, which was rather new at the time, and after that, I was able to manage. And then after a few years I got married and decided that I didn't want to work full time anymore, and I thought it'd be nice if I could find a part-time job.

TI: And before you move to the next job, were you able to ever have discussions with Mr. Besig about his work around the Japanese Americans and, in particular, maybe the Korematsu case or anything like that?

FD: Yeah, occasionally from time to time. Oh, and then I met his wife, and we became close friends. So even after I stopped working there, he and his wife used to invite me over to his house for dinner once in a while, and then after I got married I invited them to my house occasionally for dinner, and we became, well, lifelong friends.

TI: Yeah, so because you knew him so well, and his wife, why do you think they stood up for the Japanese Americans? Because everyone else wasn't during this time period.

FD: Well, it's because it was a matter of civil liberties, that it was wrong, according to the Constitution. People were being discriminated against simply because of their national origin or their ancestry, and well...

TI: And yet, lawyers all across the country, even the national ACLU, didn't stand up for the Japanese Americans. I mean, Ernest Besig at Northern California was just a chapter that kind of stood up for them, but national didn't, and so...

FD: I know, uh-huh.

TI: So what made him so special?

FD: Well, that is, he was a firm believer in civil liberties, and he thought that the government, well, that the government couldn't be trusted to do the right thing. And so he protested and filed lawsuits, and did whatever he could to right the wrong.

TI: Now, did he have much contact or experience with Japanese Americans before the war?

FD: I don't think so. And he didn't do it because they were Japanese Americans, he did it because their rights were being abrogated.

TI: And how supportive was his wife for doing all this work? Because I'm guessing that they may have been called names and maybe even ostracized by some people because of their stance with Japanese Americans.

FD: Well, possibly, but, well, his wife supported him as far as I could tell.

TI: Did they ever talk about that, whether or not other people kind of shunned them because of his work?

FD: No, no. Because they had plenty of people who agreed with them, and they had influential friends.

TI: Yeah, no, in Japanese American history, he's a giant, the things he did. So it's exciting to talk with someone who actually worked with him.

FD: Uh-huh.

TI: Anything else about the Besig couple that kind of comes to mind about who they were as people?

FD: Well, I don't know.

TI: Like it sounds like they were good friends, they were nice people.

FD: Yeah. And by coincidence, after I got married, I moved into a house that's only about a half a mile from their home. So we used to get together more frequently then.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2016 Densho. All Rights Reserved.