<Begin Segment 5>

BF: So at the time you got involved, were you fairly active in JACL and that got you involved, or...

WM: No, I was involved in JACL before that, before I became a judge. I was its national legal counsel from nineteen... for about eight years, until 1970, when I resigned as legal counsel. As a matter of fact, as legal counsel, I tried to check into how to get these cases re-opened and re-litigated. And you may have heard, Sho Sato, a professor at Boalt Hall in Berkeley, I talked with him and he got some students that researched this area to see if we had a basis for re-opening the cases of Hirabayashi, Korematsu, and so on.

BF: And what did you... what was the ultimate conclusion of that?

WM: The conclusion was you, we did not have what is called a "justiciable controversy." What that means is -- are you suffering from the conviction, what loss are you continuing to incur today? And Min Yasui, for example, said, "I'm not suffering any loss, I mean, I can get a job any place I want, I was admitted to the bar. In fact, I'm licensed as a lawyer." See, if they had withheld licensing him as a lawyer because of his conviction, his conviction, then we would have had a justiciable controversy, because he was now suffering losses as a result of having been unjustly convicted.

BF: And so a writ, then, of...

WM: coram nobis.

BF: coram nobis.

WM: Would not be applicable.

BF: Interesting. So, when you -- so obviously, being legal counsel and working on these cases to re-open -- redress was a fairly natural process for you to get involved in.

WM: Yeah, we were thinking about it. I mean, it's true we didn't act upon it, but we didn't act upon it because there was nothing to act upon, legally speaking. We didn't know that the government had lied. That's when the writ of error coram nobis would be coming to the fore, when the government cheats or lies, or there was some evidence that was withheld by the government, which was the case here.

BF: Uh-huh. Could you explain a little bit about how a writ works, for those who don't have a legal background?

WM: Well, a writ of error coram nobis is a very unusual piece of writ. If there is any evidence that you say you should have had, but you yourself could have had, had you not sat around, the writ would not be applicable, you could not get a relief. It is only that kind of evidence which -- and the evidence has to be substantial, it has to have meaning to it, not some little evidence, slight error, but an error which would change the, could have changed the result of the case. And in the writ of error coram nobis involving Yasui, Hirabayashi, etcetera, Korematsu, it was a substantial piece of evidence. The government lied on a critical point, that it was not military necessity, and it would have changed the result, could have changed the result of the case.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.