<Begin Segment 6>

GK: Could you talk about the Mitsuye Endo case again?

WM: Mitsuye Endo? Mitsuye Endo filed in 1942, July of 1942, a writ of habeas corpus. A writ of habeas corpus is quite common. A writ of habeas corpus is a piece of, a relief that you go to the government and say, "You know, you have arrested me and jailed me, but you haven't told me why. You must tell me why." And the court will listen to the reasons, so you go into court and the judge will listen to the reasons, and if there's no good reason, then you must release the person, because otherwise you could just keep the person in jail forever. In a democracy it doesn't work that way and that is why we have that relief. Because of the nature of the relief, you must give a hearing promptly -- three, four days. You just cannot have a person sitting around and, "I'll get to your case when I have time." You give it high priority, it comes from the very top. In Mitsuye Endo's case, the judge did not make a decision until one year later, twelve months later, in 1943, the judge finally made a decision. Well, there's a saying in jurisprudence that, "Justice delayed is justice denied." This is a classic example in Mitsuye Endo's case. When the judge decided against Mitsuye Endo, she took an appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States, directly. And the Supreme Court did not get around to deciding that, reversing the decision of the lower court, until another twelve months go by. Now in the meantime Mitsuye Endo's in prison, so to speak, she is behind the barbed wire. This is completely improper, this is a classic example of "justice delayed is justice denied." She is not given her day in court. They finally told her that she was right all along, but 24 months in prison while they come to that decision? It's so abundantly clear that it was unjust.

BF: So it looks as though all of the attempts to work through the judicial arena met up with dead ends.

WM: All failed, dismally so.

BF: Was that sort of the impetus for going after some sort of legislative action?

WM: Well, I would think it would be, to some extent. That's outrageous. To let a situation sit around for 24 months while a person... you know, you could be picked up, any of us could be picked up, just because the government wants -- the king, the government, whoever it might be, may not like you for whatever, your race, color of your hair, whatever. And keep you in prison for 24 months, and they say, "Oops, we're sorry, we got the wrong person, you're innocent, we were wrong." Can't do that.

BF: To this day, I assume that that's a fairly unprecedented, or a...

WM: Yeah, it's a gross violation. The government grossly violated the law of habeas corpus.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.