<Begin Segment 6>

TI: And what else do you think you felt really good about in the package that you sent to D.C.?

BT: Okay. We had answered the question that had been posed to Kashino, getting a statement from the soldier who started the scuffle. Then the other thing is that I had asked Sus Yamamoto for help in Washington, D.C. And he had gone to the Judge Advocate General office and they had sent back information that military regulations, court-martial regulations, are available at the University of Hawaii. So I visited the library and looked over the manual of court-martials. And throughout the regulations, it comes out loud and clear that whoever is charged should be tried as soon as possible. In fact, for a general court-martial, which is the -- I guess you'd say the strictest penalty, facing a general court-martial... I think they had that the soldier should be charged, I think, in (what is it?) eight days or two weeks? And this was only a special court-martial, which is a lesser degree than the general. And here they were one month in southern France and no charges, no trial. The other thing is that throughout the manual, they always talk about a defense counsel. And I kept hopping on Kash, "Double-check with Fred Matsumura, double-check with Sadaichi. Was there a defense counsel -- did any officer approach you folks as being a defense counsel?" And they all said, "No." In fact, in Fred Matsumura's initial affidavit, he asked the question, "Why was there no one to serve as his defense counsel?" So here again, now the delay in trial and no defense counsel, I think, was a very serious breach of military regulations.

TI: And I think a third one was the change of venue, too. It happened in France.

BT: Well, yeah, because of the delay. Yeah. The change in venue from France to Italy. That means that the MP officer could not appear at the trial. But when we found out that the MP officer didn't want to -- wanted charges dropped, again that changed the whole picture that, "Why was the trial held in the first place?"

TI: And how did it come about, how did we know, or how did you know, that the MP officer wanted the charges dropped?

BT: Okay, this happened early in the Kashino appeal. In fact, Kashino based his appeal on a statement from Sadaichi Kubota that Chaplain Yamada was on the phone line with their battalion commander talking to the MP officer, and the chaplain told Sadaichi that the MP officer wanted charges dropped. And this is what Sadaichi recalled back in, I think, 1983 or '85, when the I Company had their reunion, and he -- and Kashino was being teased about the court-martial, that Sadaichi mentioned this to Kash, "Why don't you appeal your court-martial, because it was wrong?" And I guess that's where the thing started.

TI: Okay, good.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.