<Begin Segment 16>

GH: You know, when the exclusion order deadlines were creeping up for Seattle, I had by that time decided that I could not go through with it. If I found curfew sufficiently objectionable that I could not as an American participate in that restriction, then how could I go through with exclusion order? That's even worse and much more involved, though the basic principles were the same. So I decided I couldn't go through with that either.

Mary Farquarson, state senator during that period, came to me and said that she heard a rumor that I was going to refuse the exclusion order. And I said, "Well, that's true. I can't go through with it." And she said, "Are you planning to carry on a test case?" I said, "No, I haven't, I haven't given it a thought, because at the present time, all I've done was to clarify my own feelings about this and made a personal stand, that's as far as I've gone. I'm not a law student, I don't have money, so I haven't given the test case idea any thought." Well, she said, "Some of my friends and I are very concerned about the erosion of citizens' rights, and we've been looking for some way by which we could check the hysteria that's going on. If you are not contemplating test case, would you allow us to do it? That would be an opportunity, a springboard on which we could fight for citizens' rights, and at the same time, protest the injustice that's happening to the Americans of Japanese ancestry." I asked her who the "we" were that she was talking about, and she mentioned the names of some professors, some businessmen in the University District, some of the church ministers, and some of the Quakers. And I happened to know each of them personally. She mentioned about eight people. And I said, "If these are the people that are involved, I have no question you could carry on whatever you wanted. Just keep me informed, and I'm with you." So that's, that was the formation of our defense, and I knew from that time it was going to be something more than just my personal stand. There was going to be a legal fight, and then also wherever there were forums, discussion symposiums, she said that her group will try to get on the program to represent this viewpoint. And so there was also a public educational campaign going on, right in the middle of the war, you know. This wasn't the most popular thing that citizens could be doing. And I think, and I'm very grateful that people like her rallied up in support of a lone wolf stand.

The Quakers that were involved included an attorney who was a close personal friend of mine, Arthur Barnett, and he was about thirty-five at the time, and considered himself maybe too young and too inexperienced to take the case himself, but he became the legal consultant on this committee. And he was the one that made the representations to courts, to the legal fraternity, trying to get support for, trying to get a lawyer to join our team. It wasn't easy.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 1983, 2010 Densho and Steven Okazaki. All Rights Reserved.