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EK: So, Bill, by virtue of Hawaii being the location of Pearl Harbor and the Japanese attack, and given that a significant portion of Hawaii residents were of Japanese ancestry, what happened here during the war was pretty different from what happened on the mainland? Can you talk a little bit about the environment in Hawaii for Japanese Americans after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and why there was not this mass evacuation like there was on the mainland?

BK: Hawaii was uniquely different from the mainland. In Hawaii at the time of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, I believe, about thirty-seven percent of the population itself was Japanese Americans. So that posed a unique, I think, question for the government, because, from a practical standpoint, to intern or displace over a third of the population would result in literally the entire collapse of an entire economy, the consumer population base. Was impractical, really, for the government to intern Japanese from Hawaii. So as a result, there are two camps that were created, one in Sand Island, the other in Honouliuli, and the government chose to intern about two thousand Japanese Americans who were perceived to have ties to Japan. "Perceived" meaning they were Japanese language teachers, martial arts instructors, folks who worked for Japanese-related newspapers, Japanese community organizational leaders who the government perceived as being, having links to the Japanese government. And so the two thousand AJAs who were interned were then put into two camps here in Hawaii, and I believe there were other temporary places where folks were also detained, like various jails and other places before moving over to Sand Island and Honouliuli. And subsequent to that, many of those Japanese American AJAs were then displaced throughout the country along with the other 110,000 West Coast Japanese. But the environment in Hawaii was very, very different just because of the significant population base that was here.

EK: So given Hawaii's unique circumstances, can you recall examples of some of the unique cases that therefore developed as a result of the differences between what was going on in Hawaii versus the mainland? Were there particular groups of people that you can recall who sought redress?

BK: Well, what was real interesting about the Hawaii cases which kind of developed as a result of the redress compensation activities, was that there were about two thousand Hawaii internees that were in Sand Island and Honouliuli. Those are the easy cases because if your name was on the list, you could verify that you're that person, then the government would issue an apology and compensate you. Because of the high profile press coverage about the redress cases being ultimately settled and people were getting apologies, there was a lot of press activity. And so along with that press activity, the JACL got a lot of questions about other Japanese Americans who were not interned, but were evacuated from their homes. And it kind of started with, in 1991 when the JACL got a call from the, actually an LA dentist, Donald Kanemaru, who called the JACL office and said, asked the question, "You know, my family was living in Lualualei, Oahu," which is next to a military naval artillery base in Lualualei. And he said, "My family got kicked out. I'm not interned, but I was evacuated. Am I eligible?" And that was a really interesting question because the standard was persons who were interned would be eligible under the Act. So we took that, the initial question from Dr. Kanemaru, and we had our legal counsel review the redress legislation, Honolulu JACL legal counsel with Clayton Ikei at that time. And he looked at the act, and he had opined, his opinion was yes, you could be potentially eligible if you were evacuated, because the law stated that if you were deprived of your civil liberties, then that would be merits for being compensated. So it was interesting because... because of this question and Clayton's initial legal opinion, that we started to be able to look into other questions of persons who were evacuated but not interned. And as it turned out, as the Office of Redress Administration came to Hawaii and started holding these redress workshops, and as the question of eligibility arose, we started to get literally hundreds of inquiries of whether folks were eligible. And so as it turned out, Lualualei was one of the first, what they call, the government referred to as "Hawaii unique cases," and I believe ultimately some twenty-three sites were determined to be these unique evacuation cases. So because of Lualualei, there were many, many other inquiries as related to the evacuation. There was Pauoa Valley, Iwilei, Waiale, Pu'uloa, Kahuku, Pu'unene, and they just kind of start to unfold, and that was really kind of a second series of redress cases that both the JACL and ORA had to deal with.

EK: Can you share more about how you worked with ORA to resolve these cases? Like what did that back and forth look like?

BK: Yeah. I think to Bob's credit, and because of his leadership and wanting to address these issues quickly, I remember when the question of Lualualei came up, and after we had rendered our legal opinion, I immediately called Bob and notified him about these potential evacuation cases.

[Interruption]

EK: So, Bill, could you continue talking about how you worked with ORA to resolve these unique Hawaii cases?

BK: So once we got wind of these potential unique cases relating to the evacuees, we did our legal analysis and I contacted Bob at ORA, and he was kind of also perplexed about the potential application of the law and how that related to these cases. And I think within a matter of four to five weeks, he sent on a team of staff people to do redress workshops on just the evacuation cases. And so literally, I think two or three hundred evacuees attended those workshops, and that's where we really found out about the potential broad impact of these evacuation cases. Frankly, they were very difficult because for literally all these evacuees, the military, immediately after Pearl Harbor, came in at gunpoint and ordered Japanese Americans out from their homes. So there were no internment logs, there was no checklist or rosters to verify whether or not you actually lived there.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2019 Emi Kuboyama. All Rights Reserved.