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EK: So could you also talk further on your recollections about different Japanese American groups who might not have originally been considered for eligibility under the original legislation?

TC: And I've already mentioned about the former non-Japanese spouses, and they were made eligible by the amendments to the Act. Another large group of individuals who were made eligible later were for the children who were born after their parents' evacuation or after the parents had left camp, and there were several lawsuits about this. There were split decisions in the lower court that some of them held they were not eligible under the Act, and there were one or two that said they were. And so the case in the U.S. Court of Appeals was the name of Ishida vs DOJ. And so that's how we sort of referred to it as the "Ishida Children". And the appellate court reversed and found that the children had been legally excluded from their parents' original home and deprived of liberty. And with that court case, then the Office of Redress Administration amended the regulation to make them eligible. And I believe there were like several hundred children paid. And another group of children who were found eligible based on a lawsuit were the minor children who relocated to Japan during the war. That was one of the exclusion provisions of the Act, that anyone who returned to Japan during the war was found ineligible. And the suit was named Kanemoto, and it involved fourteen individuals who had been minor children during the war, and who had to go back to Japan when their parents took them back. There were two sailings of the ship Gripsholm during the war, and they were primarily diplomats, but then it was also individuals from the camps. And the children were arguing that they did not have a voluntary choice to return to Japan. But since they were minors that the law should not exclude them. And the department agreed with that position. We made the caveat that if they were emancipated or married, or joined the Japanese government, [or] military, then they would be excluded. But, again, those minor children were made eligible under the Act.

Then another big group of individuals who were found eligible dealt with Hawaii. And the report Personal Justice Denied mentioned the approximately 1,800 internees from Hawaii who were moved to the mainland, but it did not go into these other areas of internment in Hawaii. And circumstances were quite different in Hawaii, that there might be a general order evacuating all people from an area versus an order evacuating only those of Japanese ancestry. So we had to do a lot of additional research to look into the Hawaii circumstances. So the research efforts continued. I know I went to the San Bruno, California [National Archives and Research Administration (NARA)], twice, because they had U.S. military research about Hawaii. We went to the University of Hawaii, Hamilton Library for information. We went to the Army Corps of Engineers in Hawaii, we went to the Hawaii State Archives, and we also hired two graduate students in Hawaii to do research for us. And based on that, some initial groups that had been found ineligible were found eligible. And that was, there was a big group, Lualualei, there was another group called Puuloa, one called Waiau, and then were was one called Iwilel. And then Iwilei was initially found ineligible because all persons of many ancestries were evacuated, and then we later found documents showing that, although most could return to that area, the small portion of those of Japanese ancestry could not. And then there were other small pockets in Hawaii that we would find individual basis, and it could be anywhere from half a dozen people to maybe a hundred, but there were probably more than, like, thirty areas in Hawaii that we later found to be eligible.

One other group that was found eligible were the Arizona residents in southern Arizona. What was unique in Phoenix and Glendale is that there was a major highway through the middle of town. And the north of town was the free zone, and the south of town was the exclusion zone. And so those who lived in the free zone, initially they were not found eligible for redress. And then in researching it and getting more information, we found there had been a significant disruption in their daily lives, where they could not attend schools, they could not go to their churches, they could not go to their businesses. And so the Department made the decision to make that group eligible. And then another large group that was mentioned in Personal Justice Denied were the Latin Americans and Japanese Peruvians who were brought to the U.S. or who were sent from their governments to the U.S. to be interned here and repatriated to Japan during the war. Many of them returned to Japan during the war right after, but several of them had children. Born here in the U.S., they were in the family INS camp in Crystal City, Texas. So the children who were born here were citizens and were found eligible, but for those who stayed in the U.S. after the war, the timing determined whether or not they were eligible as to when they applied for their permanent residency status. There was a difference in the immigration laws, which were very complex, and there were differences between the 1917 law, there was a 1948 law, and also 1952. And depending upon which immigration law they applied under, some of them might receive retroactive status, some would not. So that was a big issue, so there was a lawsuit called Mochizuki, and they filed saying they should be eligible even though there was a group that did not have their permanent residency status. And the government had recognized what had happened to them during the war and agreed to settle for five thousand dollars and an apology. So they did not receive the full twenty thousand dollars, but they received five thousand. And then there was a small group from that who refused to accept the settlement, and they also filed a later lawsuit asking for the full twenty thousand and also punitive damages, and their suit was not successful.

And I guess the last big group of claimants that had been ineligible and then found eligible were the railroad and mining workers. And again, that was another lawsuit called Kaneko vs the U.S. And in that case, both the lower court and the appellate court upheld the Department's decision saying there was no federal government action involved in the firing, but it was the private companies' determinations to fire individuals. And ORA conducted quite a bit of extensive research, we worked with some historical societies from the states, we worked with a number of the railroad companies, and gathered a lot of research, but there was really no smoking gun for the railroad workers. But there was some implication that in being rehired, there may have been army security regulations that might have impacted, and I believe the Department at that time used the benefit of the doubt standard to make them eligible, which gave us greater latitude. Those are the major groups unless you can think of something else.

EK: No, that hit all those different areas.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2019 Emi Kuboyama. All Rights Reserved.