Densho Digital Archive - Saburo Masada Interview (denshovh-msaburo-01-0021)

<Begin Segment 21>

KL: Were you involved in the commission hearings?

SM: In what?

KL: In the commission hearings.

SM: No, I didn't. Yeah, I should've, but I didn't. Some of my friends did, but I did go to Korematsu's coram nobis trial in San Francisco, federal court.

KL: I'd like to hear about that.

SM: Yeah, that was quite an experience for me. A friend invited me, said, "Let's go," so I went from Stockton and we went to the courthouse and we sat there. And it was, I guess it was packed, and the lawyers gave their cases, government and the Korematsu team, and then Judge Marilyn Patel said, "We'll take a recess, and when I come back I'll give my verdict." I remember the courtroom was very quiet, real quiet as we waited. And when she came back she had some scathing words for the government lawyers for withholding evidence, for destroyed evidence and lying to the Supreme Court, and she vacated Korematsu's case. And people told me the courtroom erupted in shouts of victory, but I don't remember that at all. I remember, all I remember was tears were coming down my face, of surprise, and I was, the overwhelming feeling I had was for the first time I was hearing with my own voice, own ears, a representative of my government saying that we were unjustly put into the concentration camps. And that's the first time I heard, with my own ears, someone saying that. But it's interesting, I don't remember anybody shouting, but I was surprised. "Gosh," tears were coming down, and that feeling of, "Gosh, finally I'm hearing somebody say it was wrong." Because until then I was constantly reading about national security and things like that. So since then, knowing, studying the history, forty year history of anti-Japanese movement and the General, what kind of person General DeWitt was, and having, I'm sure the government did it deliberately, they replaced him with General Emmons in '43 because I think DeWitt was an embarrassment to the War Department. But that was no way to solve it. That was just a cover up.