<Begin Segment 23>

MR: Earlier, you told, you were talking about your brother Min and his efforts to prove the curfew unconstitutional during the war. Can you tell the story of how he got arrested and some of his motives and hopes for his quest?

HY: Yeah. Well, Min tells the story, and I've heard it many times. Actually, I've seen it written too. But Min says that when he read General DeWitt's proclamation promulgating the curfew laws, on the face of it, that's unconstitutional. You can't make an order that's applicable to aliens and also make it to only one select group of minority group like the Japanese Americans which had to obey the curfew, but Italian, German American, Italian Americans did not. He says you can't do that. So he wanted to find the ideal candidate, the World War I veteran, a father, and so on. So he'd go up to these people and say, "Hey, will you be willing to volunteer as a test case, a guinea pig for this?" Hell, no. I'm not going to do that because, afraid to go through trial and maybe found guilty and be put in jail. He says, "All right. Doggone it. I'll do it myself then." So he said, he instructed his secretary to notify the police. They call up the cops and tell them, "There's a Jap going to be walking on the street tonight, and you know, he's not supposed to be on it because it's past 8 o'clock at night and the curfew begins at 8 o'clock, so you want to be, watch out for him." So Min goes out, and he says that he took his citizen, his birth certificate with him, and he took a copy of the proclamation number three, I think it was, which is DeWitt's curfew order, in his pocket, walked up and down Burnside, and he says nobody stopped him. So he said he got tired of walking after walking an hour or two. So he comes to a patrol man, says, "Say officer, I want you to arrest me." He says, "Run along, Sonny. You're going to get into trouble." He says, "Wait a minute, wait a minute. This is my birth certificate. Here's General DeWitt's order, curfew order number three. It says no Japanese will be out after seven-thirty, 8 o'clock at night. You got to take me in." He says, "All right, Sonny. I'll take you in. I'll take you into the station house." This is Saturday night. So Min goes in, and he tells the desk sergeant, "I want you to book me because I violated the curfew law. And the sergeant says, "Well, sure, Son. I'll book you in." So he threw him in the drunk tank. Well Min forgot nothing happens on Saturdays and Sundays, so he had to wait until Monday until his attorney, Earl Bernard, came with the bail to bail him out. So he spent two nights in the drunk tank waiting to get out until he could tell his attorney, "Hey, come get me." That's the story. That's what you'll see published too. That's a pretty neat story.

MR: It took him a long time to get through this whole process.

HY: Oh, yeah.

MR: Years.

HY: Years, decades.

MR: Decades. At the, at the end of his life, what did he think about what he'd done?

HY: Well, Min was a very interesting character too. He says, "You know, I really didn't have much doubts that it was going to come out the way it did because I knew I was right." That's the way he was. "I knew I was right," but it took him over forty years to get that. So in the end, he says, "Well, it was worth it." He said, he felt that he would have really like to have his case go to what they call an evidentiary trial; in other words, a new trial, rehearing, new prosecution, new defense, and so on. It didn't get that far because he died before it could go that far. But he was happy knowing that Gordon Hirabayashi did, Gordon Hirabayashi was another one of the test challengers of the evacuation and the curfew in his case. Korematsu was another. But in Gordon Hirabayashi's case before Judge Donald Voorhees in Seattle, Korema-, I mean, Hirabayashi did have an evidentiary hearing, and he was exonerated. That's what Min wanted. He wanted, he wanted the judge or the jury to say, "You were never guilty in the first place." That's what he wanted to hear. But what happened in Min's case is that the judge vacated his sentence at the request and recommendation of the federal government. In other words, it's as if he was never sentenced. So they got a little asterisk or footnote down there saying "but vacated in 1984." So forty-two years later, it's vacated as if he was never sentenced, but that's all. But in Hirabayashi's case, there is a case lesson, case, this went to trial again, and there was an evidentiary hearing, so that's what Min wanted. He wanted to be vindicated, and he wasn't vindicated the way he wanted. But that was his only dissatisfaction as far as I know. But, "I knew I was right." [Laughs]

MR: So what was your brother's view of success?

HY: Of what?

MR: Success, a successful life?

HY: Min?

MR: Uh-huh.

HY: Well, I think my, Min was very much like my father in, we had so many dumb idealists in our family that one of them was, like I said, my father says, "Well you're here in this earth to do good and that should be the major focus in life." And then, that sounds awful Pollyannaish, but you know, I think they really believed it, and I think they really worked towards that. I'm sure they did.

<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.