Coram Nobis and the Continuum of Activism

              Nikkei Heritage • Spring 1999
Bigger Than All of Us (cont'd from p. 15)
really held together and didn't have any
major holes."
At the suggestion of the group,
Minami became the coordinating attorney for all three cases, and
subsequently the lead counsel for
Korematsu. Minami says modestly,
"For us, clead counsel' was just an organizational term. I didn't run the show.
We operated collectively - we developed the strategy pretty much
together. We all took leadership roles at
different times and in different areas.
We appreciated each other's work and
understood how all the pieces fit together." Tamaki handled community
outreach, publicity and fundraising.
Hayashi and Rusky were in charge of
legal research. Peter Irons, Lori Bannai
and Karen Kai handled factual development and documents. At a time
when computers were still a rarity in
legal offices, Akira Togasaki wrote
computer programs to manage the
overwhelming number of documents,
which were input by a succession of
law students and legal assistants who
volunteered for the "grunt work." One
of them, Marjorie Barrows, signed on
for the duration.
Needing additional resources, the
group reached out further into the
Asian American community. Leigh-
Ann Miyasato, who had clerked in
Minami's office, joined them. Hayashi
recruited Chinese American Ed Chen,
who had clerked both at the Caucus
and at the Ninth Circuit Court of
Appeals. Tamaki called his former
classmate Eric Yamamoto, who was
well-versed in the complex discovery
issues that would be involved in the 40-
year-old case. Although he had just
been offered a partnership by his law
firm in Hawaii, Yamamoto did not hesitate to quit his job and go San
Francisco. The decision was easy, "We
] J    National Japanese American Historical Society
had trained ourselves legally and politically to work in the public interest for
racial injustice, so when this case came,
we were ready."
Through eight months of hard
work, the team was buoyed by the feeling, Kai says, "that you're involved in
something much bigger than yourself,
and it will really never come again."
During development of the case, the
team kept a low profile. There were still
documents to be retrieved in
Washington. A public appeal for funds
was out of the question, yet money was
needed to pay for researchers, travel,
long-distance calls, photo-copying and
other expenses. The group decided to
send out a letter to fifty friends saying,
in Tamaki's words, "We can't tell you
what this case is about but it's really, really important." And their friends came
through, contributing $5,000-$10,000
on faith. At the time, no one realized
that by the time the last case was resolved five years later, total expenses
would amount to $100,000.
While they were trying to keep the
case under wraps, former Supreme
Court Justice Arthur Goldberg got
word of the case. A CWRIC commissioner, Goldberg wrote to fellow
commissioner Judge William Marutani
criticizing the proposed Coram Nobis
effort as ill-advised and almost certain
to fail. The letter was published in the
Pacific Citizen. Minami recalls, "This
brilliant man, a really liberal, progressive guy, was essentially telling us, a
young group of lawyers, that the whole
weight of the redress movement was
now on our shoulders. Should we
chose to take this foolish move, we
would be losing a victory for all
Japanese Americans. One of us
brought Goldberg's comments up to
the group and asked 'What do you
think?' We looked at each other and almost simultaneously we all said, 'Nah,
he doesn't know what he's talking
about!' and everyone started laughing.
That moment revealed to me the immense confidence we had in our cases,
and in our clients. We felt we were on a
mission; we had a sense of destiny
about what we were going to do."
Shortly before the Korematsu brief
was filed, Tamaki began speaking to
community groups to raise funds and
garner support. He also began alerting
journalists to the importance of the
case. He was surprised by how many
knew nothing about the internment,
much less the Supreme Court cases. "I
didn't know that this happened," they
exclaimed. "How could this happen in
America?"
On Jan. 19, 1983, the day Kore-
matsu's case was filed in San Francisco,
all three petitioners and members of
the legal team held a press conference
at the San Francisco Press Club. The
results of Tamaki's publicity efforts
surpassed his expectations. More than
100 journalists jammed into the room;
microphones and cameras were everywhere. "Fred was terrified," Tamaki
recalls. "We had promised him it
would be a very low-key event. Fred's
wife Kathryn said, CI thought you said
he wouldn't have to speak.' Dale could
only shrug, CI lied.'"
The team was pleased that they had
been assigned Judge Marilyn Hall
Patel, a municipal judge who had recently been recommended to the
federal bench by Sen. Alan Cranston
and appointed by Pres. Carter. Married
to an East Indian engineer, she had
worked for the Immigration and
Naturaliza-tion Service and had supported several progressive causes. The
legal team was hopeful that Patel
would be sympathetic, but they wondered how the government would
respond to the petition.