Coram Nobis and the Continuum of Activism

              ikkei Heritage • Spring 1999
Bigger Than All of Us (cont'd from p. 17)
representing a client on a case that's
very significant for me. If that's not
compatible with my job responsibilities, I won't accept the position." He
replied, "If the African American community asked me to take a case like
that, I would take it anywhere.
Absolutely! Come, bring the case." In
July 1982, Nagae moved to Eugene to
become one of two Asian American assistant deans in the nation.
The Oregon Territory was originally
settled as a "white homeland" which
barred people of African ancestry from
settling there, and the Ku Klux Klan remained active and visible in the state
until the '60s. Even in the '80s people
of color comprised only 10% of the
population. Nagae organized a meeting of Japanese American lawyers in
Portland to raise interest and support
for Yasui's case. The lawyers backed off,
dubious about the strength of the case.
Nagae recalls, "I was really surprised.
This was our community's case, this
was our case personally, and who cared
how good it was, we needed to go forward with it."
In Eugene, a small city with a minority population of 3%, the only
practicing Asian American attorneys
were Mary Mori and Fern Eng. Along
with Bert Fukumoto, a lawyer who
worked at the law school, they formed
the core of the initial Yasui team.
Fukumoto says, "I have happy memories of spending hours trying to pick
holes in arguments, strategizing and
discussing our findings. We were a
small group, but spirited. Whenever we
were exhausted, there was always Peggy
Nagae. She's a human dynamo. And
she's very good about making her enthusiasm contagious."
Although the arguments and documentation of government misconduct
were similar, there were different fact
18    National Japanese American Historical Society
patterns to each of the original cases,
and each brief needed to be tailored to
fit. Mori recalls going over boxes and
boxes of documents. She adds, "My
memory is not what I did, but of what
I learned. Reading the actual reports as
to what happened was just shocking.
What's more shocking is that this
could very easily happen in the future
in the U.S. People condemn other
countries. If they really understood
what the U.S. did (and still does), they
wouldn't be quite so quick to say how
great this country is."
"We had a multicultural team. In
Oregon, where there are numerically
fewer people of color, the battle lines
are drawn differently. More interdependence is needed," Nagae says. The
law school lacked sufficient minority
students to form separate black or
Asian student groups. There was simply the Minority Law Students
Association, from which Nagae enlisted Russ Aoki, Jeffrey Beaver, Lavernis
Cole, Jim Egan, and a number of others. Beaver, an African American who
later worked on the Hirabayashi appeal, recalls, "Our dean was Derrick
Bell. Any time there's an injustice, he's
going to call it out. A number of us
thought that this was a tremendous injustice and wanted to help right the
record. The students were jazzed."
Nagae also recruited some white
civil rights lawyers in Portland. "I was
glad to get Don Willner. He had his
own firm and was a civil rights advocate with lots of trial experience - he
started practicing in 1951, the year I
was born. Clayton Patrick had appellate experience. And Scott Miesner
joined us. I picked people who had the
heart to do this work, as well as the
legal talent. We had a holy mission -
and some were white men who really
believed in the case. It's hard to say
this, but some of the people who didn't
believe in it were Asians, Japanese
Americans."
Nagae recalls, "People came and
went at different stages of the case.
Two very steady people were Karen Kai
and Bob Rusky of the San Francisco
team.... They read every brief that we
wrote - we would edit over the phone.
They were just wonderful. I think
they're the unsung heroes."
About her relationship with Yasui,
she says, "I was about his daughter's
age. But he was, to me, the ideal client.
He took advice, he didn't try to second-guess me, he worked with me.
Given the cultural stuff - generational
and gender issues - it could have been
very different. It was healing for me to
work with a Nisei man who wasn't paternalistic, who treated me as a
professional. Particularly since he was
the voice of redress at that time.
"He was very opinionated, very
strong. I recall a panel with Min and
Bill Hohri. They were going at each
other. I finally said, 'Would you please
stop?! There's not just one way to obtain redress. To me, the meaning of
redress is to stand up and say, we will
not tolerate this. The first no-no boy,
the first drafter resister, they were on
the path to redress. There are many
paths to redress.'
"I basically said, 'Okay, knock it off.'
and it felt all right to do that. There
wasn't a Nisei-Sansei generation gap.
The feeling was, 'We are moving. It was
important to include everyone, and
not to exclude people.' I never felt anything but a high degree of respect from
Min. I know he had his clashes with
other people, but he never did with
■>•>
me.
The judge assigned to the case was
Robert C. Belloni. His response to the
case was difficult to predict. Although
an active Democrat prior to his appointment, he had no real record on