Nikkei Heritage
Issue Vol XI, Number 2, Spring 1999Coram Nobis and the Continuum of Activism
by Kenji Murase, PhD
It Was Bigger Than All of Us: Behind the Scenes with the Coram Nobis Teams
by Shizue Seigel
The Meaning of Community:
The Issei Farmers of Wapato, Washington
by Isao Fujimoto
The Roots of My Struggle for Peace and Justice
by Rev. S. Michael Yasutake
The Asian Law Caucus and the "New Issei"
by Gen Fujioka
Victim of the Alien Land Law: the San Francisco YWCA Case
by Robert Rusky
Letters to the Editorial Board
The Coram Nobis Team Today
NJAHS Events and programs
Coram Nobis Tribute dinner
New Members and Donations
Two articles in this issue are devoted to the historic Coram Nobis court cases. Kenji Murase contributes "Coram Nobis: The Error Before Us," a summary of the legal issues and a detailed timeline. "It Was Bigger Than All of Us: the Coram Nobis Teams" describes the teamwork and personal sacrifice required to challenge the Supreme Court decisions. Several dozen lawyers and researchers donated hundreds of hours over a five-year period. More than a dozen were interviewed for this issue. Themes that still seem very much alive for all of them are: a passion for social justice and public education, a feeling of closeness and cooperation which exemplifies the true meaning of community, and a heart-felt connection with all Japanese Americans past, present and future. Karen Kai, one of the lawyers, says, "I’ve come to realize that when it comes to a matter of principle – an issue that’s important to them – the quiet Japanese American people you see at meetings are very strong. They do not back down and they do not give up."
An abiding sense of interconnection, gratitude, responsibility and perseverance distinguishes the Nikkei traditions of activism. Individuals see themselves as part of a greater whole, and do not rest so long as any among us suffers. In related articles, Isao Fujimoto recalls the Issei roots of these values in a story about pre-war community and cooperation in a Washington farm community. Rev. Michael Yoshitake writes about the experiences that led one young Nisei to pick up the torch and shine its light beyond the Nikkei community. Sansei Gen Fujioka writes about the continuing activism of the Asian Law Caucus, and Robert Rusky discusses the continuing legal battle over the YWCA Building in San Francisco’s Japantown, which was founded by Issei and is still used by Yonsei and Gosei.
"Injustice affects all of us, not just the targeted group," says Karen Kai. "Everyone has the responsibility to be vigilant. Otherwise, in a time of crisis it’s easy to justify an infringement of human rights because the groundwork of prejudicial assumptions gets laid slowly in tiny increments. This is our community legacy – what we can pass on to others." This is our true Nikkei heritage. We hope this issue inspires you as much as it has inspired us to produce it.
Shizue Seigel
Managing Editor
Feature Article
Coram Nobis: The Error Before Us
by Kenji Murase
Coram Nobis is a Latin term meaning the "error before us." A petition for a "writ of error Coram Nobis" is a legal procedure designed to protect criminal defendants against arbitrary and unlawful judicial action. Related to the better known writ of habeas corpus which protects against unlawful detention, Coram Nobis applies to persons who have been convicted and have served their sentence.
Coram Nobis is limited to cases in which a "fundamental error" or "manifest injustice" has been committed. A high burden of proof is required. It cannot be used to reopen and reargue points of law the courts have decided, but only to raise errors of fact that were knowingly withheld by the prosecutor from judges and defendants. Clearly, only defendants who can demonstrate the most outrageous and obvious governmental or prosecutorial mis- conduct would have any chance of winning in a Coram Nobis case.
In January 1983 a legal team led by Dale Minami and Peter Irons filed a Coram Nobis petition in the San Francisco federal district court on behalf of Fred Korematsu. Simul- taneously, almost identical petitions were filed in Seattle on behalf of Gordon Hirabayashi, and in Portland on behalf of Minoru Yasui. The petitions argued that the 1943 and 1944 Supreme Court decisions in their cases, affirming the constitutionality of the World War II curfew and exclusion orders and upholding their convictions for violating the orders, were compromised by fundamental errors and manifest injustice on the part of the government. They charged that the government had withheld from the Supreme Court information about alteration, suppression and destruction of relevant evidence; e.g., knowledge of the falsity of General DeWitt’s allegations of espionage and sabotage by Japanese Americans, his racist view that inherent racial characteristics made it impossible to separate the disloyal from the loyal, and that military necessity justified the mass removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans.
The significance of the Coram Nobis petitions is that they coincided with a growing movement among Japanese Americans for some form of redress and reparations for the injustice of internment. By challenging the convictions of Hirabayashi, Korematsu and Yasui for violations of the curfew and exclusion orders, the petitions attacked the underlying legality of the exclusion and incarceration. By demonstrating that the Supreme Court’s convictions and the upholding of the constitutionality of the exclusion and detention order were tainted by fraud and misconduct by the government, the petitions discredited the court’s rulings and legitimized the call for redress and reparations.
Given the overwhelming odds against them, the victory of the Coram Nobis legal teams was a remarkable achievement. Historically, never before in American legal history had a comparable effort been mounted to overturn convictions in cases that had been finally decided by the Supreme Court. The following account summarizes in a time-line the history and context of the Coram Nobis cases in which Sansei lawyers and their associates succeeded in exposing the government’s premeditated and calculated lies to the Supreme Court in order to manipulate the outcome of its ruling on the legality of the exclusion and internment orders.