by Sharon Letts,
October 7, 2006
In July 1944, James Yamaichi was one of 27 young Japanese Americans who were held at the Tule Lake California Segregation Center, indicted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for failing to appear for a physical exam and subsequent draft into the armed forces. The case was tried here in Eureka by U.S. District Judge Louis E. Goodman of San Francisco. It was the seventh court case of its kind brought before a U.S. District court during that time, and the only one in which charges were dismissed.
Yesterday, Yamaichi, his wife, Eiko, and Judge Goodman’s former law clerk, Eleanor Jackson-Piel, walked into the courtroom above the post office on Fifth and H streets, where James and Jackson-Piel stood 62 years earlier under different circumstances.
Local McKinleyville High School history teacher Jack Bareilles organized the reunion, and panel discussion held later in the day at the Wharfinger Building, as part of a California Council for the Humanities project, California Stories.
Yamaichi was born in San Jose. Although at the time a birthright to citizenship didn’t exist for Japanese Americans — nor the right to vote — Yamaichi considered himself an American, and at 18 was looking forward to attending college.
“World War II didn’t start for me with the bombing of Pearl Harbor,” Yamaichi said yesterday during a panel discussion at the Wharfinger Building. “My war began on Feb. 19, 1942, when Executive Order 9066 was written. My life as an American citizen ceased that day.”
Yamaichi and his family were sent to a series of camps before ending up in Tule Lake. It was there he received his draft notice and made the conscious decision to resist.
“It wasn’t a cop out,” Yamaichi said, still passionate regarding his decision. “We were born here, but we were not allowed to vote for our own destiny, but we could be drafted. We were protesting for our civil rights.”
The defendants were brought to Eureka by car, and stopped along the way for lunch at a cafe. Yamaichi shared one story of many of prejudices and hostilities against them.
“The U.S. Marshal put his gun in the glove box and said he trusted us. When we got into the cafe, they wouldn’t serve us. They said the only way they would serve ‘japs’ was by the Marshal holding his gun to their heads. We went without lunch or dinner that day.”
Jackson-Piel, who was the newly appointed law clerk for Judge Goodman, shared another view.
“It was a junket. In those days, federal judges were brought up from San Francisco to preside over cases such as illegally selling alcohol to Indians, in between fishing trips, and buying the stuff they wouldn’t sell to Indians.”
Jackson-Piel said that Judge Goodman instilled in her his philosophy of making sure the judgement was right.
“The case just wasn’t right,” Jackson-Piel said. “Here you have citizens who haven’t been charged with anything, being held in concentration camps, really — who would have been sent to war and put into special armies where they are guarded and watched because they couldn’t be trusted because of their ancestry.”
Jackson-Piel recalled that there wasn’t a law library in Humboldt County. With little references to the other court cases, she and Judge Goodman were left to analyze the draft policies.
In Judge Goodman’s own words from the bench, he expressed his feelings on the case within his dismissal of the charges.
“It is shocking to the conscience that an American citizen be confined on the ground of disloyalty and then, while so under duress and restraint, be compelled to serve in the armed forces or be prosecuted for not yielding to such compulsion.”
Jackson-Piel compared the situation to that of detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay today.
“It’s still significant today,” Jackson-Piel said. “We have to recognize that history keeps on repeating itself.”
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