History Analytical essay

n

Mark Brilliant

UNIVERSITY PRESS

When Larry Tajiri invoked the term "Jap Crow" in 1944, he meant to convey

what he took to be the parallel plights of Japanese Americans and African Amer-

icans.1 A journalist, born and raised in Los Angeles, Tajiri served as editor of the

Pacific Citizen^ the newspaper of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL).

During the war, Tajiri worked from Salt Lake City, where both the Pacific Citizen

and JACL headquarters had been forced to relocate from San Francisco in 1942.2

Like some 120,000 of the roughly 127,000 people of Japanese descent (Nikkei)

residing in the continental United States in 1940, Tajiri and the JACL leaders who

came to Utah from California had been exiled from their homes.3 Unlike the vast

majority ofNikkei, Tajiri and his JACL counterparts avoided internment, in what

President Franklin Roosevelt himself called "concentration camps, by heading

east during the brief window of "voluntary evacuation" time in March i942.4

Banished, if not behind barbed wire, Tajiri decried the "racial nature of [the]

evacuation," how "Japanese American citizens were evacuated [but] white enemy

aliens' were not." In this crucible of "segregation, Tajiri observed, a common

color consciousness... with other colored groups was slowly emerging. With

it, Tajiri hoped, would come a commitment to mount a collective campaign

Eo complete "the unfinished racial business of democracy." "]ap Crow," Tajiri

believed, resembled "Jim Crow," and the "ultimate solution" to both necessitated

"correlation" with other problems of color and race in America today.5

To this end, Tajiri endorsed Carey McWilliams's proposal in Brothers Under

the Skin from the year before for a sweeping federal antidiscrimination law, a

"Fair Racial Practice Act" that would encompass "all colored minority groups.6

The effort to enact this legislation, Tajiri believed, would foster the kind of

"co-ordinated action by America's 'minorities'" Tajiri favored. Such coordination,

however, required "a groundswell of support from the discriminated groups,

and that, Tajiri acknowledged, had yet to gather momentum. "Many Japanese

Americans," Tajiri believed, accepted . .. prejudices against Filipinos, Mexicans,

Negroes, and Jews" Consequently, Tajiri conceded, bur group has far to go

along the road to the actual co-ordination of our desire for integration with the

mass hopes of all 'minorities.

Joseph James, president of the San Francisco chapter of the NAACP, also

hope^ to effect the co-ordination" of which Tajiri spoke by joining the causes

^nd constituencies of the NAACP, JACL, and kindred organizations. Speaking at

one of the 1945 conferences that launched what would become the California

Federation for Civic Unity (CFCU), lames linked the recent plight of the Japanese

American evacuees with the three-century-old plight of African Americans.8

In so doing, James implied that Tajiris Jap Crow did indeed correlate with Jim

Crow.9

Or did it? Just a few months later, James alluded to a salient difference in the

experiences of African Americans and Asian Americans that complicated the

prospects for the interracial coalition building that he, like Tajiri, endorsed.

"The Negro is unquestionably a citizen, James wrote, and "thoroughly Ameri-

can." This thoroughgoing American-ness, James continued, accounted for why

"the Negro has been able to establish alliances with sections of the Caucasian

society where the Orientals"—who were, by James's implicit contrast, less "thor-

oughly American" and less "unquestionably" citizens—"could not."10 It also

explained why James believed that the JACL would benefit from "jom[ing] forces" with the NAACP, as he invited his JACL counterparts in California

to do."

In distinguishing between degrees of African American and Japanese Amer-

lean American-ness, James unwittingly echoed Supreme Court Justice John

Marshall Harlans famous lone dissent in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case that

upheld state sanctioned segregation laws provided that the segregated facilities

were equal. In their legal campaign to overturn Plessy, lamess NAACP col-

leagues would draw upon Harlan's denouncement of "the arbitrary separation of

citizens on the basis of race" and his insistence that "our Constitution is col-

or-blind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens." Yet, Harlan's

willingness to strike down legalized discrimination as applied to black citizens

did not extend to Chinese noncitizens. Harlan proclaimed the "unconditional

recognition by our government. . . of the equality before the law of all citizens

of the United States, without regard to race" He then asserted, "There is a race

so different from our own that we do not permit those belonging to it to become

citizens of the United States." What scandalized Harlan was how the segregation

statute at stake in Plessy allowed a Chinaman" to travel in the same train car as

white citizens, while citizens of the black race" could not. The "color-blind"

Constitution whose praises Harlan sung in solo against his Supreme Court

brethren's chorus of "separate but equal" might not "know nor tolerate classes

among citizens."12 However, distinctions between citizens and immigrants

(e.g., African Americans versus Chinese immigrants), as well as between immi-

grants themselves (e.g., Europeans who could immigrate and naturalize versus

J A P CROW 29

Chinese, and later other Asians, who could not), posed an entirely different

question. Simply put, Harlans brand of color-blind constitutionalism ended

where Chinese (and, by subsequent extension, other Asian) ineligibility to

immigrate and naturalize began.13

As Harlans dissent made clear, legalized discrimination in the United States

did not simply encompass citizens. Noncitizens, too, or, more precisely, immi-

grants who were racially ineligible to become citizens through the naturaliza-

tion process were the targets of a species of discriminatory federal and state

laws. The most pervasive and pernicious of these at the state level were the

so-called Alien Land Laws, which barred aliens ineligible for citizenship from

being able to own land. As of 1947, one noted legal scholar counted eleven states

with anti-Japanese land laws.14 The jACLs Pacific Citizen described these laws,

in general, as "the keystone of discriminatory legislation agains.t persons of

Japanese ancestry, and the Open Forum of the American Civil Liberties Unions

(ACLU) Southern California Branch referred to the California Alien Land

Law, in particular, as "easily the most disgraceful and internationally harmful

piece of legislation in California's history. ls To strike it from the statute books,

lawyers affiliated with the JACL and ACLU mounted a challenge in 1944 that reached the United States Supreme Court three years later.

Oyama v. California marked the most important of several test cases in

which the JACL was involved in the immediate aftermath of World War II,

according to Saburo Kido, a lawyer who participated in these cases and served

as JACL president from 1940 to 1946. As Oyama unfolded, it demonstrated

how Jap Crow" diverged from Jim Crow. Oyama reflected what the JACL

referred to as "problems and adjustments which are peculiar to Americans of

Japanese ancestry."17 It became, in the words of one of its supporting attorneys,

the case for the Japanese community. is As Tajiri remarked in 1952 in a sEate-

ment that alluded to the limits of the Jap Crow /Jim Crow analogy he drew in

1944) the Alien Land Law represented the backbone of discriminatory activity

against the Japanese in California and . . . their citizen children. 19 To break

that backbone, the legal campaign against the California Alien Land Law

proceeded down a separate track from the contemporaneous court challenges

to other forms of legalized segregation in California that disproportionately

targeted other groups. In the process, Oyama underscored the difficulty of

developing Ehe co-ordinated action by Americas mmorities that Tajiri called

for in the same year that the case began.

While visiting JACL headquarters in Salt Lake City in 1944, attorney Abraham Lin-

coin Wirin proposed a legal challenge to the California Alien Land Law.20 His timing

could hardly have been worse. With the United States locked in battle with Japan,

30 | THE COLOR OF AMERICA HAS CHANGED

^ritb Americans of Japanese descent locked in Supreme Court sanctioned intern-

^gfit camps, and with a 1944 poll of Los Angeles residents revealing that sixty-five

icrcent of respondents favored a constitutional amendment... for the depor-

tation of all Japanese from this country and forbidding further immigration," the

spects for a sympathetic hearing in a case against the Alien Land Law appeared

^rorse than slim.21 Wirin, however, was no stranger to long legal odds. He special-

ized in representing underdogs such as Harry Bridges, a Congress of Industrial

Organizations (CIO) leader whom the Roosevelt administration tried to deport

to his native Australia in the late 19303 and early 19405 for his alleged Commu-

nist Party membership. Yet, Wirin's 1942 decision to defend Americans of Japanese

descent—the ultimate underdog litigants of the day—against internment proved

too much for even Bridges to bear. He accused Wirin of "representing the enemy"

and severed ties with him. Bridgess CIO followed suit.23

Born to a poor Jewish family in Russia in 1900, Wirin moved to Boston

in 1908. His parents changed his first name to Abraham and middle name to

Lincoln. Young Abraham Lincoln—who later went by either A.L. or Al—worked

his way through high school and Harvard, where he earned his bachelor's degree

with honors in three years. He then pursued a law degree at Boston University,

after which he took a job in the national office of the ACLU in New York. In 1931,

Wirin moved to Los Angeles. Following a stint as a commercial and bankruptcy

lawyer, which he detested, Wirin became counsel for the ACLU of Southern

California. A few years later, he received a brutal introduction into his new legal

career. Shortly after arriving in California's Imperial Valley with a court injunc-

tion against local authorities and citizens attempting to prevent the meetings of

striking vegetable workers, Wirin was abducted, beaten, and abandoned in the

desert by opponents of his legal work. By the early 19408, Wirin had become

counsel for the JACL, in addition to remaining counsel for the ACLU. From this

position, Wirin persuaded the JACL to join him in submitting an amicus curiae-

or, friend of the court—brief to the Supreme Court in the case of Gordon

Hirabayashi, who challenged the government's curfew order, which was the

prelude to internment. In addition, Wirin participated in the oral arguments

before the Supreme Court in two of the internment-related cases.23 The JACL's

entry into these cases marked a shift away from the accommodationist stance

the organization had assumed in the face of the government's round-up

of Japanese Americans and Japanese immigrants who were ineligible for

citizenship at the outset of World War II. This more confrontational JACL

posture would continue with the active role the organization played in the

Wirin-led case against the Alien Land Law.24

That case would soon involve the family ofKajiro and Kohide Oyama. Born

in 1899, Kajiro immigrated to the United States in 1914. The oldest of three

TAP CROW 31

brothers, Kajiro left his familys small farm in a small Japanese coastal town at

the behest of his father who had come to California in 1905. On his fathers

advice, Kajiro purchased a first-class ticket in order to minimize his chances of

being detained at the Angel Island immigration station in the San Francisco Bay.

On his teachers advice, he brought his flawless report card and a dream to

attend the California Institute of Technology. Kajiros father, who was then living

and working for a salt company just south of San Francisco, had other plans for

his son. Shortly after Kajiro arrived, his father presented him with a pair ofover-

alls and took him to Orange County. There, he began to work on a farm leased

by one of his two uncles who lived in the area. Kajiros father then returned to

northern California, where he died the following year.25

Much later in life, Kajiro would describe himself as having been determined

to become a successful farmer. This determination manifested itself in his in-

defatigable work ethic and insatiable thirst for learning about how to farm.

While making the rounds from farm to farm during a stint as a truck driver,

Kajiro would trade his help with packing and loading produce for lessons in

how to cultivate it. "I wanted to learn how they farmed," he recalled years later.

If I helped them they were willing to teach me. I was still a young boy and I

asked them to teach me everything. Those lessons, most likely, included in-

struction in how to circumvent the Alien Land Law. In 1923, he purchased six

acres of farmland in Chula Vista in San Diego County and placed title to the

property in the name of Arthur Glower. A bookkeeper at a local market, Glower

had taken a paternalistic interest in Kajiro, sometimes referring to him as his

son. The attachment was mutual. Oyama turned to Glower for advice for the

rest of his life.26

As Oyamas farming hopes flourished, he returned to his hometown in Japan

to get married. His new wife, Kohide, joined him on his newly purchased farm

in 1923. During the next decade, Kohide gave birth to five children. In 1934,

Kajiro transferred title of the sue acres to his oldest son, Fred, who was six years

old. At the time, Kajiros US.-born cousin, Yonezo (Dick) Oyama, held the title,

having assumed it from Arthur Glower. Court records indicate that Kajiro and

Kohide paid Dick $4,000 for the property and recorded the title in Freds name.

Three years later, Kajiro and Kohide, engaged m a similar transaction for an

adjoining two acres, this time from their US.-born niece. By 1937, then, Fred

held title to eight acres. In between the two purchases, Kajiro successfully peti-

Eioned the San Diego County Superior Court to become legal guardian of Fred s

property in order to serve as its caretaker.27

To expand his farming business, Kajiro moved his family to much larger

tracts of leased land in Orange County in the late 19308. The Chula Vista prop-

erty, however, remained in Fred's name. Meanwhile, his mother's brother and

32 I THE CO I, OR OF AMERICA HAS CHANGED

his family lived there until early 1942 when implementation of President

Roosevelts Executive Order 9066 culminated in the evacuation and incarcera-

tion of all persons of Japanese ancestry, as per the subsequent exclusion orders.

During the brief period of "voluntary evacuation," a traveling seed salesman

with whom Kajiro did business presented the Oyamas with the chance to avoid

incarceration by leasing farmland in Utah. Kajiro seized the opportunity and

brought four other Nikkei families with him in what one of his daughters, Alice

Oyama Yano, would later describe as a Grapes of Wrath migration in reverse.28

Two-and-a-half years later, as the summer of 1944 drew to a close, Fred was

sitting on a tractor preparing to go to work on the family s forty-acre farm in

Payson, Utah. A law enforcement official approached and served Fred with legal

papers addressed to him and his father. .California prosecutors, Fred was

informed, had initiated steps to seize the two adjoining parcels of Chula Vista

land that were in his name. Filed on August 28, 1944 by a San Diego County

deputy district attorney on behalf of both the county s district attorney and state

attorney general, the Petition to Declare an Escheat to the State of California

began by referring to the Oyamas as a whole as members of the Japanese Race

and the Oyama parents—Kajiro and Kohide—as natives of the Empire of Japan'

and therefore ineligible for citizenship in the United States. It then charged

Kajiro and Kohide with perpetrating a "fraud upon the People of the State of

California for Ehe "subterfuge and cover of deeding the property they pur-

chased to Fred willfully, knowingly and with the intent to violate the Alien

Land Law.29

Fred's reaction to the news he received that fateful summer morning in 1944

was a combination of "stunned silence and shattered dreams, as he recalled

years later. Seventeen at the time, Fred was approaching the age when he would

have the chance to fulfill his wish to honor his country by serving in its armed

forces. Somehow he had managed to cling to that aspiration amidst his familys

exile and the internment imposed upon his fellow Nikkei. Though he would

recover from his "stunned silence," he would never reclaim his broken dream.

He invoked his asthma to get classified as ineligible for military service. Instead,

upon graduating high school in Utah, Fred worked briefly in a defense plant in

Chicago at the tail end of the war.30

Meanwhile, Californias action against the Oyamas came to the attention of

JACL president and attorney Saburo Kido. Kido asked Kajiro to travel from

Payson to JACL headquarters in Salt Lake City. Upon his arrival, Kido told

Kajiro that he wanted to use his case to test the Alien Land Law. That the Oyamas

had not lived on that land for years before World War II made it a sure winner,

Kajiro recalled Kido telling him. (Presumably, the state would have a harder

time proving the "subterfuge and cover" it charged, since Kajiro was dearly not

JA P CROW 33

profiting from the land he had previously purchased and placed in Fred's name.)

At first, Kajiro refused, telling Kido that the property's limited acreage rendered

it "not worth his time and effort." Kido persisted, and Kajiro consented after

Kido vowed to "collect donations" so that Kajiro would not have to "spend

even a penny. Through Kido, then, Al Wirin now had the Alien Land Law legal

challenge he sought.31

Drafted by state Senator Francis J. Heney and state Attorney General Ulysses

S. Webb, the California Alien Land Law, as it was officially known, passed the

California legislature with overwhelming support in 1913. The law drew a critical

distinction between two classes of "aliens"—those "eligible to citizenship" and

all aliens other than those who were eligible to citizenship." Unlike aliens eli-

gible for citizenship, aliens ineligible for citizenship could neither "acquire, pos-

sess, enjoy and transfer real property nor "lease lands for agricultural purposes"

for more than three years.32 One year after the law's passage, fifteen-year-old

Kajiro Oyama arrived in Japan and began working in the fields.

In distinguishing between immigrants based on their eligibility for citizen-

ship, the architects of the Alien Land Law exploited the language of the federal

naturalization law. Initially restricting naturalization to "free white person[s]"

in 1790, Congress revised the statute in 1870 to also include "aliens of African

nativity, and . . . persons of African descent." Beginning in 1878, courts across

the country confronted the issue of whether immigrants who were neither "free

white nor of African nativity. . . [or] descent" could become naturalized clti-

zens. The first of Ehese racial prerequisite cases involved a Chinese immigrant

to California. The court ruled that "a native of China, of the Mongolian race, is

not a white person within the meaning of the federal naturalization statute and

was therefore not eligible for naturalized citizenship. Other courts extended

this reasoning to other immigrants from Asia.33

In theory, the California Alien Land Law encompassed all aliens ineligible for

naturalized citizenship. In practice, it targeted Japanese immigrants.34 Not only

had their numbers spiked in the wake of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act (from

1,147 in 1890 to 41)356 in 1910, which represented 1.7 percent of the total state

population), when Japanese immigrants replaced Chinese immigrants as Cali-

fornias major source of agricultural labor, but so, too, had the number of farms

they operated (from 37 in 1900 to 1,816 in 1910) and number of acres they owned

(from 2,442 in 1905 to 26,707 in 1913) and leased or contracted (from 59,416 in

1905 to 254,980 in 1913). These demographic and economic changes, in turn,

fueled the passage of the Alien Land Law. As Webb explained in 1913, "[The alien

land law] seeks to limit their [i.e., the Japanese] presence by curtailing their

privileges which they may enjoy here; for they will not come in large numbers

and long abide with us if they may not acquire land."36 Because only the federal

34 THE CO I. OR OF AMERICA HAS CHANGED

^yernment had the power to restrict immigration, the Alien Land Law repre-

sented California's effort to curtail jTapanese immigration by other means.37

Despite Webb's best efforts and aspirations, the Nilckei population nearly

doubled between 1910 and 1920 (from 41,356 to 71,952,), while the number of

farms they operated nearly tripled (from 1,816 to 5,152).3S Similarly, between 1913

and 1920, the number of acres they owned also nearly tripled (from 26,707 to

74>769)> while the number of acres they leased or contracted grew by over half

(from 254,980 to 383,287).39 Issei (Japanese immigrants) farmers had found ways

of circumventing the law. One of the most common strategies—-which Kajiro

Oyania would eventually adopt—was to transfer land ownership from Issei par-

ents deemed ineligible for citizenship (like Kajiro Oyama) to their Nisei chil-

dren who were citizens by virtue of their birth in the United States (like Fred

Oyama).40

Californias anti-Japanese forces bristled at the Alien Land Law's ineffectual

enforcement, even though the total amount of land either owned, leased, or

contracted by Californians of Japanese descent amounted to just over two percent

of the 29.3 million acres of agricultural land in the state in i92o.41 To close loop-

holes in the law, the nativist Joint Immigration CommitEee—a coalition that

included the Native Sons of the Golden West, American Legion of California,

State Federation of Labor, and California State Grange—placed an initiative on

the 1920 ballot. Most notably, the measure, which passed by an overwhelming

three-to-one margin, established the legal presumption that any land purchased

by an ineligible alien and then transferred to a citizen or eligible alien repre-

sented an attempt to evade the Alien Land Law.42

The federal government aided Californias anti-Japanese forces in the early

1920S. In 1922, the Supreme Court ruled that Takao Ozawa—a Japanese-born,

American-raised, Berkeley-educated, English-speaking Christian—was neither

Caucasian nor, consequently, eligible for naturalized citizenship, though he was

otherwise well qualified by character and education. " By extension, all

Japanese immigrants were ineligible for citizenship. One year later, the Supreme

Court upheld the constitutionality of Californias Alien Land Law in a series of

cases. These decisions, as well as subsequent ones in 1925 and i934> gave

unequivocal Supreme Court sanction to race-based discrimination between

groups of immigrants—those eligible for naturalized citizenship versus those

tneligible—when it came to the right to own or lease land.45

Buoyed by victories in both the United States Supreme Court and the

California court of public opinion, Californias Joint Immigration Committee

lobbied both the California legislature and the United States Congress for

even greater restrictions. Both acceded to these demands. California tightened

its Alien Land Law yet again in 1923, and Congress passed the Johnson-Reed

]AP CROW 35

Immigration Act of i924.46 This law adopted the "aliens ineligible for citizen-

ship" language based on California's Alien Land Law, stipulating that no alien

ineligible for citizenship shall be admitted to the United States."47 As with the

Alien Land Law, so, too, with the Immigration Act of 1924: what appeared to be

a race neutral formulation—applying to all "aliens ineligible for citizenship

was in fact directed at Japanese immigrants.48

The revisions to both the Alien Land Law and United States immigration law,

along with the rulings in the United States Supreme Court, had at least some of

the impact their proponents desired. Between 1920 and 1930, the Japanese-

descent population in California grew more slowly than in previous decades

and then declined overall from 1930 to 1940 (from 71, 952 in 1920 to 97>456 in

1930 to 93,717 in i94o).49 At the same time, the number of farms operated by

Californians of Japanese descent fell from 5,152 in 1920 to 3,956 in 1930, and the

total number of acres they farmed, as either owners, lessees, or contractors

plummeted from 458,056 in 1920 to 288,000 in i930.50 As a result, by 1934—the

same year that Kajiro Oyama purchased the land whose title he placed in his

sons name—one observer described the Alien Land Law as a dead letter law.51 A

San Joaquin Valley newspaper attributed the law's lax enforcement in the decade

before World War II to the profit motive. "It has never been conscientiously

enforced," the Selma Enterprise explained, "because it interfered with business

transactions that were profitable to landowners, lawyers, and others.s2 To this

explanation, a Business Week article added the "diplomatic risk" that more strin-

gent enforcement would have entailed.53

Pearl Harbor, however, resuscitated the Alien Land Law. In January 1942,

California Attorney General Earl Warren noted "the revival of interest in the

enforcement of the Alien Land law" This included a California Senate resolution

calling for prosecutors to investigate violations. To this end, Warren convened a

meeting in San Francisco in February 1942 of district attorneys and sheriffs to

discuss what he called the "innumerable violations" of the Alien Land Law.54 At

dial meeting, as well as in a memorandum, Warren linked enforcement of the

law to national security. "Great caution," he warned, needed to be taken to

prevent California land from slipping "into the hands of enemy aliens who will

use [the land] as a starting wedge £o undermine our entire system of govern-

ment." Lest there be any confusion over the "enemy aliens" who were the laws

target, Warren singled out the "all too harmless-looking Japanese farmers [who]

carry on their activities in close proximity to some point of military impor-

tance," serving as "the eyes and ears of our enemy," and standing "ready to pull

our house down at a moment's notice"55 Warren reinforced this assertion of

treason by proximity in testimony to a congressional committee later in the

month. He identified aircraft manufacturing plants "surrounded entirely" by

36 | THE COT, OR OF AMERICA HAS CHANGED

land occupied by CaUfornians of Japanese descent The "absence of sabotage" in

these places up until that point, he charged, was the "most ominous sign" of its

imminence. To thwart it, he advocated immediate action, including more vig-

orous Alien Land Law enforcement.56 Shortly thereafter, in March 1942, the

Kern County prosecutors filed what the Los Angeles Times described as the "first

alien-land law case of World War II.57

When Warren became governor in November 1942, Robert Kenny succeeded

him as attorney general. At the time of his election, Kenny was president of the

National Lawyers Guild (NLG), the lone nationwide organization of politically

progressive attorneys founded in 1937. Though the NLG had often allied itself

with the ACLU, it did not do so over the Nikkei incarceration, which the Guild

supported.38 As attorney general, Kenny threw his office behind Alien Land Law

prosecutions with unprecedented vigor. In 1943, the same year he blasted the

"insane barriers that separate man from man" and praised "Negroes . . . [as]

among our country's most desirable citizens," Kenny implored district attorneys

across the state to prosecute Alien Land Law violations. His exhortation to his

counterparts at the local level represented the logical extension of the briefs his

office filed that same year in support of the federal governments position in the

curfew and evacuation cases then wending their way to the United States

Supreme Court. As Kenny explained in a press release, "Persons of Japanese

ancestry" were "largely unassimilated . . . and possessed strong religious, ideo-

logical, and family ties with Japan." Because many of them also resided close to

strategic sites, such beaches and military bases, government officials needed to

take "prompt action.'"'9 In 1944, the same year Kenny disparaged racism as

Americas most distinctive weakness. ..and .. . prominent evil" at a dinner in

honor ofCarey McWilliams, he also denounced the "Japanese, as a race" for "the

cunning and defiant schemes they employed to evade the Alien Land Law. These

included purchasing land "just under the wire" in 1913 when the Alien Land Law

was first enacted, using American-born Japanese "decays," and exploiting

the diplomatic concerns of the United States vis-a-vis Japan to undermine

enforcement.60

To enforce the law, Kenny accelerated his predecessor's efforts to appropriate

all Japanese farm land to the state," as the Native Sons of the Golden West

applauded him for doing.61 This amounted to 226,094 acres spread over 5,135

farms valued at just under $66 million in 1940.62 Though Californians of Japanese

descent operated only 0.7 percent of farm acreage in the state, which corre-

sponded to half of their 1.4 percent representation of the overall population,

they managed to secure a forty-two percent share of the commercial truck crops

across the state.63 This included a fifty to ninety percent market share for a

variety of crops—such as celery, peppers, strawberries, cucumbers, artichokes,

TAP CROW 37

llll^gmach. an4 tomatoes-~with an annual value of $35 million.64 Alien

thus threatened to destroy the niche in the agricultural

of Japanese descent had managed to carve out for

iHNtsfc the Alien Land Law had been on the books since 1913, California

SIShorities had iniUafed only fourteen escheat proceedings through 1943. Of these,

seven occurred during the years 1920 and 1921, four in 1942 and 1943, and all but

three targeted Japanese aliens ineligible for citizenship. Over the course of 1944

and 1945, however, the number of Alien Land Law prosecutions quadrupled that

of the preceding thirty years. in what the JACL's Tajiri described as "one of

the biggest land grabs in history" perpetrated against the states 'weakest

citizens:'65 Of these prosecutions, all fifty-five targeted Japanese aliens ineligible for citizenship.66

The state senates DonneIIy Committee on Japanese Resettlement spurred on

this spike in cases. At his committee's first hearing in Fresno in August 1943,

Senator Hugh P. Donnelly criticized the "laxity" of Alien Land Law enforcement.

The consequence of this, Donnelly warned, echoing Warren and Kenny, was

"exposing the country to espionage:'67 Two year's later the committee's final

report reiterated its chairs indictment. "The Alien Land Law has not been

properly enforced . . . since its adoption," the report charged, though state

law enforcement officials had at least recently stepped up their prosecutions.68

The overwhelming majority of the fifty-five cases they launched during the wars

final two years involved land purchased by Japanese immigrant parents in the

name of their American-born children, some of whom were serving in the

military.69 Kenny described property acquired in this way as being "owned and

controlled by subjects of the Japanese empire" and, therefore, a "fraud upon the

people of California" by the "alien Japanese" who used their "American born

Japanese children as a "mere subterfuge and cover" for their illegal activity.70

The San Diego County district attorney s office adopted Kennys language verba-

tim on August 28,1944 when it initiated its escheat action against Fred Oyamas eight acres.71

CaUfornias Alien Land Law prosecutions sent shock waves well beyond the

fifty-five cases brought in 1944 and 1945. Some forty-five percent of California

Issei and forty percent of California Nisei worked in agriculture.72 Many of these

Issei faced the threat of being charged with violating the Alien Land Law or the

reality of paying steep fees to avoid being charged, while many of these Nisei

grappled with the possibility that the property for which they held title might be seized by the state.73 In addition, Nisei property owners could not secure title

insurance on property purchased with money earned by Issei family or friends,

while prospective Nisei property owners needed to provide proof that the money

38 | THE COLOR OF AMERICA HAS CHANGED

were using to purchase property was not earned by an alien ineligible for

^tizenship.74 Simply put, the proliferation of Alien Land Law prosecutions,

according to the ACLU "cast a cloud over the validity of the titles held by

Americans in California and, consequently, complicated any

transactions involving such property.For these reasons, the Alien Land Law in

California and elsewhere, according to one critic, loomed as the most serious

legal impediments to resettlement" of the Nikkei.76

As the Oyama's case headed for trial in San Diego County Superior Court,

the Department of War rescinded its nearly three-year-old exclusion order

effective January 2,1945. Shortly thereafter, Kenny delivered a speech to a state-

wide sheriffs' meeting. He called for restoring and safeguarding the rights of

returning evacuees.77 Despite this call, Californians of Japanese descent came

home to what the Pacific Citizen described as a virtual reign of terror, victims

of "more than 100 separate cases of arson, intimidation and attempted murder

from 1945 through the first half of 1946.7S

These incidents prompted a steady stream of letters to Governor Warren,

including one from Eleanor Roosevelt. Warrens reply to Roosevelt acknowl-

edged the "tyranny of the Caucasian," the "good many instances perpetrated

by hoodlums who usually operate under the cover of darkness. At the same

time, Warren insisted, "our people are not disposed to make the lives of

Japanese-Americans or the Japanese more difficult.79 More typically, Warrens

office issued a stock reply, claiming that the governor was doing his utmost

to cultivate a "tolerant public opinion in connection with the problem, that

there were limits to what he could do given the localistic nature of law

enforcement, but that within those limits he would continue to do everything

in his power "to see that the Japanese-Americans have their constitutional

rights protected.i!o

Not surprisingly, the governor's office made no mention of the "law enforce-

ment" being meted out by the state against the returning evacuees in the form

of the Alien Land Law prosecutions. Nor did they address the role that Warren

himself played in promoting these efforts as World War II drew to a close. On

July 9, i945> he signed into law a bill designed to tighten the Alien Land Law and

promote its enforcement. Passed unanimously by the state legislature and

backed by Kenny, the measure, which the Open Forum described as "conceived

in a fit of racism," appropriated $200,000 for Alien Land Law prosecutions and

freed the law's escheat provisions from statute of limitations requirements.81

Most importantly, the law provided financial incentives (namely, the splitting of

proceeds from the sale of escheated property between state and local govern-

ments) for local district aEtorneys who, as one governors aide put it, were previ-

ously "loath to undertake proceedings under the act, since the investigation and

TAP CROW 39

prosecution of violations are expensive."82 The San Diego County district

attorney, whose office was about to go to trial in the case it launched the year

before against the Oyamas, was particularly keen on the financial inducement.

Because local governments bore the brunt of the costs involved in Alien Land

Law prosecutions, he wrote Warren, they should "benefit from the sale of the

escheated lands."83 Warrens legislative secretary offered the same reasoning in

recommending the governor sign the bill, adding that its would facilitate "more

effective enforcement."84

Almost on cue, San Diego County Superior Court Judge Joe Shell handed

down his ruling in the case brought by California prosecutors against the Oya-

mas. At the time, the family, which had returned from Utah, was sharecropping

land elsewhere in San Diego County, after the "supposed friend" to whom they

entrusted the land they were leasing prior to fleeing to Utah refused to return it

to them. He made so much money during the war years," recalled Fred Oyama,

that "he conveniently forgot about his promise."85 As for the land the family

owned in Chula Vista, Judge Shell ruled in September 1945 that it "did escheat to

and become and remain the property of the state of California." No member of

the Oyama family had "any right, title, or interest to the land purchased by the

parents and then deeded to their son.86 "Coming at the time when the evacuees

were trying to resettle and rehabilitate themselves economically," Shell's verdict

dealt a "terrific blow," as one JACL account put it87

To muffle that blow, Al Wirin wasted little time appealing directly to the

California Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case and thereby circumvent

the normal legal process. Saburo Kido, who would join Wirin as co-counsel,

urged the states highest tribunal to take this atypical procedural step given the

growing constitutional injunction against racial discrimination." The Alien

Land Law, he added without exphcating, "indirectly affectfed] all minority

groups. Similar requests arrived from the Catholic Interracial Council of Los

Angeles, as well as the Los Angeles chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.89

An attempt by Wirin to get Los Angeles-based NAACP-affiliated attorney

Loren Miller to draft a "statement ... for filing with the [California] Supreme

Court in [Oyama] in behalf of the N.A.A.C.P.>" however, came to naught.90

Though the Open Forum indicated that it "expected" the NAACP to join the

ACLU, Catholic Interracial Council, and National Lawyers Guild in filing its

own amicus brief, the NAACP never followed through.91 At the time. Miller was

consumed with racially restrictive housing covenant cases, the overwhelming

number of which involved African Americans.92

As Oyama headed for the California Supreme Court, JACL leaders convened

in Stockton in December 1945 to devise a response to the "alarming increase of

escheat cases [that] imperils the civil rights of all Japanese Americans" Conference

;es> including Wirin and Kido, addressed the prohibitive costs that indi-

ndual defendants were forced to bear. In response, they launched the Civil

Defense Union of Northern California (CRDU).93 This was part of

reader JACL efforE to "begin to carry the burden of protecting our rights in

the courts" by assuming "major responsibility" from the ACLU.9'1 The CRDU

^oiild concentrate on "cases involving the rights of persons of Japanese ancestry,"

beginning with Oyama, which reached the California Supreme Court on June

l3> ^946.' As it did, the Open Forum hoped that "history would be "made for

democracy."96 On Halloween 1946, the California Supreme Court dashed that

hope, upholding the trial court's ruling in favor of escheating the Oyamas'

Chula Vista land to the state. "The property in question passed to the State of

California by reason of deficiencies existing in the ineligible alien [Kajiro

Oyama], and not in the citizen [Fred] Oyama," declared Justice Douglas

Edmonds. "The citizen is not denied any constitutional guarantees because an

ineligible alien, for the purpose of evading the Alien Land Law, attempted to

pass title to him." In other words, the Alien Land Law barred Freds father from

purchasing land. Passing title of land he purchased to his citizen son did not

render the initial purchase any less illegal. Rather, it represented a "subterfuge

for the purpose of evading the Alien Land Law." State authorities thus acted

within the law when they petitioned to escheat the land. "Property which the

citizen never had," proclaimed the majority opinion in a fit of legal legerdemain,

"he could not lose." Consequently, "he acquired nothing by the conveyance and

the Alien Land Law took nothing from him." The Chula Vista land first pur-

chased by Kajiro in 1923, deeded to Fred in 1934, and cultivated by the entire

family were in fact never theirs to begin with—or so the logic of the California

Supreme Court went. Not a single justice dissented.9

The only silver lining for Wirin and his clients could be found in the terse

concurring opinion of Justice Roger Traynor. In a single sentence, Traynor

implied his moral opposition to the ruling, but conceded his legal obligation to

abide by it. "I concur in the judgment on the ground that the decisions of the

United States Supreme Court [upholding the Alien Land Law] cited in the main

opinion are controlling," Traynor wrote, "until such time as they are reexam-

ined and modified by the Court. Traynors concurrence, Wirin hoped, sent a

signal to the nations highest tribunal to hear the case." This had been Wirin's

preferred destination from the outset. As he explained to Judge Shell at the be-

ginning of the trial on August 21,1945, The matter ... is one of considerable

consequence ... [and] will caU for a decision by the higher courts."'00 Whether

Traynor's signal would have the effect Wirin hoped it would remained to

be seen.

40 THE COLOR OF AMERICA HAS CHANGED JAP CROW 41

the Pacific Citizen denounced both the substance of the

Spfeme Coutt's decision as well as its "unfortunate timing; just days set to vote on Proposition i?.101 Introduced by state' before Californians were

senators Jack Tenney and Hugh Burns in 1945, Proposition 15 sought to etch the

Alien Land Law into the California Constitution. Proponents of Proposition 15

portrayed it as a moderate, technical measure—"merely validat[ing] statutes .

heretofore enacted by the Legislature and now in full force."102 Opponents

of Proposition 15, however, found nothing modest about it; They knew, for

example, that Tenney backed a failed attempt earlier in the year to secure passage

of a joint resolution to Congress from the California legislature requesting

deportation of the entire Nikkei population and prohibition of any future

Japanese immigration to California.103 They knew, too, that Tenney chaired

and Burns served on the state legislatures Joint Fact-Finding Committee on

Un-American Activities in California, whose 1945 report declared the "great

majority oflssei to be "loyal to Japan," while "many" Nisei remained "disloyal

to the United States:3104 Not surprisingly, then, Proposition 155 opponents, such

as Daniel Marshall of the Catholic Interracial Council of Los Angeles, blasted

the measure as "a crude restatement of the fundamental principle of Hitler's racist doctrine."105

To prevent its passage, the JACLs Mike Masaoka, who had served with four

of his brothers in the famous Japanese American 442nd Regimental Combat

Team, spearheaded a statewide campaign against Proposition i5.106 Drawing on

over $100,000 in contributions, the Masaoka-Ied effort denounced Proposition

15 for seeking to "make race discrimination constitutional;' while touting the

loyalty of the Nikkei, in general, and the 25,000 Nisei GI's, in particular, whose

outstanding war record ... has earned the right to fair play and decent

treatment"107 They had, as General Joseph Stilwell put it, purchased "an awful

big hunk of America with their blood and lives" on the battlefields of World War

II, which supporters of Proposition 15 were bent on seizing.108

AnEi-Proposition 15 pamphlets reprinted an October 1946 letter to the Los

Angeles Times from Akira Iwamura, a former sergeant in a Nisei intelligence

unit that served in the South Pacific. After being honorabiy discharged,

Iwamura returned home to Fresno County to face an Alien Land Law prosecution

against his family's farm. "Why," he asked, "does California with its Alien Land

Law and Proposition 15 keep kicking us in the teeth?"109 Iwamura's story

prompted a letter to Governor Warren from an elderly woman, among others,

urging him to take action against the "injustice rampant ... in our beloved

state:1>0 In response, Warren's legislative secretary deferred responsibility to the

state's voters. Only they had the power to repeal the Alien Land Law—or, alter-

natively, if they so chose, constitutionalize it by passing Proposition is.111 Coming

42 j THE CO I, OR OF AMERFCA HAS CHANGED

on the heels of the California Supreme Court's Oyama ruling, Masaoka feared

that the states voters would "automatically conclude that Proposition 15 should

be affirmed"112

A majority ofCalifornians, however, drew no such conclusions. On November

5,19461 they rejected Proposition 15 by a vote of i,i43>78o to 797,067. Though

decisive, the defeat carried little legal significance. The Alien Land Law, after all,

remained on the books, even if it was not in the state constitution. Moreover, the

states Alien Land Law prosecutions persisted.113 As an act of political symbolism,

however, and as a barometer of public opinion, Proposition 15 s defeat was hardly

inconsequential. The Pacific Citizen hailed it "an event of major significance ...

the end of four decades of political scapegoatism directed against the states res-

idents of Japanese ancestry"114 Kido was equally effusive. He attributed the out-

come to "the contributions of the alien Japanese towards the war, which, in

turn, demonstrated how "Americanism is not a matter of race or blood, but of

the heart and mind." The defeat of Proposition 15, he continued, marked "a new

chapter in the attitude towards the persons of Japanese ancestry in California,"

adding, "since California has been the standard bearer for anti-Oriental legisla-

tion" the outcome would reverberate nationwide, Masaoka echoed Kido. In

his estimation, the vanquishing ofPropostion 15 ((presage[d] a new era which

will be free of discriminatory legislation for persons of Japanese ancestry. More-

over, it signaled a political coming of age for Japanese Americans, the first time

Nisei citizens organized, financed and carried an important political fight in

California."116 The people of California had spoken, pronounced the ACLU's

Open Forum. "Elections," they declared, "do not follow court decisions! In so

doing, "They kept a constitutional law' out of the constitution""7 The task

remained to render that law unconstitutional.

To this end, Wirin and his legal team promptly filed a petition for rehearing

with the California Supreme Court. Among other points, the petition claimed

that the Proposition 15 vote dramatically altered the political and legal context

within which the California Supreme Court had ruled in Oyama. If the purpose

of Proposition 15 was to win popular validation for the Alien Land Law, and if the

voters refused to grant such validation, then the law must be considered invalid.

The Court "accentuated the racist features of the Alien Land Law, concluded

the petition, "at a time when the people of California by the rejection of Prop-

osition No. 15 have indicated that they do not approve the shabby practice of

racial intolerance." It therefore needed to catch up with the "shifting sands of

time" and reverse its recent ruling."8 The justices, however, disagreed and

rejected the petition.

Wirin and his allies, including Kido and lawyers for the Civil Rights Defense

Union of Northern California, now turned to their final recourse, requesting an

J A P C R 0 W 43

audience wiEh the United States Supreme Court on February 25, i947.119 Their

request received additional support—in the form of amid curiae briefs—from

the national ACLU, National Lawyers Guild, and American Jewish Congress. As

he had done when Oyama was before the California Supreme Court, Wirin solic-

ited NAACP support, this time in a letter to Thurgood Marshall.120 Once again,

though, Wirin's overture to the NAACP failed to generate the brief he sought.

Opponents of the Alien Land Law recognized, as Masaoka put it, that the

purely legalistic precedents might have militated against their appeal to the

United States Supreme Court. However, they hoped that the historical and

sociological background of the enactment of Californias present Alien Land

Law and its present-day discriminatory enforcement would prevail upon the

justices' "social consciousness." Meanwhile, California prosecutors continued

their Alien Land Law enforcement efforts, and California elected officials contin-

ued to help fund them. Though JACL lobbying contributed to the defeat of a 1947 bill that proposed another $200,000 appropriation to enforce what a JACL

letter sent to all members of the California legislature described as an obsolete

law that victimizes American veterans of Japanese ancestry, it could not pre-

vent the legislature from appropriating $75,000.122 Nor could JACL efforts pre-

vail upon Governor Warren to strike the appropriation from the budget. This

left overturning the law in court as the JACLs only remaining option. The United

States Supreme Court made that possible on April 7,1947 when it agreed to hear

Oyama. 3

With oral arguments set for October, Wirin and his legal team drew on les-

sons from their state court losses and shifted the focus of their legal attack.124

In both the San Diego County Superior Court and California Supreme Court,

Wirin had mounted a broad-gauged challenge to die constitutionality of the

Alien Land Law as applied to both aliens ineligible for citizenship and their

citizen children. His pretrial response to the charges levied against the Oyamas,

for example, insisted that the Alien Land Law discriminates against persons

[i.e., both aliens ineligible for citizenship and their citizen children] solely

because of race.125 Having failed to persuade the California courts with this line

of argument, Wirin and the lawyers who joined him on the briefs he submitted

to the United States Supreme Court advanced an argument that parsed the racial

discrimination meted out by the Alien Land Law into two groups (i.e., aliens

ineligible for citizenship and their citizen children) and led off with the laws

impact on the second one of those groups: The Alien Land Law ... deprives

Fred Oyama, a citizen, of the equal protection of the laws and of the privileges

and immunities of a citizen." Elaborating on how the statute sanctions ... pat-

ently discriminatory treatment of American citizens on racist grounds," they

explained. "A gift by a parent to child," which is what Kajiro and Kohide Oyama

44 THE COLOR OF AMERICA HAS CHANGED

and their attorneys maintained that their purchase of the eight acres ofChula

Vista land was for their son, Fred, "is a normal, usual and expectable occur-

rence. In the case of an American citizen child whose parents are British aliens,

no burden is cast upon citizens to prove his gift" However, the same gift by

parents who were Japanese aliens ineligible for citizenship to their Japanese

American citizen child could be denied unless the child could demonstrate that

the parents acted without intending to circumvent the Alien Land Law. This

unequal treatment between two "different classes of citizens"—those whose

parents could naturalize and those whose parents could not "based solely on

racial origin —was unconstitutional. It denied Fred Oyama one of the privi-

leges inhering in every other citizen except those whose parents happen to be

Japanese-—the privilege of the unlimited bcmnty of the parents eager, as are all

parents, to advance [their child's or children's] welfare as best they can."126

The JACL Reporter commented on the tactical thinking that drove Ehe shift

in Wirins legal strategy as Oyama went from the California courts to the

nations court of last resort. "Everyone knows how much [Wirinj wanted to

have a sweeping decision on the basic point of the constitutionality of the

Alien Land Law itself. He did not relinquish that aspiration. However, he did

subordinate it, recognizing that the "first thing was to have the Oyama case

reversed, and then, "if possible," to go for more.127 Given the precedents on

behalf of the Alien Land Law, it was a daunting enough challenge to secure a

ruling against the laws applicability to the citizen children of aliens ineligible

for citizenship. If doing so allowed for the possibility that the Supreme Court

could leave the law's applicability to their parents in place, that was a chance

that Wirin and his legal team were now willing to take. Better a partial victory

than a total defeat.

The pursuit of that victory soon received an enormous eleventh-hour boost.

Wirin and Kido, who was now one of Wlrin's law partners, had been hoping to

secure the services of a more high-profile attorney to accompany Wirin in oral

arguments.128 To this end, Charles Horsky, a Washington, D.C. based attorney

who joined Wirin and Kido on their appeal to be heard by the Supreme Court,

brought the case to the attention of Dean Acheson with whom Horsky was in

practice.129 No doubt Acheson, a former undersecretary of state and future sec-

retary of state, recognized Oyamas foreign policy implications. Wirin had

stressed this dimension of the case elsewhere in an effort to win government

support. On April 9,1947, for example, just two days after the Supreme Court

agreed to hear Oyama, Wirin urged Roger Baldwin, National Director of the

ACLU, to take up with General MacArthur ... the matter of the government,

through the Department of Justice, filing a ... brief. . . amicus urging the

Supreme Court to hold CaUfornias Alien Land Law unconstitutional." Such

JA P CROW 45

action, Wirin believed, would further" Americas "democratic program in

jfapan. i3(> Wirin likely struck a similar chord when he, Kido, and Masaoka met

with Acheson to persuade him to join them. Their efforts succeeded, with

Acheson agreeing to take the case pro bono.w

Oral arguments in Oyama began at noon on October 22, 1947. Over two hun~

dred people packed the Supreme Court chambers. Wirin led off, seeking to per-

suade the Court to rule against the constitutionality of the entire Alien Land Law,

which had been his aspiration from the outset. One JACL eyewitness described

Wirin as confident and convincing ... a real expert who made his living lighting

Californias discriminatory statutes" After a half hour, Acheson approached the

bench. The Pacific Citizen described him as "the most distinguished lawyer ever

to plead the cause of the Japanese."132 As he opened his case, "The black-robed

Justices straightened up and looked at him with a noticeable air of respect. The

busy page boys paused in their errands. The spectators craned their necks. There

were excited whispers. In contrast to Wirin, Acheson plotted the more mod-

erate legal course that had been the emphasis of pretrial strategizing. Rather

than challenging the constitutionality of the entire Alien Land Law, Acheson

confined his attack to the laws violation of the rights of the American citizen

children of Japanese immigrants ineligible for citizenship.133

Attorneys for the state of California followed Wirin and Acheson. They

received a much less sympathetic hearing. The assistant attorney general from

San Diego County who went first exceeded his allotted time, in part because the

justices literally bombarded" him with questions that he had "a very uncom-

fortable time answering. Kido took this as a good omen.134 So did Masaoka. "I

think we're going to win this one.... I hope. I hope," he wrote, though he doubted

the Court would go beyond '(uphold[ing] the rights of citizen Oyama" and strike

down the Alien Land Law in its entirety.135

On January 19,1948, the Supreme Court fulfilled Masaokas tempered hopes.

From a legal standpoint, the victory for opponents of the Alien Land Law was a

partial one. The majority of six justices did not invalidate the entire statute, only

its appUcability to American citizens of Japanese descent like Fred Oyama. In

the words of Chief Justice Fred Vinson, who wrote the opinion, "The California

law points in one direction for minor citizens like Fred Oyama, whose parents

cannot be naturalized, and in another for all other children—for minor citizens

whose parents are either citizens or eligible aliens, and even for minors who are

themselves aliens though eligible for naturalization" Such a double standard-

"the only basis for which was that "[Freds] father was Japanese and not American,

Russian, Chinese, or English"—could not be maintained absent a "compelling

justification, which the state failed to provide. As for the Alien Land Law's

discrimination against Freds father and other aliens ineligible for citizenship (as

46 THE COLOR OF AMERICA HAS CHANGED

?osed to all other aliens), the majority opinion avoided it. The first conten-

i" ofWirin and his co-counsel—which, for strategic reasons now borne out

the verdict, had emphasized the laws discrimination against Fred and other

citizen children of aliens ineligible for citizenship-—sufficed to reverse the

CaUfornia Supreme Courts decision. Beyond that, the majority of the United States

Court refused to venture.136

The concurring opinions, however, displayed no such inhibitions. Justice

Hug0 Black (joined by Justice William Douglas) expressed his preference to

reverse the judgment of the California Supreme Court in Oyama and over-

rule the previous decisions of this Court that sustained" California's Alien Land

Law, as well as similar measures in other states. The effect and purpose of the

[California] law is to discriminate against Japanese because they are Japanese,

which thereby ran afoul of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amend-

ment137 Justice Frank Murphy (joined by Justice Wiley Rutledge) drafted the second concurring opinion. He delivered a detailed history of California's "anti-

Oriental virus," which infected many Californians and spawned the Alien

Land Law. Like Black, Murphy viewed as utterly specious the claim advanced by

the law's defenders that the race-neutral formulation of the Alien Land Law

somehow rendered it nonracist. Any such legalistic defense of it, not only ran

counter to the United States Constitution and United Nations Charter, but was

also tantamount to support for Nazism. In origin, purpose, administration and

effect, the Alien Land Law does violence to the high ideals of the Constitution

of the United States and Charter of the United Nations, he concluded, It is an

unhappy facsimile, a disheartening reminder, of the racial policy pursued by

those forces of evil whose destruction recently necessitated a devastating war. It

is racism in one of its most malignant forms.13S For Wirin, lustice Murphy s

opinion was "particularly . . . noteworthy.139 The Open Forum explained why,

calling it "the best brief summary ofCalifornias yellow peril hysteria... a gem

on racism. Mo

Even the dissenting opinions in Oyama had little to offer in defense of the

Alien Land Law. For Justice Stanley Reed (Joined by Justice Harold Burton) in one

dissent and Justice Robert Jackson in another, the problem with the majority

opinion was its failure to address head-on the constttutionality of the Alien Land

Law as a whole. Reeds concurrence insisted that unless the California Land

Laws are to be held unconstitutional, then the steps the state took to enforce the

law "must be accepted as legal. Jackson agreed, but went further than Reed and

Burton in insinuating his disdain for the law. While acknowledging the unnec-

essary severity by which the Oyamas lose both land and investment, Jackson

nevertheless insisted upon the constitutionality of California's action until such

a time that the Court struck down the entire Alien Land Law.141

J A P CROW 47

Initial reaction to Oyama reflected the ambivalence to be expected from a

partial legal victory. On the one hand, the lead Pacific Citizen headline declared,

"Oyama Case Decision Upholds Nisei Rights" On the other hand, the headline

just below read, "US. Supreme Court Majority Avoids Ruling on Validity of

California Alien Land Statute."142 Mainstream newspapers registered similar

reservations, reflecting what the ]ACL Reporter described as "a tendency to

belittle the decision" immediately after it was handed down for dodging the

issue of the constitutionality of the Alien Land Law"143 The Los Angeles Times, for

example, noted the Court's preference to issue rulings "only so far as is necessary

to decide" the matter at hand "left doubts and an area of evasion and litigation.

The Washington Post pronounced the verdict a victory for "the great majority of

citizens... who are devoted to constitutional democracy." Nevertheless, the Post

lamented, "It is difficult to imagine a more unsatisfactory decision than the

"halfway" one the Supreme Court delivered.14-1

Mixed reactions, however, soon gave way to more favorable ones, as the prac-

tical, rather than legal, upshot became apparent. Though legally the Alien Land

Law remained on the books, its enforceability had been dealt a crippling blow.

At the time of the decision, approximately ninety percent of the pending escheat

cases involved transfers of land from Japanese parents, who were ineligible for

citizenship, to their citizen children.1115 Oyama provided the precedent to dose

these cases. On January 27, 1948, less than two weeks after the Supreme Court

rendered its decision, California Attorney General Fred Howser, who succeeded

Robert Kenny in November 1946, wrote Wirin, "There is little if anything left of

our alien land law." Consequently, he saw no other option besides dismissing

pending cases."6

Howser's sweeping decision came as a pleasant surprise to Wirin. I must

confess," he confided to Masaoka, "that when I first began to talk to Howser, I

didn't dream that he would be willing to dismiss all the cases," just the parent-

child cases;'147 Howsers action, in fact, reflected "a more liberal and friendly

view as to the effect of the [ Oyama] decision" than even Wirin himself took.

This was an especially unexpected surprise coming from a man whose office had

not only defended the Alien Land Law but who himself had just four years before,

as Los Angeles district attorney, referred to the impending return to California

of the Nikkei evacuees as a "second attack on Pearl Harbor:'149 Shordy after

Howser informed Wirin of his intention to drop the remaining Alien Land Law

cases. Warrens office announced that the governors proposed budget for the

1948-1949 fiscal year would contain no appropriation for the laws enforce-

ment.150 Oyama, proclaimed the New Republic, "virtually brings to an end Cali-

fornia's longest-stand ing piece of anti-Japanese legislation." Still, the Alien Land

Law's continued presence in the state's statutes remained a "blot on Americanism,"

48 | THE CO I. OR OF AMERICA HAS CHANGED

as the Open Forum put it, and an embarrassing impediment to the United States

in international affairs.151 For this reason, the fight against the remnants of the

Alien Land Law would continue into the 19505.

In the meantime, the JACL focused its litigation attention on another

California-based, Wirin-led, and Acheson-supported case. Like Oyama,

Tarao Takahashi v. Fish and Game Commission involved a statute based on the

aliens-ineligible-for-citizenship classification, which one commentator of the

day described as "the prime root of discrimination against the Japanese in this

country:152 More specifically, Takahashi involved a Japanese immigrant who

had resided in Los Angeles since 1907 and received a license from the California

Fish and Game Commission to earn a living as a commercial fisherman every

year from 1915 until he was interned in 1942. The following year, while Taka-

hashis two sons and two sons-in-law were serving in the U.S. armed forces, the

California legislature amended Section 990 of the state's Fish and Game Code to

prohibit the granting of commercial fishing licenses to "alien Japanese."153 (Prior

to then, the Fish and Game Commission issued commercial fishing licenses to

qualified applicants without regard to citizenship status, despite nearly thirty

legislative attempts between 1919 and 1943 to restrict such licenses to either citi-

zens or aliens eligible for citizenship.154)

The blatant racial discrimination of the new law worried the state senates

Donnelly Committee on Japanese Resettlement, which called for a revised letter

of the law to maintain its old anti-Japanese spirit. "There is danger," the com-

mittee noted, "of the present statute being declared unconstitutional, on the

grounds of discrimination, since it is directed against alien Japanese." To avert

that possibility, the committee recommended making the law "apply to any alien

who is ineligible to citizenship:'155 In 1945, the California legislature passed such

a measure, Senate Bill (SB) 413.

The Open Forum described the new law as designed to "discourage evacuees

from returning to California... and costly to a group of about 500 industrious,

America loving aliens who are ineligible to citizenship through no fault of their

own:15G By contrast, a representative from the state attorney generals office

viewed SB 413 as "a step in the right direction, constitutionally speaking, because

it deletes specific reference to alien Japanese and substihites all persons... ineligible

to citizenship."157 On May 2, 1945, Warren signed the bill into iaw.

One year later, following Takhashi's return to Los Angeles from Manzanar in

October 1945, Wirin sued the Fish and Game Commission to compel it to issue

a commercial fishing license to TakahashL158 On June 13, 1946, Los Angeles

County Superior Court judge Henry M. Willis ruled in Takahashfs favor. In

response, Attorney General Kenny appealed directly to the California Supreme

Court.159 On October 17,1947, just five days before oral arguments in the United

?A P CROW 49

States Supreme Court for Oyama were slated to begin, CaUfornias highest court

overturned Judge Williss ruling on Takahashis behalf. As in Oyama, Justice

Douglas Edmonds wrote the majority opinion, which supported the legal rea~

soiling the state attorney general's office offered in support of SB 413. Whereas

Judge Willis had viewed the substitution of "person ineligible to citizenship" for

"alien Japanese" in SB 413 as a "thin veil" employed to "eliminate Japanese aliens

from the right to a commercial fishing license. Justice Edmonds insisted, Taka-

hashi has not established with any certainty that the legislature intended to dis-

criminate against the Japanese by enacting the 1945 amendment. 16° After all, as

Edmonds continued, "All of the races ineligible to citizenship are included and

no one group in particular is singled out —not only Japanese, but Hindus and

Malayans," as well, at the time of the laws passage. By not isolating one group

in particular," the law managed to pass constitutional muster with the majority

of the Califorma Supreme Court161

Justice Roger Traynor had tried to thwart this line of argument He requested

that Wirin provide data to corroborate Judge Williss claim that it was commonly

known to the legislature of 1945 that Japanese were the only aliens ineligible to

citizenship who engaged in commercial fishing in ocean waters bordering on

California." In response, however, Wirin presented no specific numbers. Instead,

he wrote in a letter to the California Supreme Court justices, Aliens ineligible to

citizenship, other than Japanese who have applied for commercial fishing

licenses, have been so small, so nominal and so inconsequential in number, that

it appears clear that the 1945 Amendment was aimed almost entirely, if not

exclusively, against persons of Japanese ancestry. 162 Absent the numerical data

Traynor requested, the dissenting opinion, written by Justice Jesse Carter and

joined by Traynor and Chief Justice Phil Gibson, found "highly persuasive, but

not conclusive, that the law in question was aimed solely at Japanese... in spite

of the fact that race is not mentioned by name in the statute." Instead, the dis-

senters rejected the laws constitutionality on the grounds that it deprived aliens

ineligible for citizenship who were commercial fishermen the means of making

a livelihood."163 The Open Forum alluded to this line of argument when it sum-

marized the California Supreme Courts ruling in Takahashi with the headline,

"Let Aliens Die"ie4

As in Oyama, Wirin, joined by Acheson and Kido among others, appealed

Takahashi to the United States Supreme Court on January 16, 1948. Three days

later, they received what the JACLs Samuel Ishikawa described in a letter to the

ACLU's Baldwin as a considerable moral boost when the Supreme Court

delivered its Oyama decision. Nevertheless, Ishikawa continued, Oyama sEiIl

left open "the question of whether the classification ineligible to citizenship

could be employed to "veil [racist] legislation." For Ishikawa and his JACL

$0 | THE COLOR OF AMERICA HAS CHANGED

iiiH

counterparts, The constitutionality of this question . . . [was] more clearly

defined in the Takahashi case."165 Takahashi, Ishikawa explained in a letter to the

jsfAACP's Marian Wynn Perry, involved a "clearer case of discrimination" against

aliens ineligible for citizenship than Oyama, which Mlasaoka believed made the

law at issue in Takahashi "so much more vicious and undefensible than even the

alien land law.16G The switch in statutory language from "alien lapanese" in 1943

to "person ineligible to citizenship" in 1945 exposed the latter formulation for

what it was— a convenient circumlocution by which to evade constitutional

limitations," as the appeal for a hearing to the United States Supreme Court by

Wirin and his co-counsel contended.167 For this reason, Ishikawa hoped to per-

suade the NAACP to do what it had not done in Oyama and file an amicus brief

in Takahashi.

Coming at a time when NAACP lawyers were for tactical reasons focusing

their litigation on cases where race could be isolated as a doctrinal variable,

Ishikawas distinguishing of Takahashi from Oyama on grounds that Takahashi

involved a clearer case of discrimination" than Oyama was a shrewd move.168

Less than a month later, the NAACP joined the CIO and United States Depart-

ment of Justice in filing briefs in support of the petition for certiorari, which the

Supreme Court granted on March 15, i948.169 Thereafter, as Takahashi headed

for oral arguments, the NAACP filed another amicus brief, this time in conjunc-

tion with the National Lawyers Guild. Other amid curiae briefs came from the

JACL, ACLU, American Jewish Congress, American Veterans Committee, and

the United States Department of Justice. According to the Open Forum, the

Department of Justice's contribution marked "the first time in history the

Attorney General of the United States has filed a brief amicus curiae in behalf of

Californians of Japanese birth."170

As he had done in Oyama, Acheson joined Wirin when Takahashi reached

the United States Supreme Court for oral arguments in April 1948. This time,

though, their efforts contributed to a much less equivocal, though still circum-

scribed, ruling. Writing for a seven-justice majority, Justice Black delivered the

decision he had wanted the Supreme Court to issue in Oyama, namely, a whole-

sale rejection of the law in question. Howeveft Black avoided grappling with the

contention ofWirin and his allies that "racial antagonism directed solely against

the Japanese" drove the passage of SB 413. "We find it unnecessary," Black wrote,

to resolve this controversy concerning the motives that prompted enactment of

the legislation." Instead, he took a page out of the dissenting opinion in the

California Supreme Courts Takahashi decision and struck down the law on

the grounds that it precluded "lawfully admitted aliens" whose ranks included

aliens ineligible for citizenship, "from earning a living in the same way that other

state inhabitants earn their living." State laws could target "alien inhabitants," in

TAP CROW 5i

some cases, such as the Alien Land Law whose applicability to aliens ineligible

for citizenship had been sustained in Oyama. However, the majority opinion in

Takahashi held, such targeting must be confined within narrow limits" SB 413

overstepped those boundaries.171

The majority's effort to distinguish Takahashi from Oyama did not sit well

with either the concurring or dissenting justices. For Justice Murphy Qoined by

Justice Rutledge), who wrote the concurring opinion, SB 413, like the Alien

Land Law, was just "one more manifestation" of Californias long-running

'anti-Japanese fever." The Court "should not blink" as the majority opinion did,

at how SB 413, like the Alien Land Law, "is a discriminatory piece of legislation"

and should be rejected for violating the equal protection clause on that basis

alone. As for the dissenting opinion written by Justice Reed (and joined by

Justice Jackson), the majority opinions effort to parse the right to own property

from the right to make a living was a distinction without a difference. The latter,

as embodied in the right to fish" at issue in Takahashi was "analogous" to the

former, which was at issue in Oyama.171 IfOyama let stand the Alien Land Law's

constitutionality as applied to aliens ineligible for citizenship, then Takahashi

needed to do the same when it came to the state's refusal to grant commercial

fishing licenses to aliens ineligible for citizenship.

Both the majority and dissenting opinions in Takahashi took for granted the

constitutionality of the aliens-ineligible-for-citizenship classification, which derived

from federal immigration and naturalization law. They differed only over what

exactly constituted the "narrow limits" that states possessed for enacting legisla-

tion that targeted aliens ineligible for citizenship. To press those limits with

respect to what remained of the Alien Land Law after Oyama, the Masaoka

brothers, represented by Wirin, launched one of two test cases that reached the

California Supreme Court in 1952. Using money from the GI death benefits of

their one brother who died in World War II (among the four, of five, brothers

who served), they contracted to buy land in Pasadena. Upon it, they proposed

to build a house and deed it to their mother who was born in Japan and hence

ineligible for citizenship.173 This plan purposely ran afoul of the Alien Land Law's

reach in the wake of Oyama, ironicially inverting the transaction that Kajiro

Oyama engaged In when he placed title of the land he purchased in the 1930S in

the name of his citizen son in order to circumvent the Alien Land Law. The

other test case involved the purchase of property by Set Fujii, a Japanese born,

American raised, University of Southern California educated attorney who

owned and published a Japanese/English newspaper. Fuji and the Masaoka

brothers had the same motive, which Fujiis attorney conveyed to the Los Angeles

County Superior Court in 1949, "We wanted to get this case to a higher court to

find out what is left of the alien land act."174

52 ] THE COLOR OF AMERICA HAS CHANGED

Three years later, a divided California Supreme Court ruled that there was in

fact nothing left. "Constitutional principles declared in recent years by the

United States Supreme Court in Oyama and Takahashi, among other cases,

•v^rrote California Chief Justice Phil Gibson in the majority opinion, are irrecon-

cilable with the reasoning of the earlier cases that upheld the Alien Land Law.

The Alien Land Law as a whole is invalid as in violation of the Fourteenth

Amendment. 17S

California Attorney General—and future Governor—Pat Brown refused to

appeal the case to the country's court of last resort. California, he declared, would

no longer adhere "to a philosophy of a super race, nor insist upon being a vindic-

tive outpost of racial discrimination.176 After nearly four decades, the law that the

Pacific Citizen described as "the most discriminatory and harmful piece of anti-

Japanese legislation" was now not only inapplicable to the citizen children of aliens

ineligible for citizenship, as Oyama ruled, but to aliens ineligible for citizenship

themselves.177 "California's Alien Land Act, declared Kido, is dead.m

Long dead before the death of the Alien Land Law were the lemon trees on

the eight acres of Chula Vista land that reverted back to the Oyamas following

the resolution of their case. In addition, the house where the family lived from

1923 to 1937 was in such dlsrepair by the time they could reclaim it that the state

condemned it. Nevertheless, the Oyamas needed to pay back taxes plus interest

on the property. Deeming the old farm bad luck, Kohide insisted that Kajiro sell

it, which he did. By then, the industrious and resilient couple already owned a

sixty-acre farm in Palm City, which they purchased following a stint as share-

croppers upon their return to California in 1945. In i949> Fred left the family

farming business to pursue his college education at San Diego StaEe, while his

brother served in the United States Army occupying Japan. The Supreme Court

ruling in the case that bore Freds name combined with a United States history

class he took in college helped restore the faith in his country that had been

shatterd on that late summer day in 1944 when he received word that California

prosecutors intended to escheat his familys land. Able to recite the Pledge of

Allegiance again, he pursued a career as a middle school math teacher. In that

capacity, he not only recited the Pledge every school day but also insisted that

his students do the same—"in correct fashion and with earnestness. Anything

less required repetition.179

In a speech delivered at the JACL's national convention in December 1944 shortly

after he launched his legal campaign against the Alien Land Law, Al Wirin

exhorted his audience to think of the fight for the restoration of your rights

[as] ... a fight you are also carrying on for the Chinese in the United States,

the Negroes in the United States, for the Jews in the United States, and for all

TAP CROW 53

minority groups."180 Wirins sentiments expanded upon those of Larry Tajiri

from earlier in the year when the Pacific Citizen editor highlighted what he saw

as the parallels between "Jap Crow" and "Jim Crow.m They also anticipated an

exchange Wirin had with Thurgood Marshall following oral arguments before

the Supreme Court in Oyama in 1947. "This case, Wirin recalled Marshall

explaining his attendance, "will tell the Negroes what we're going to get out of

this court." Marshall's intuition jibed with Wirins. The Japanese cases, Wirin

believed, "had to be decided favorably before the Supreme Court was ready to

decide the Negro cases." For Wirin, Oyama involved a variation on the same

legalized segregation theme that the NAACP was attacking in its cases that cul-

minated with Brown. The former simply involved "small[er] segregation than

the latter.182

Yet Oyama also involved different segregation than Brown, as Wirin and Mar-

shall no doubt recognized. When it came to Grafting legal arguments, Alien Land

Laws that sanctioned discrimination between two classes of citizen children

(those whose parents were or were not eligible for naturalized citizenship) as

well as between two classes ofnon-citizen parents (those who were or were not

eligible for naturalized citizenship) raised distinct legal questions from those

involving school segregation laws that did not involve issues of citizenship

status. Most specifically, "the question of whether the classification 'ineligible to

citizenship"' could be employed to "veil [racist] legislation, as the JACLs Samuel

Ishikawa had written the ACLU's Roger Baldwin in January 1948, figured into

Oyama in ways that were altogether absent from Brown.1^ This question and the

litigation involved to answer it pointed to the limits of just how far Wirins claim

about the parallels between the fights for "Japanese rights" and "for all minority

groups" could be pressed.

So, too, did the formation of the JACL Legal Defense Fund in late 1946. Mod-

eled after the NAACPs Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the JACL's coun-

terpart proposed to "protect the civil and property rights of persons of Japanese

ancestry in the United States and ... participate in litigation involving the civil

liberties of other racial minorities." These aims—on behalf of people of Japanese

descent and on behalf of "other racial minorities"—were not necessarily one and

the same.184 As Masaoka explained before a 1947 hearing of President Trumans

Committee on Civil Rights, "We persons of Japanese ancestry, citizens and

aliens alike, have many problems in common with other minority and racial

groups in the United States. At the same time, we have several that are peculiarly

and exclusively our own."185 To the extent that these "problems" did not overlap,

a 1948 report from the JACL National Planning Committee chaired by Kido

endorsed the JACL's "emphasis at all times ... on problems pertaining to the

welfare and interest of persons of Japanese ancestry.i86

54 I THE COLOR OF AMERICA HAS CHANGED

Of course, privileging "the welfare and interest of persons of Japanese ances-

try did not preclude paying attention to "other minority and racial groups." As

a January 1947 JACL "Statement of Policy" noted, "We believe that as we work

for the solution to the problems peculiar to our own minority group, we are

helping ... to solve the total problems of all minorities."187 To this end ofassist-

ing with problems not "peculiar" to people of Japanese descent in order to

help solve the Eotal problems of all minorities," the JACL submitted an amicus

brief in a California school desegregation case involving Mexican Americans on

appeal to the Ninth Circuit in 1946, as well as one in the racially restrictive

housing covenant cases on appeal to the United States Supreme Court in

1947.lss

Jhese instances of multiracial cooperation, however, remained the exception

rather than the rule. They neither reflected nor foreshadowed the emergence of

a multiracial civil rights movement in California. Rather, they revealed how the

states multiple civil rights struggles occasionally crossed but never coalesced

into something enduring. In the case of the JACL, in the aftermath ofOyama, its

priorities remained predominantly group specific given the "problems" it con-

tinued to identify as unique to "the welfare and interest of persons of Japanese

ancestry.

As a matter of litigation, this focus was reflected in Takahashi, as well as the

cases that challenged what remained of the Alien Land Law. As a matter oflegis-

lation, Joe Grant Masaoka, regional director of the JACL in Northern California,

spelled out the unfinished business on erasing discrimination toward Japanese

Americans" at the annual convention of the California Federation for Civic

Unity in San Francisco in November 1948. Under state laws," he placed at the

top of the list compensation for "settlements paid by Nisei defendants to abate

alien land law proceedings" in light ofOyama's vindication of "rights of citizens

in their properties. ls9 For Wirin, recovering these "unjust settlements" was of

"even greater importance" than the legal challenge to the post-Oyama remnants

of the Alien Land Law.190 Two years later, California-based JACL activists

created a state JACL Anti-Discrimination Committee to lobby Sacramento for

legislation of interest and welfare to persons of Japanese ancestry," of which

securing old-age pensions for Japanese immigrants who remained ineligible for

naturalized citizenship in 1951 was given first priority.191

Of course, the necessity of such a measure would be eliminated if Congress

dispensed with the category of aliens ineligible for citizenship. As a report by the

JACL National Committee on Legislative Matters explained in September 1948,

Since most state and local discrimination against persons of Japanese ancestry

is based upon ineligibility to naturalization, this Committee feels that the

enactment of appropriate federal legislation will nullify and void these statutes."192

TAP GROW 35

For this reason, the JACL's "National Legislative Program" for 1949 prioritized "a

bill to secure equality m immigration and naturalization" for Japanese, Koreans,

and other people of Asia and the Pacific Islands" It would be modeled after the

"Chinese formula" from 1943, in which Congress rescinded Chinese immigra-

tion exclusion and removed the prohibition on naturalization for Chinese

immigrants already residing in the United States. Thereafter, the JACL national

legislative agenda included securing compensation for evacuee property that

had been lost or damaged while being held by the government during the war,

returning property to law-abiding aliens, extending the Soldier Brides' Act for

two more years, admitting children of Soldier Brides' Act marriages, granting

statehood to Hawaii, and, finally, more general civil rights legislation," such as

federal laws for a permanent FEPC and against lynching and poll Eaxes.193

To secure Issei naturalization rights, which Masaoka described in November

1946 as the only real and permanent solution to the whole problems oflegal-

ized discrimination and persecution" against all people of Japanese descent, the

JACL joined forces with the Committee for Equality in Naturalization.194 In

i949> Robert Cullum, a leading figure in the Committee for Equality in Natural-

ization, which was an outgrowth of the Citizens Committee to Repeal Chinese

Exclusion and Place Immigration on a Quota Basis from earlier in the decade,

offered a Japanese American Audit" in the pages of Common Ground. He noted

how 1948 marked fche year when "the group status of Japanese Americans has

moved ahead with greater strides than in any single year since the turn of the

century. Yet, the most fundamental liability still remained: racial barriers In

immigration and naturalization laws.195

In the meantime, though "Jap Crow" in California had yet to be vanquished

completely as the 19405 drew to a close, it was certainly reeling. Oyama had

broken what Tajiri described as "the backbone" of discrimination against Cali-

fornians of Japanese descent.196 It, along with the defeat of Proposition 15 and

Takahashi, prompted Joe Grant Masaoka to marvel in late 1948 at the "truly re-

markable demise of "discriminatory practices directed against Japanese Amer-

leans over the course of the previous three years.197 The Pacific Citizen waxed

even more whiggish. The once potent anti-Japanese forces in California, it

exclaimed, had lost their punch and now numbered just "a few assorted crack-

pots [on] the lunatic fringe of racism."198

In 1952, Congress passed the Immigration and Naturalization Act (also

known as the McCarran-Walter Act). The law eliminated the racial barrier

to naturalization and with it the category of aliens ineligible for citizenship.199

Following its enactment, Kajiro and Kohide Oyama wasted no time acquiring

the citizenship they had long been denied. Kajiro quickly developed an affinity

for politics. He became a regular voter and devoted Republican. His favorite

56 THE COLOR OF AMERICA HAS CHANGED

politician would prove to be Ronald Reagan, with whom Kajiro shared an antip-

athy for Cesar Chavezs efforts to organize farm workers. During Reagans suc-

cessful 1980 presidential bid, Kajiros contributions earned him an invitation to

the White House with other big donors to celebrate Reagan's victory. He declined.

At eighty-one, he was still too immersed in work—this time in the garden of the

house he and Kohide retired to in Lemon Grove, California—to justify time

away for such frivolity.200

J A P CROW 57