Kumezo Kawato and “Justice Court”

Abstract

Kumezo Kawato and “Justice Court” CHARLES J. SHEEHAN The Accident Among the early acts reported in Volume 317 of the Supreme Court Reports was the December 21, 1942, memorial for the late Justice Louis D. Brandeis. Gathered that morning were leading jurists and members of the Court’s bar. The proceedings were called to order by Solicitor General Charles Fahy. His brief remarks recognized the mem­ bers absent, those “called this last year to other tasks and places that need them during the war.”1 Judge Calvert Magruder noted the occasion’s setting “[ajmid the din and distractions of war.”2 Imperial Japan’s fury loosed much of the din. Its baleful reach would deepen the struggle of a middle-aged West Coast working man in the early months of 1942—a story that quietly unfolded in Volume 317. In 1889, Kumezo Kawato was born in the southeast coast city of Ugui, Japan.3 He arrived as a teenager in the United States in 1905 and settled in the Los Angeles area.4 In April 1940, he took work as a fisherman on the “vessel Rally,” with his wages set as a share of the Rally's catch.5 On December 4, the Rally was docked and Kawato, in a small skiff alongside (he was five feet one inch),6 was repairing fish nets hanging from the larger vessel. Suddenly, the skiff was “thrown against” the Rally? Kawato sustained “severe injuries to his left foot and leg,” a fracture, and a wrenched knee.8 Immediate medical care from a physician and surgeon was required. Four months of incapacitation followed. Having paid his own medical bills, Kawato was now unable to support himself.9 In April 1941, Kawato brought suit against the Rally in federal district court. His attorney was Herbert R. Lande, of nearby San Pedro. Lande had practiced in California since 1934.10 He represented injured seamen, and his sometime opponent in these matters was attorney Lasher Gallagher.11 Kawato sought “wages due” ($387) and “mainte­ nance care while ashore” ($264—consisting of $38 in medical expenses and $2 “per day” while unable to work).12 In August, Gallagher answered for the Rally with de­ nials both of responsibility and of federal court jurisdiction.13 In a “SEPARATE AND KUMEZO KAWATO AND THE RIGHTS OF RESIDENT ALIENS 195 Kumezo Kawato was a Japanese-born fisherman who lived on Terminal Island, an enclave of 3,500 Japanese Americans near Los Angeles. Above is a photo of unidentified seamen docked at Terminal Island taken before World War II. SPECIAL DEFENSE,” he asserted that Kawato was a “citizen and subject of the Emperor ofJapan,” and that “no citizen ofthe United States shall pay any ... subject of the said Emperor of Japan.”14 A “Japanese” Seaman The case of Kawato the seaman was not the first encounter between Lande and Gal­ lagher, nor the first in which the two contes­ tants over a seaman’s claim found themselves on the docket of federal district court Judge Leon R. Yankwich. In late 1939, Clarence Robinson, an “ordinary seaman,” had fallen ill after “a voyage to the East Coast and return.”15 Robinson, represented by Lande, was unable to work for several months and sued the ship owner, represented by Gal­ lagher, for lost wages and “maintenance” during convalescence. The owner disputed the diagnosis of malaria. Judge Yankwich rendered a brisk and unhesitating decision on May 17, 1940. Declaring “immaterial” the cause of the illness and finding Robinson “unable to work,” he ruled the seaman “en­ titled to recover his wages to the end of his voyage.”16 The maintenance claim he treated with the same dispatch and awarded “actual costs.”17 Unlike Robinson, Kawato was no “or­ dinary seaman” appearing before Judge Yankwich. The times were far from ordi­ nary. Pearl Harbor still smoldered, its horror acutely raw on the Pacific coast, when the Rally sharpened its rhetoric and characterized Kawato as “a Japanese,” with the United States and Japan “at war.”18 Claiming that 196 JOURNAL OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY The first- and second-generation Japanese-Americans living at Terminal Island were forced to leave their homes in February 1942 and were given...