By SHARON YAMATO
It’s been four very long years since I first applied for funds to produce a documentary on attorney Wayne M. Collins, a heroic figure for most Tule Lake Segregation Center former detainees and their descendants.
As legendary as he is to anyone who had any connection to Tule Lake, he is little known to almost everyone else. I’m hoping more people learn about him after seeing my film, “One Fighting Irishman,” scheduled to premiere at the Japanese American National Museum on Oct. 28, with narrator George Takei and Collins’ son, attorney Wayne Merrill Collins, on hand for a post-screening panel discussion moderated by Densho’s Brian Niiya.
Thanks to Yoko Nishimura at DiscoverNikkei.org, I was given the opportunity to talk more about the film with writer Tamiko Nimura. Here are excerpts from my answers to Tamiko’s insightful questions:
Q: How, when, and why did you decide you would make a documentary about Wayne Collins?
A: When I heard Wayne Collins’ son, Wayne Merrill Collins, speak at the 2014 Tule Lake Pilgrimage, I was blown away. Even though I already knew the elder Collins to be a man of principle, I was struck by his son’s description of the doggedness it took to engage in a lifelong fight for the rights of Tule Lake segregants in the face of a government dead set on getting rid of them.
I was particularly shocked to hear that among the reasons his fight was prolonged were his battles against the National JACL and the National ACLU — mainly in the persons of JACL Executive Director Mike Masaoka and attorney A.L. Wirin.
One might assume these two respected civil rights organizations and leaders were on the side of those held in camp, but they literally turned against those who they considered “disloyal” or “troublemakers.”
After the standing ovation Collins received from the many Tule Lake families in the audience, I was driven to find out more.
Q: What kept you going during the creative process?
A: Although writing and cutting the script down to 30 minutes was a solitary process that allowed for long bouts of procrastination, I was fortunate to have the assistance of many creative people who pushed the process along.
A wonderful editor and cinematographer, Evan Kodani, whose commitment to telling stories about our history, was a perfect fit, and by enhancing the visuals he made the script come alive.
I was also thrilled to find a creative husband-and-wife team, Mike and Julia McCoy, who did all the motion graphics as well as completed the editing. When I was first introduced to them, I was deeply touched by their enthusiasm for a subject they knew little about but clearly understood its importance.
It was wonderful seeing the results of their polished work, which when combined with the brilliant music of composer Dave Iwataki, made everything come together.
So many friends were also there as trusted allies and knowledgeable scholars who kept the film honest and true – -people like scholar Art Hansen, Densho’s Brian Niiya, and Tule Lake survivor Hiroshi Shimizu.
I knew the film’s subject was important when my trusty sound editor, Jon K.Y. Oh, who has finessed the sound on every Japanese American film made in Los Angeles since the beginning of time, told me he liked it and did everything he could to make it better.
Q: What surprised you the most in your research about him?
A: Since there has been very little written about him, surprises were many. Perhaps most amazing was the amount of work it took to defend this special group of maligned Japanese Americans. After looking through his voluminous files, it was unimaginable that one man was responsible for the piles and piles of paperwork that crossed his desk.
Besides the 10,000 affidavits he researched and filed, there were questionnaires, drafts, and letters that accompanied each one. There were also hundreds of lengthy legal briefs that had to be written and filed.
To cite one example, the original Abo v. Clark pleading (which was one of his four original renunciation lawsuits) involved 986 plaintiffs, was more than 50 pages long, and was just the beginning of a deluge of subsequent pleadings on behalf of more than 4,000 others.
When you consider the 23 years it took him, you can only imagine the correspondence involved in locating all the renunciants, both in the U.S. and Japan, and having to keep track of each individual case. Thankfully, he was helped by members of the Tule Lake Defense Committee, headed by Tex Nakamura, a man who deserves a film of his own.
I was also amazed to learn that Collins, who was orphaned as a child with little formal education, was capable of such a thirst for justice and intellectual prowess. A brilliant man and prolific writer, he immersed himself in books, particularly Greek and Roman classics.
His passion for justice was described by his son at the Tule Lake Pilgrimage in his recitation of a passage in Plato’s “Apologia of Socrates” that his father gave him. In it, Socrates describes how he could never work for the state or any governing body lest his pursuit of justice be compromised.
Q: In the last 30 years or so, more stories about Japanese American resistance have emerged. Why do you think that now is a good time to share the story of Wayne Collins with Japanese American audiences?
A: There was (and sadly, still is) a time when it was shameful to admit you were from Tule Lake. I vividly remember attending my first Tule Lake Pilgrimage in 1996 when it was clear that former Tuleans were barely beginning to emerge from the shadows. Twenty-one years later in 2017, the JACL agreed to issue a somewhat diluted apology to those 18,000 people who were long maligned at Tule Lake.
I believe that new generations of Japanese Americans now see these ancestors rightfully fighting for our civil rights when no one else would, and I believe Wayne Collins would agree that recognition of these Tule Lake “resisters” is long overdue.
At the same time, we also need to face the dark side of the problems created by the pro-Japan factions at Tule Lake. Wayne Collins provides the perfect vehicle for presenting these problems because he does not hesitate to call them out as despicable, while at the same time attributing their causes not to the inmates themselves but to the government that imprisoned them.
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“One Fighting Irishman” was funded with a grant from the Department of Interior,
National Park Service (NPS) through the Japanese American Confinement Sites (JACS) grant program. Additional funding was provided by the California Civil Rights Public Education Program. Tickets for the Oct. 28 screening are available at www.janm.org.
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Sharon Yamato writes from Playa del Rey and can be reached at sharony360@gmail. Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of The Rafu Shimpo.
