Janice Munemitsu: Ours is a multicultural story. It's a Japanese family. It's a Mexican family. It's a Jewish attorney with a Catholic judge. Thurgood Marshall and Robert Carter were young attorneys at the NAACP, and they wrote legal support for Mendez v. Westminster. Oh, by the way, our family was incarcerated on a Native American Indian reservation that still holds this history, and with the Japanese Americans holds annual pilgrimages to remember this. These small acts of kindness are very intentional to help one another as individuals as neighbors, cross-culturally, across racial divides, really are important.

Host: Chapman University's Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences and Past Forward present, Engaging the World: Leading the Conversation on Environmental Justice. In this series, we explore ethnicity through race, religion, indigeneity, and cultural identity, examining how the stories of these communities are told and their histories are taught, if at all. Through art, education, scholarship, and activism our guests fight to have their voices heard, their heritage celebrated, and their contributions to the fabric of American society recognized.

In this episode, we connect with Janice Munemitsu, author of The Kindness of Color, which follows Gonzalo Mendez and his family's federal case of Mendez v. Westminster and the 1947 desegregation of California Public Schools. It wasn't until later in her life when Janice met a new friend, Sylvia Mendez, that she discovered how her own family's experience of the Japanese American incarceration in 1942, was directly connected to the Mendez family case. Here is Janice Munemitsu.

Janice: Gonzalo came from Chihuahua, Mexico as a young boy, and his family were farm workers. Gonzalo also [00:02:00] was a student in Westminster School District and did spend time at the segregated Hoover School. He and a few boys were quite smart and were not being challenged. They were given the okay to move to 17th Street School. He had a background in that school district with the same things his kids were now experiencing and having to go to the segregated school when he knew that they were much more capable.

I think that was just embedded in Gonzalo that, of course, he was able to go to the regular school because he was a good student with some other friends and so should his children. When that comes all the way back around when he moves to Westminster to a farm, he probably thought, "Wow, this is coming full circle," to redeem all the years he had worked as a farm laborer and now to be the boss of a farm. That's a word that Sylvia uses, is that her father wanted to be the boss of a farm. Not a farmer, but a boss of a farm. I think it just shows his real-- He was very much an entrepreneur. They owned a very successful little restaurant, cantina, and they were in their early '30s. I think he was a very successful businessman, very sharp. To be the boss of a farm was a big deal to him. Then to raise his family with his sister's family in Westminster, seemed like a dream come true. When, because of his last name and the color of his children's skin, which they were darker skinned, his children were excluded from 17th Street School, I think he really thought that if he just kept talking to the officials, goes back to Westminster School, talks to the principal, goes to the Westminster [00:04:00]School District, goes to the Orange County Department of Education, I really think he thought, "We can make this change locally."

Host: Because it happened to him and his siblings, right?

Janice: It happened to him. I don't know exactly how many years, but it would've had to have been probably about 15 to 20-- more than that. Probably more like 20 years ago for him and thinking, "Okay, I proved my academics, I can move up." but that wasn't the case this time. Very sadly, you see this rise and fall of racism that goes on.

I think it's also important to know that when you read more about the case there was never any English proficiency testing done for the students in the Hoover Mexican School. The school districts would say, "Well, they're not proficient in English and so they wouldn't be able to succeed in a regular school." but they didn't do any English proficiency testing to determine that. Obviously, Sylvia, Gonzalo, and Jerome, and other children from the Palomino, Ramirez, Estrada, and Guzman families, their children could succeed. They were proficient in English, but there was no testing done. How could they determine that? It was definitely based on their last name and the color of their skin that they were segregated out.

Host: Then after talking to the school board and the Orange County-

Janice: Department of Education.

Host: -Department of Education and getting nowhere, the next option was to take it to court? That's such a big decision. We weren't a very litigious society back then just to rush to court.

Janice: No, no. Not at all. I bet those families would say "We just wanted our kids to get to school. I don't think they saw court [00:06:00] as their first step at all. I don't have a timeline for this. I'm sure in between going to all of those different educational county and district officials, I'm sure Gonzalo was meeting and talking with other people and finding out was this the case in other places? Either that or people heard about Gonzalo going to the Department of Education and they came to him and said, "Hey, we have a problem too. While you're at it, that's not just in Westminster, it's over here too."

There was a lot of conversations, and Sylvia would say she just remembers her dad going to a lot of meetings or having a lot of meetings at their house. This could have been some parents from Garden Grove School District or El Modena School District coming over and saying, "Hey, we heard you have this problem. We do too." I don't think that they were quick to go to court. I think they were saying, "Hey, who else has this problem? How big is this problem?" Then they find out it's pretty much county-wide. I think there was a lot of conversations that went on.

Then Gonzalo was talking-- One day, a truck driver, Henry Rivera, who probably has no idea he's part of the story-

Host: [laughs]

Janice: -but he was listening to what Gonzalo was talking about, this issue, and said, "Hey, I heard about in LA there's this attorney, David Marcus, and he's starting to fight for these inequalities that the Mexican American community has seen. It wasn't just schools, it was public pools that were closed to Mexicans but only Mexicans could go on a certain day and that was Monday because Monday was the day the pool was drained and cleaned.

Attorney Marcus was taking these cases up and Henry happened to mention it, "Hey, this guy, this Jewish attorney who works for the Mexican consulate [00:08:00] and speaks really good Spanish is taking up these cases. Maybe you could talk to him." Gonzalo reaches out to Marcus, explains the case. Marcus comes out-- I think he actually probably came out a couple of times it seems. When I say came from LA to Orange County to talk to some of these parents and really thinks, "Wow, I think we have a case here."

Then that's when I think probably Gonzalo thought, "Wow, maybe this man can help us." Now, whether he thought this man could help us by going to court, or this man could help us by just coming with us to talk more--

Host: To open the right door, to talk to the right person.

Janice: I believe just knowing more about that generation, I think they probably thought, "Oh, maybe an attorney could help us." Then the attorney says, "We're taking this to court. We're not taking it to state court, we're going to federal court." 

They also talked to a lot of other families who were experiencing this, and I could totally understand why they were hesitant to-- They're immigrants, they don't speak the language well, and they're hesitant to put their name on anything that's a lawsuit because they've come here for a livelihood.

In that time, I think it was a pretty well-known issue that this was going on and that there were some families who were going to stand up against it. That's why I know about the courage to really say, "We're going to take this to court if--

Host: Not just any court. It went to-

Janice: The federal court.

Host: -the federal court, and won!

Janice: I think it's really amazing. We just talk about it. "Oh, yes. 1947, Judge McCormick, the federal court in LA ruled in favor of the families." I think when you really think about it, it's quite remarkable that this started with [00:10:00] a conversation at the counter of a rural farm school, Westminster 17th Street School, and ends up in LA, in federal court with Judge Paul McCormick in charge of the trial. Judge McCormick was really, really thorough. He doesn't decide on the case for seven months. Now we're into 1946, February '46 is when he rules in favor of the families.

Westminster School District then allowed the students to come back or to come in, so they integrated their school and invited the Mexican students to come. That's what the story was for Westminster, but the other school districts, El Modena, Garden Grove, and Santa Ana, they appealed the case. That's when now it goes to the Circuit Court of Appeals. At the end of '46, in December 46, that's when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, tries the case.

Then by April, April 14th is actually the date that they announce that they uphold Judge McCormick's ruling in favor of the families. It's interesting because they do that in April of 1947. Meanwhile, the California legislature is looking at this because this was a district-by-district ruling. Just within Orange County you have several school districts, much less the whole state, and they must see the writing on the wall because in January of '47 they introduced the Anderson Bill, which is the bill that leads to the desegregation of California State School even before the Circuit Court has ruled on it.

Host: To your knowledge, were there other segregated districts at that time? Throughout the state, there were [00:12:00] other school districts that weren't a part of this case and still had segregated schools until the Anderson Bill passed.

Janice: Just to give you a little more background on that, that is one of the key reasons why David Marcus wanted to go to federal court. The California law at that time said that it was okay for you to have segregated schools for Native Americans, Chinese and Japanese students. There were segregated schools throughout the state, and it was by law okay for Native Americans, Chinese, and Japanese.

Host: It would have been easy for them to add.

Janice: To just add Mexicans. That's one of the reasons, I believe, that David Marcus chose to go to federal court. Actually, I think it is one of the key reasons that he chooses to go to federal court so that he can basically leapfrog that issue, go to federal court with this issue. He also in federal court, can then use the 14th Amendment of citizens unequally treated. These children, while their parents were immigrants, these children were citizens. They were born US citizens.

Host: 1947. We're seven years, almost a decade before Brown v. Board of Education, which a lot of us learned in school that historic case. You grew up in California, you grew up in Orange County. Did you learn about this case of Mendez v. Westminster?

Janice: No, not in school.

Host: Did you know about the Anderson Bill?

Janice: No.

Host: Neither did I. I grew up in Northern California and all of this, again, it's as an adult that I'm learning all of this information. I'm wondering why this wasn't more widely [00:14:00] taught about. California being the first state to desegregate schools, I don't know why even in our state we weren't taught this. I know that things have changed and they've introduced it to their curriculum, and we're making even more changes which is great, but that just baffles me.

Janice: I get this question a lot like, "Why didn't we know this?" I had to think about it because I'm not sure. I'm not a historian, but I've come up with a couple of thoughts. I'll offer those. I think one of the reasons is because California passed the Anderson Bill in a very quick, for six months. It was introduced in January, and by June, the state Assembly and Senate had passed it, and Governor Earl Warren had signed it.

The next fall, the school districts in California had to desegregate their schools or integrate their schools. They made this law for California. California says, "Okay. We're good." If one of those school districts had appealed it one more time, Mendez v. Westminster would've gone to the Supreme Court in 1947. That's when you would have heard about it, right?

Host: Yes.

Janice: That's when we would've heard about it. Part of me says I think most of the books I studied decades ago, I know, but you're much younger than I am and even when you studied, I think they were all published on the East Coast. We didn't have the internet. We had newspapers and basic media, but I think the publishing world when I grew up was New York or Boston maybe, centered around the major universities. I think that they didn't even think about this because the issue of race was so much more of a North-South, Civil War, [00:16:00] Black-White issue that they wouldn't have even imagined that California is dealing with Asians, they're dealing with Mexicans.

I also think part of it had to do with agriculture. We're a very agriculture-based state. This was all about, and I'm just going to say it, cheap farm labor. My grandfather came from Japan to work on a farm. Japanese were farm labor. Then they were able to save and hopefully eventually start either a business or be a farmer.

Host: I want to talk a little bit about your family now. I think we talked about the Anderson Bill and it really-- California being the first state to desegregate schools puts that lens of the progressiveness of this state that we come to know of California, but California wasn't always a very progressive state. I want to talk about some legislation that definitely was racist and challenging, but that led to your family being here and also affected them. Let's start by talking about the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, where the majority of the Chinese population was here in California, brought over to work on the railroads but then were starting their lives here. I know that that Chinese Exclusion Act opened the door for more Japanese immigrants to come, which ultimately led to your grandfather coming here.

Janice: It's interesting because now we say Asian American. Just as you noted specifically earlier it was [00:18:00] Chinese or Japanese from Japan. The Japanese came-- one of my grandfathers came very, very early. Japanese, I want to say it's the second half of the 1800s, were some of the earliest immigrants from Japan to America. I would say it's pretty much all farming. Farming or fishing.

Basically again, there's the opportunity to come and work. Japan is an island nation, you don't have a lot of land. If you're not the eldest son, you probably will not inherit the family farm. In fact, you won't inherit it. If your family comes from a lower class or has less assets, you don't really have a future. That led people like both of my grandfathers to come to America. Both of them were farmers, both in Orange County eventually.

You are leaving everything to come here in hopes of a better life. You're willing to work really, really hard to do that. That's why as the Chinese came to build the railroad, they suffered a lot and they worked extremely hard and some lost their lives doing that. They essentially bet on the fact that living in America was going to be better. It was a way to make money.

My grandfather, they came, and they had the opportunity to come. As we go down to the story I think then this competitive nature comes into play and there becomes a lot of discrimination and racism based on economics where Japanese farmers now were being very prosperous and perhaps taking "the better land," which is probably not the better land, but they just worked hard and made it really fruitful.

Host: [00:20:00] Understood the land as well, from what I gather. They understood the soil. They understood how to make this land prosperous.

Janice: Japanese are very-- We are good with the soil. Let's just put it that way. [chuckles]

Host: That leads to this next law that passed here. As these Japanese farmers became more and more prosperous and successful in that competition, California passed the Alien Land Law in 1913 and then repassed it in 1920 again. It really seemed to target more of the Japanese immigrants even though it wasn't specifically written for one group. How did that-- That directly affected your family.

Janice: My grandfather was able to lease land to be his own farmer, to have his own farm in Westminster. He leased it from a woman who was elderly. She leased it to my grandfather. It was 40 acres. When she died, she gave my grandfather and my father the first right of refusal to own that land. Now, she did this, she would've had to known that they weren't able to own it outright.

They couldn't have just gone to another farmer and bought that land because my grandfather was not American-born citizen and my father was underage. He wasn't an adult. He was probably 10 to 12 years old at that time. She obviously had a good relationship. She liked my grandfather, and my dad, and our family. This was the opportunity to own this land, knowing that my grandfather couldn't own it and [00:22:00] seeking wise counsel through other friends.

Probably most of the advice came from their banker, Mr. Frank Monroe in Garden Grove, that if my dad could have an American-born guardian, then the land could be under his name with a guardianship. They had a friend who was Hawaiian-born. He was second generation, so he was probably, likely about 10 years older than my dad at the time, but he could stand as a guardian for my father, and my father could own that land. My dad was a very young landowner. The land was in his name as the first-generation citizen.

Host: The California Alien Land Law did put limitations on land ownership, but there were workarounds and families found ways to lease or obtain land and start to thrive. The Japanese community at that time started to thrive and assimilate into the Western culture and educate their children. Then in December of 1941, Pearl Harbor was bombed and three months later, President Roosevelt passed Executive Order 9066.

Janice: I think I'll just insert one other main major historical event that happened in the '30s was the Great Depression. This was the same timeframe that my grandfather had the option to buy this land. Generally, the whole nation was suffering economically. I think that plays into this, “who has what” mentality. There was [00:24:00] a lot more pressure, I think, by immigrants, Japanese or Chinese, to say, "People who had been here longer--" Caucasians were saying, "Wait a second. They're here and now they're owning this." I think a lot of this more competitive, perhaps greedy spirit comes into play because the country is in and coming out of the Great Depression into a world war. There's some other factors at play here.

Host: Sure, yes.

Janice: In terms of where we're at, my dad was 20 years old, he was farming. It was pretty good. They had their own farm. They were able to buy equipment. Then World War II begins with the bombing of Pearl Harbor. My dad was out in the cabbage field with his workers harvesting cabbage that morning and a car drives by and some very vicious racial slurs were yelled out the window at him. He remembers that it was different. He had experienced name-calling, bullying because he was Japanese before, but somehow this felt different.

When they went in for lunch that day, one of the workers turned on the radio and that's when he heard that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. Now, you look like the enemy. Even though you've never been to Japan, you only speak Japanese because that's the language your parents speak. You know some of the customs, but you are definitely American. My dad went to 17th Street School. He went to Huntington Beach High School. He played sports in high school, so very much an American lifestyle, but now he looks like the enemy.

The uncertainty started really in December 7th because some of the families, and this would've been maybe not on the news for [00:26:00] sure, but within the community, you would've heard, "Oh. The fishermen at Terminal Island, they were taken away." The FBI made them move in the same week. They would've been hearing this in the community, wondering like, "What's going to happen next?"

Then February 19th, 1942, it becomes much clearer what the government has in mind. I would see as I read about this, the amount of fear that 120,000 Japanese Americans, two-thirds were American-born citizens and likely, just because of economics and such, had probably never been to Japan, were now all suspect of being the enemy and spies.

Host: 120,000 Japanese Americans are taken to different camps which are incarceration camps surrounded by barbed wire, leaving their farms that they have spent generations building up, leaving their fishing boats, their stores leaving everything. If they're lucky they were able to sell it, but they're selling things for pennies on the dollar or having somebody take over their land. Your family owned their farm and found a way to retain it during this time of incarceration. Let's connect the two stories of Gonzalo Mendez and your family.

Janice: My father… I mentioned Mr. Frank Monroe. He essentially was my father's business and banking mentor. My dad would go, as a child, to the bank with my grandfather to basically translate English to Japanese and Japanese to English. In that process, he learned a lot about banking and business. Mr. Frank Monroe, my dad always said, "He was a very good friend to me," but I would say in today's [00:28:00]vocabulary, we would say he was a really lifelong mentor to my dad.

My dad, when they find out they have to leave, he goes to talk to Mr. Monroe and say, "What do you think we should do? Should we sell? Should we--" I don't think he even thought maybe that leasing was an option because it wasn't as common then as it is now. You might rent an apartment, but a farm, you either owned it or you didn't, probably. It wasn't so common to lease a farm. Mr. Monroe, he told my dad, "I think you're going to come back. I don't know when, but I think the war will end. Let's try to lease the farm."

This is a ready-made farm. They're leasing tractors, and hand tools, and wheelbarrows, and the whole farmhouse with the furniture in it. Mr. Monroe gave my dad that idea. They didn't make a deal right away because this was really pretty quick. They had to leave within less than four months of Executive Order 9066. Mr. Monroe finds Gonzalo who was a customer of his, and he says, "Gonzalo, I know you've always wanted to be the boss of a farm. Maybe this is your chance."

Gonzalo and Felicity just talk about it and they think about, "Wow. My sister, and her kids, and her husband can come down. We could all live and work there. This is going to work out great. Our kids could grow up together." Gonzalo says, yes. Now, my dad had never met Gonzalo. I don't think he actually met him until they signed that lease document because my dad was in the camp.

Host: All of this had to happen through the barbed wire of the fence of the Poston camp.

Janice: I don't know how they exactly signed the lease, but Sylvia remembers driving out to the desert with her father to take lease payments because he wasn't sure putting it in the [00:30:00] bank whether my dad could access those funds or not. At least several times, they drove out to the desert, one of those times could have been to sign the lease. This is all built on the trust that Mr. Monroe had in Mr. Mendez and my dad had in Mr. Monroe, and they believed that they could trust each other. That's what happened. They leased the farm. Off the profits of the asparagus is how Mr. Mendez paid David Marcus for the legal case and all the hours that he put into it, and this worked out great believing that Mr. Mendez was somebody they could trust.

Host: The war ends horrifically. All the families have to go and find out where are they going to go. Like I said, their homes are gone, their land is gone. Your family had land but the Mendez family was utilizing it. They were at the end of their lease at that point, but--

Janice: There are two paper document leases that I have. We know that they actually moved on to the farm before the first lease because Sylvia had her eighth birthday, and her eighth birthday is in June, and the lease started in September. We know there's probably some gentleman's handshake on that. Mr. Mendez, he had a lease space for his restaurant, he owned a home that he had to lease. There was other arrangements that had to be made.

Towards the beginning of 1945, or end of '44, beginning of 1945, they could see that the war was going to end at some point. That final lease that we have stipulates that when the war does end and the Munemitsu family can come back [00:32:00] to Westminster, they made what I call a win-win solution.

Mr. Mendez, at that time, is still in the middle of this Mendez v. Westminster case. When you are in a case, you're living in a city where you want your kids to go to school, and this whole case is on that, you can't move from Westminster. He's got to stay in Westminster. A lot of it, I don't know, he was right in the middle of this case that Judge McCormick had not ruled yet in federal court on it. Mendezes need to stay there. Mr. Mendez has spent the profits of the farm now on the case so he doesn't have the capital to go start a new restaurant. Somehow in this whole thing, he's decided farming is not for him and wants to go back and start a restaurant.

It wasn't a clear-cut thing that Munemitsus can come back, Mendezes could go back to what they had to do especially because of the case. Knowing that, my dad said, "Gonzalo, here's what we can do. We'll come back, we'll move into the cottages." Obviously, that meant that the Mexican workers who were there they would have to find housing for them. "We'll move back into the cottages and we will work for you for daily wages." On my dad's tax return for '45, '46, it shows lease payment received from Gonzalo Mendez, and then it shows hourly wages received from Gonzalo Mendez.

The owner of the farm was working for the guy who leased the farm so that the guy who leased the farm could stay in this legal case, as well as, then Gonzalo took the profits from that year's farming efforts so that he could start his next venture.

Host: Which was another cantina.

Janice: He had made enough friends now in the Westminster area that he thought he would open a restaurant there, and that's what he ended up doing. I think it just shows a [00:34:00] certain level of collaboration. When I first heard that story, I was like, "Yes, that makes sense to me." People are amazed that they would figure this out, and quite honestly, that my grandfather and dad would say, "Hey, we'll just work for you for hourly wages. Oh, by the way, we've got other friends who have no place to go so those other cottages, our friends are going to come and we're all going to work for you, Gonzalo." Now, I think Gonzalo had a lot more foreign bosses in his labor crew.