Book Highlight: Lawyer, Jailer, Ally, Foe
Lawyer, Jailer, Ally, Foe, signed by author Eric Muller, is available for purchase at our online store.
By Shannon Reagan, Beyond the Barbed Wire Project Manager
Lawyer, Jailer, Ally, Foe, the fourth book by University of North Carolina law professor Eric L. Muller, is a compelling look at the history of incarceration but through an alternate lens – that of the project attorneys tasked with representing incarcerees’ interests, while simultaneously protecting the interests of the War Relocation Authority during World War II.
The book centers on the work of men in three different concentration camps – Jerry Housel at Heart Mountain in Wyoming, Ted Haas at Poston in Arizona, Jim Terry at Gila River (Amache) in Arizona. (Muller also briefly highlights the work of Tom Masuda, an incarceree who worked alongside Haas as an attorney in Poston’s Project Attorney office. For a time, Masuda was even in charge of the office, while Haas was out on medical leave.)
Much of the literary canon on Japanese American incarceration is centered around the experience of incarcerees, but Muller takes a different approach with Lawyer, Jailer, Ally, Foe. He explores the ways in which project attorneys were two sides of the same coin: a much-needed legal resource for incarcerees, but also a part of the apparatus which helped keep the camps running. Jim Terry, for example, went head-to-head with the Arizona Corporation Commission in a contentious hearing to defend a cooperative store run by incarcerees. But he is also the same attorney who relentlessly grilled a young man named Satoshi Kira during a leave clearance hearing. Kira’s confusion and discomfort is evident when reading the excerpt of the court transcript. Kira would later go on to suffer mental and emotional issues, and was shot for walking past guards and through the front gate at Gila River, reportedly due to a belief that he was president of the United States. Muller explains in his author’s note that Kira’s family and friends believed the leave clearance hearing triggered his breakdown.
Notably, Muller takes some creative license in this book. While all the historically significant events are true, Muller draws them together by imagining the inner worlds of each individual and how he might have reacted – both outwardly and inwardly – to the happenings around him. Most of the conversations are invented, as Muller explains in his author’s note. However, Muller relied on hundreds of pages of the attorneys’ own writings; each sent biweekly reports to WRA Deputy Director Philip M. Glick. Because Glick wanted them to report on the wide ranging array of issues and events at each camp, the letters are full of nuance and detail, helping Muller imagine the motivations and inner struggles of each attorney more clearly.
Ultimately, although Lawyer, Jailer, Ally, Foe is situated in the camps, it is less about the camps than about the complicity of those who helped run them, according to Muller. The book dives into the complex, often contradictory motivations of the project attorneys – well-educated, driven individuals sworn to uphold the law, yet working within a system that stripped people of their civil liberties. Muller’s work invites readers to grapple with the moral paradoxes these attorneys faced, challenging us to reflect on the responsibilities and consequences of working within inherently unjust systems.
New additions to Friends of Minidoka’s online store now available! Purchase author-signed copies of We Hereby Refuse, The Literature of Japanese American Incarceration, Free to Die for Their Country and Jailer, Lawyer, Ally, Foe and more!