Probably the same challenges I still face as a judge, which is that you still get stereotyped. At that period of time, I mean, Asian American women were not lawyers and so besides being mistaken for the interpreter or the court reporter or just treated badly, I said you get a lot of "sweethearts" a lot of brushing you off, a lot of assuming that what you have to say isn’t important, and that even as a young lawyer, even as a partner at my law firm, if I was with a young Caucasian man they always, the other side would always talk to him. And ask him his opinion, and ask him what is the client going to do? And I would have to stop and say excuse me, it’s my client. This is my case and I am the partner on the case, and they would just kinda go… "Really?" You get a lot of that… I feel, a lot of women of color on the bench feel that we get a lot less respect than do say white males or even white females, and there's a feeling more that they can be disrespectful to us and that-that is okay -- of course it’s not and they learn that once they’ve had an interaction or two with me. You know, I work very very hard to make sure that I have control of my courtroom and that people understand that women of color can be the boss in this situation, but it’s still an issue.
Date: July 11, 2019
Location: California, US
Interviewer: Kayla Tanaka
Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum; Japanese American Bar Association
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