 This is ThinkTech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Aloha and welcome to another edition of Living Legend Lawyers. This is a program aired by ThinkTech in conjunction and in collaboration with the Hawaii State Bar Association. My name is Howard Luke. I am the current president of the Hawaii State Bar Association. And I am so honored this afternoon to have as my guest Mr. Lole Chun-Hoon. Mr. Chun-Hoon has been practicing law for over 40 years now. He has really distinguished himself in the areas in particular of labor and employment law and also in workers' compensation law. But that doesn't tell the whole story. His entire career and even before he became a lawyer has been devoted to helping the underserved and the underprivileged in our communities. He has devoted enormous amounts of time, all pro bono or for no compensation on behalf of so many people. Those have been suffering by an account of human trafficking, torture and several different forms of abuses of human dignity. So I am happy to have here Mr. Chun-Hoon this afternoon. I will also say that Lole, if I may call you that, you are one of the most popular and trusted attorneys in our state. I think everyone would agree with me on that. Briefly, I could go on the entire half an hour about your background, but I just want to say that congratulations. You are consistently rated as one of Hawaii's best lawyers, one of America's best lawyers, and have been lawyer of the year in these areas of employment law and labor law and workers' compensation. So welcome aboard. Thank you very much Howard. Now I would also like to add one more thing before we really get started in your background and so forth. You have been involved with Legal Aid Society, you're on the board of directors and the Hawaii Immigrant Justice Center. These are areas of your non-practice that I'm going to be asking you about. But first I'd like to ask you a little bit of your background, why don't you just take it away? Okay, well, I went to Paloma Preschool, which is probably my primary street credentials. Then I spent 13 years at Punahou after Punahou went to me. So you lost all your credentials there, right? Yeah, lost whatever credibility I had as a member of the proletariat. I graduated from Yale in 1971, went to the UCLA Asian American Study Center, or I edited a small publication called the Amerasia Journal that continues until this day. Margie, you were an undergraduate. No, no, well it started when I was an undergraduate at Yale, but UCLA gave the publication permanent funding, so it now exists and continues at the UCLA Asian American Study Center. Along the way I picked up a Master's in American History at UCLA in 1974, went to law school at UC Berkeley in 1977 and came back to Hawaii then. Okay, and even before you graduated from law school you were working for a law firm, a very famous law firm. I think you were externing or interning at Boslog and Simons, is that correct? Yes, I spent a summer there and then after I graduated from law school I worked for the same firm. Okay, you were an associate there. Right. Tell us about the two names, Harriet Boslog and of course Meyer Simons, about their backgrounds. I know this is supposed to be about you, you're the living legend lawyers, but they are true legends in the past. Well, that's absolutely correct, Howard. Psy and Harriet were founding members of the National Lawyers Guild, but in addition to that they came to Hawaii when none of the other 400 members of the Hawaii Bar would represent the ILW during McCarthyism. And so Psy and Harriet both had a great deal to do with resisting charges against the Union and its members of engaging in unlawful assembly and they were prosecuted under riot statutes. This coincided with the upswing of the ILW and the organizing of the sugar plantations at the end of World War II. And Psy and Harriet were also forced to defend witnesses who appeared before the House of Un-American Activities Committee when the committee came from Washington, D.C. to investigate allegations of communism amongst Hawaii's unions and in particular the ILW. So in the course of their representation they invoked the Fifth Amendment for the first time in a congressional hearing. For the first time nationally? The first time nationally that there was a judicial recognition that the Fifth Amendment extended its protection to people testifying in congressional hearings. Wow. And then you told me a little something about Meyer Simons and some of the other people you work with, but I believe that, was Meyer Simons, was he involved in the war effort at all? He was. Originally Psy was a bankruptcy lawyer from Vallejo, California, but he became an enforcement attorney for some branch of the government and the name escapes me right now. But with the war price administration, I think if businesses engaged in profiteering during the war, the federal government would bring actions against him and that's what Psy did. Yeah. And then Harriet Boslog, she is in some minds even more prominent than Mr. Simons. She had, I believe that she had a case that went all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. That's correct. She essentially gave a speech I think on the Big Island in which she doubted whether communists could receive a fair trial in Hawaii and she was disbarred for that by the Bar Association at the time. And it wasn't until her case made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954 that her disbarment was reversed by vote of five to four. At the U.S. Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court. Interesting. And among the many interesting things about Harriet, she also dated Sam King for a little while. Oh. Judge. Judge Sam King. Judge Sam King. Okay. Before you graduated from law school, I'm reading a little bit about your background. You had, I believe it was an externship with Judge Robert Takasugi from the Middle District of California, United States District Court. That's correct. I was very fortunate to work for Judge Takasugi for a semester, my first semester of third year of law school in Los Angeles, California. And Judge Takasugi had been a distinguished criminal defense attorney in East Los Angeles and was eventually appointed to the federal bench. Yeah, he had, I heard of him before, probably even before I got to know you. I mean, he was appointed federal judge. And eventually, I think this is long after he had graduated from law school. He went on to do other things that gained national prominence. I think he presided over the Larry Flint trial or proceedings. Also, I think it was, he had presided over some of the prosecution of individuals who were involved in matters related to what happened on September 11, 2001. Is that correct? I believe that's correct. Yeah. So, and, but you had an inside, sort of a ringside seat to what was happening and there was really prominent cases. Well, I think one of the most notable things for me with Judge Takasugi is he would instruct the bailiff to announce his arrival by saying court is now in session. The Honorable Robert M. Takasugi presiding, will you all please remain seated? Oh, interesting. Because he didn't want to elevate himself among above everyone else. And I guess the most exciting case we had during my brief tenure there was ABC television tried to enjoy the showing of the movie Billy Jack. And the judge denied the injunction. Oh, is that right? Believing that they could recover monetary damages if they could prove a loss at a later date. Wow. That's amazing. And then he did the, I think the DeLorean trial at some point was good. Yes. But we won't go too far to that. I think we could talk about, you know, your, his tenure on the bench, but we have time and, you know, to wrap up this interview. So it seems like a lot of, like Judge Takasugi, other individuals were involved as their families were in turn doing World War II as Judge Takasugi's family. And then later on when you graduated from law school and worked for Boslog and Simons, eventually you went off to another firm with Nakamura and Nakamura. And I don't know if I have the right series, but in King Nakamura and Nakamura and Takahashi, is that correct? That's right. There was a point at which Harriet and Sy and the rest of us separated. Right. Yeah. And that's why you moved on to the other firm. Right. So what about James King? What up, he had a pretty interesting background himself, didn't he? Right. Well, you know, Jim was, was part of the Kamayana King family. He actually went to Georgetown and stayed with his uncle Samuel Wilder King in Georgetown, who was then the territorial representative for the territory of Hawaii. And then Jim eventually went on to serve in World War II, where he was captured by the Nazis and was a prisoner of war in the Vogess Mountains. So he lived, you know, through some extraordinary hardship, surviving on potato soup and the most minimal kind of nutrients. And he had a little bit of history after the war. I think he returned, I've read somewhere, returned to France where, in the area where he was incarcerated or... That's right. He went back to the village many years later with his regimen and he was embraced as a hero. The mayor of the small town kissed him on both cheeks and they had a little parade for the American servicemen who had fought to defend the village. So that was, that was certainly an impressive highlight of his life. And during his legal career, probably the two most notable cases that he ever did was he represented Mr. Mahler, the Polly Sniper. And he also did a case called Akamini versus Hawaiian Packing and Crating, which is perhaps the seminal case on the presumption of coverage in our workers' compensation statute. Okay. And that's the path you followed in your legal career during workers' come on behalf of the claimants, is that correct? That's right. There are two Nakamura's. One was Hideki, of course, you know, a very, very wonderful man. I did get to meet him personally and, you know, he didn't know who I was, but he was so cordial and I was so surprised what a gentleman he was. The other, of course, being Edward or Eddie Nakamura, who was probably the preeminent labor lawyer for many years and then eventually was appointed to the Hawaii State Supreme Court as an associate justice. Where? Now, this is my endorsement of, you know, reading his opinions mostly in criminal cases, but also in civil cases. I had the impression that he could sit in any court of the land. He's a great scholar and a beautiful writer. And I thought it'd be wonderful if he was sitting on the United States Supreme Court. He was just a wonderful man as well. He became slightly close with him. I know he hired so many local lawyers as his law clerks and you got to work with him as an associate and then a partner. Is that correct? Well, not technically as a partner. I was his associate, certainly would not ever claim to be in his league. But Ed had a fantastic career. His father was a waiter at the old Cantalus restaurant, so I understand that at family gatherings, they insisted on having starch tablecloths. Oh, okay. So we're going to go into a little break right now, but very quickly and wrapping it up on Justice Nakamura, he also was a World War II veteran. Yes, he served in the artillery. In the artillery in Europe. Yes. Okay. Thanks very much and we'll be right back as soon as the break is over. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. Mark Shklav. I am the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea. Law Across the Sea is on Think Tech Hawaii every other Monday at 11 a.m. Please join me where my guests talk about law topics and ideas and music and Hawaii Ana all across the sea from Hawaii and back again. Aloha. Welcome back and we're here with Mr. Lowell Chunhoon. He is our guest on Hawaii's Living Legend Lawyers this afternoon. We did a quick flyover of Mr. Chunhoon's legal career. I wanted to talk to him in the remaining time about some of the other things he's involved with that pertain to his fight for civil rights and civil justice. So, Mr. Chunhoon, I would like to ask you, there are several things that you're involved with and I can only touch on a few of them. But first of all, I'd like to talk about, you discussed with me the immigration law clinic that you are hoping to get off the ground and running. Can you talk about that? Sure. This is something in which I'm very grateful for your support as the president of the Hawaii Bar Association. But I'm attempting to create a permanent tenure-track position for a professor who will specialize in immigration law. And this professor will also run an immigration law clinic and make it permanent. We currently have an immigration law clinic on a slightly sporadic basis that's run by Bowman Chin and John Egan. But we would like to make this permanent. And in order to do that, we need to attempt to secure permanent funding from the legislature. And, you know, for myself, one of the reasons why I'm interested in doing it is, well, I think obviously immigration policy is a matter of national and international concern. But on a personal level, I think for many of us, you know, immigration is our family history. And for myself, when the Alun Farms workers encountered their difficulties in Hawaii, I thought of this in terms of my own grandfather and the difficulties he must have faced immigrating from China. And so to me, you know, it's a matter of creating a resource that can help these different populations. And to continue to renew our society with the vigor and energy that immigrants bring. There's another organization called Justice for Our Neighbors. That's a national organization. And I believe there's a clinic called the Legal Clinic or the Methodist Legal Clinic. You're involved with that as well. That's right. You know, although I'm also involved with the Legal Aid Society of Hawaii in a group called Hawaii Immigrant Justice Center, the Legal Aid Charter prohibits legal aid from generally representing undocumented workers, although there are exceptions for people who are victims of crime. So the Methodist Legal Clinic is an attempt to create another organization that will serve largely the needs of undocumented individuals in our community. And this effort is being spearheaded by a number of people who for many years have been involved in seeking to develop more public interest resources for immigrants. Some of those who have contributed either currently or in the past are Pat McManaman, Amy Agbayani, Esther Arinaga, and we have a vigorous new president, Reverend Amy Waake, who is affiliated with the Methodist Church. So you're involved with the Legal Clinic as well as the Hawaii Immigrant Justice Center? Well, you know, we're just petitioning for our 501c3 status now with the Legal Clinic. We've attempted to raise money. We're renovating an office that's across the street from Thomas Square where the Methodist Church is. That church itself has a high population of Tongans in the congregation, and that was somewhat the impetus for starting the project. You know, the Hawaii Immigrant Justice Center at one time was Naloyo, no Nakanaka, then became Naloyo, right? So you were there from the beginning. You were one of the founders. Right. Well, this was actually, the founder actually was Bill Hosejo, who's now the executive director of the Hawaii Civil Rights Commission. But Bill led the organization for approximately 10 years, and there are a number of us who helped him create the organization. And then Pat McMahon ran the organization until about 2010 when she was appointed the director of the Department of Human Services and the Abercrombie Administration. All right. And still going strong. Of course, there seems to be something very timely and contemporary, the rates of immigrants who seem to be under a lot of stress at the current time. After 2010, the private nonprofit entity merged with Legal Aid Society of Hawaii, which is why it is now known as the Hawaii Immigrant Justice Center at Legal Aid Society of Hawaii, and is being very ably and energetically led by a young attorney named Todd Johnson. What about the proliferation of people coming in from Micronesia and trying to get settled here and assimilate within the population? Do you have any thoughts about how the Hawaii Immigrant Justice Center or any other program can facilitate their assimilation? Well, I think in actuality, the Hawaii Immigrant Justice Center is directly involved with helping another of Micronesian immigrants with their various problems. I know they hold community workshops to address these legal problems. And my impression is that the work is of a very substantial grassroots nature. It's very practically oriented, it's very effective, and I think a lot is being done with limited resources. That's always the case, limited resources, right? Getting funding. It's like you're away of the immigration law clinic. You're talking about the University of Hawaii Law School. Correct, yes. And I think the goal is to have the legal clinic educate young lawyers who will then go out and serve things like the Methodist Legal Clinic and like the Hawaii Immigrant Justice Center, as well as become members of the private immigration bar. The private immigration bar itself is very supportive of all these efforts. And so is the law school. At least some people are. I mean, Professor Calvin Pang, for example, he's always been with you shoulder to shoulder on this aspiration. Yes, and I think Professor Pang will be very instrumental as we attempt to make this clinic a reality. That'd be great. So we're hoping that we can get at least some seed money to get you going, and then I won't say that you're on your own from that point, but you're going to be mostly on your own, and hopefully we can find some innovative ways to raise the sufficient money to have a continuing tenured position at the law school. That'd be a wonderful thing and necessary. I mean, most law schools do have, well not most, but many law schools are enlightening enough to know that that is a significant area in the practice of law and newly minted lawyers can go out and do some very good work in the communities. And because the high proportion of immigrants in Hawaii as a whole, we are hoping that once our efforts become better known, that we will find those successful immigrants who recognize the value of a project like this and can help us make it a reality. Great. You know, Lowell, we've been talking about your past history and we had to do a very quick synopsis of that and your aspirations for the future, your involvement in current legal organizations that assist the members of the public. What about just general citizen involvement in democratic institutions? You have any thoughts about that? Well, I do. I think this is a time in which democratic institutions are challenged and perhaps even collapsing in the United States. I think the rule of law is in jeopardy and I think in general it'd be whose citizens to do whatever they can in their private lives and in their communities to resist this trend. I think also I might just add as a lawyer, as I've gotten older, more of my work has been in partnership with non-lawyers so that another organization that I work with extensively is called the Pacific Survivor Center. We do medical care for human trafficking victims. We took care of the Alloon Farms workers. We've created an animation warning middle school and teenage girls about the dangers of sex trafficking. This animation is now starting to be shown in the schools and we're hoping to develop greater collaboration with the Department of Education and other schools that are interested in hearing about this program. We've been fortunate to be supported in creating the animation by the Junior League and our curriculum has been supported by the Ching Foundation. Most recently we also are attempting to create something called the Human Rights Provider Network which is an attempt to create a network of medical subspecialists who will assist our primary physician, Dr. Nicole Littenberg, in treating this population and developing a body of expertise on the treatment of trafficked and tortured people in Hawaii. And I'm happy to say that we've secured a $51,000 or $56,000 grant in aid from the legislature. This past session with the assistance of Speaker Psyche, representative of Lohenberg who super intends that program and the assistance of other senators such as Senator Ihara who is one of our supporters. Terrific. So if someone is watching in on this program and either is an attorney or a lay person, perhaps a student or someone who wants to become involved, how do they go about that? Well there's a contact number for the Pacific Survivor Center and we have a website and one could contact us through that number and people do. Or they could send us a brief email to our address and we'll try to pair them up with areas of need in our organization. So if they Google Pacific Survivor Center Hawaii or something like that they should come up. Yes. Which tells me that you probably don't know the number off the top of your head. I don't. Which is not surprising. Actually, Mr. Chun-Huen and I are, although he is considerably younger, we graduated from law school, different law schools at the same time. So I know how that goes. Identify with that. You know, any last words, anything you would like the viewers to hear about the current state of affairs in Hawaii primarily, but also nationally and your aspirations to have this be a better state, a better country and perhaps a better world. I know as we get older we tend to look back as well as look forward and we tend to realize that we're not going to be here in the saddle forever. Any thoughts about that? I'm putting you on the spot. Well, I do have one thought that I'll express about that. As I get older, you know, I do worry simply about the absence of hope in our society. There seems to be so much despair. I mean, it's almost give you a clinical depression to watch the news of parents being separated from their children at the border who are merely seeking asylum status. Although I do understand listening to the radio today that President Trump may have reversed that. But I think the antidote to all of that is for each of us in our individual lives to do what we can that is within our grasp. And that's the whole purpose of what I tried to do. I find it very rewarding. And I find that if you look for them, there are many people in Hawaii who are interested in doing this. And I think there is a joy to linking these people together to try to accomplish something to resist these negative trends. Well said. You know, as you were speaking, the words just for some reason into my mind popped a little phrase from a photographic exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art. And it was, I hope I'm not misquoting, for mercy has a human heart and pity a human face. I mean, we're all in this same boat on this planet. We have limited time on Earth and hopefully, I don't know if it's going to happen within our lifetimes, but perhaps we can find something in common that will bring us all together and move forward for the common good of humankind. That's very true. We can't all be a great trial lawyer like Howard Luke, but I think each in our own way we have a contribution to make. But we all certainly can make the contribution as Mr. Chun Hoon has done his entire career. He has a lifetime of service to our community, both in Hawaii and to the nation. I want to thank you for being here today. I think our time is just about up. I could go on now just getting warmed up. I taxied along the runway. I'm now ready to take off, but our time is about up. I'd like to thank you very much, Mr. Chun Hoon, for being here this afternoon and for your very wise words and the obvious compassion you have for your fellow human being. Thank you.