Interviews

1. On the Impact of the Camp Experience

2. Coming into Japanese Culture and Heritage

3. “I had no idea about studying law…”

4. “How did I end up going to law school?”

5. Opening Up Shop in Little Tokyo

6. The Other Two JA women lawyers in Los Angeles—Chiyoko Sakamoto and Madge Watai

7. On Generational Differences in JABA’s Early Years

8. The Founding of JABA: Getting Judges Appointed

9. “If I hadn’t gone to that meeting…”

10. On Hon. Edward Kakita and JABA’s early efforts

11. JABA: On Engaging Students and Community

12. On the Importance of Role Models

13. On Getting the Call from J. Anthony Kline

14. On Being a New Judge and a New Mother

15. On Justice Todd’s Daughter, Mia Doi Todd

16. On Justice Todd’s Involvement with the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center

17. On Working in the Appellate Court

Todd,Kathryn Doi

(b. 1942) The first Asian American woman judge

“How did I end up going to law school?”

When I was at school—at Stanford—I went to a speech given by John Kennedy when he was a candidate for president, and he talked about—I mean, I was so inspired by him that when I graduated, I signed up to go to the Peace Corps. And I had actually gotten my papers. They had assigned me to go to training in Colorado. I expected that I was going to Nepal, but it turned out that my father had a very, very serious stroke right at that time, and he became debilitated. […] So I ended up staying at home with my father to take care of him [for a couple of years]. During that time, I got a part-time job working in a law office in Little Tokyo. And I worked for a lawyer by the name of Robert Iwasaki. And he…he represented a lot of Japanese Americans. He was the lawyer for the Gardeners’ Association. So there were a lot of people coming in from the Japanese American community, and I just thought, oh my goodness, this was so wonderful how you could help people. So that was how I became interested in law.

John F. Kennedy law presidents Robert Iwasaki United States

Date: July 10, 2012

Location: California, US

Interviewer: Lawrence Lan

Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum; Japanese American Bar Association

Interviewee Bio

Justice Kathryn Doi Todd was born on January 14, 1942, one month before President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, after which she and her family were interned at the Heart Mountain concentration camp in Wyoming and the Tule Lake concentration camp in northern California.

After World War II, her family returned to Los Angeles, where she grew up. Todd graduated from Los Angeles High School in 1959, and she went on to Stanford University, where she received a degree in history in 1963. She eventually went on to Loyola Law School, where she received her law degree in 1970.

Todd's legal career began when she opened up her own civil practice in Los Angeles' Little Tokyo, at a time when there were only three Japanese American women lawyers working in Los Angeles. In the mid-1970s, Todd and several other Japanese American jurists came together to found the Japanese American Bar Association (JABA), whose primary objective at its inception was to increase Japanese American representation on the bench.

In 1978, Governor Jerry Brown appointed Todd to the Los Angeles County Municipal Court bench, giving her the distinction of being the first Asian American woman judge. Three years later, in 1981, Brown elevated her to the Los Angeles County Superior Court bench. In 2000, Governor Gray Davis appointed Todd to the California Second District Court of Appeal, Division Two, where she currently serves as an Associate Justice. (July 2012)

*This is one of the main projects completed by The Nikkei Community Internship (NCI) Program intern each summer, which the Japanese American Bar Association and the Japanese American National Museum have co-hosted.