Minerich, Paul T.

Attorney and son-in-law of resister Tim Nomiyama.

From the description of Paul T. Minerich papers, 1944-1998. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 433616165

Biography / Administrative History

The Paul T. Minerich papers document the court cases of draft resisters who were court-martialed in 1944 in Ft. McClellan, Alabama. The resisters were court-martialed for refusing to be trained for combat while their families were incarcerated in concentration camps. On March 20, 1944, forty-three infantry trainees were ordered to march to a field house to hear an orientation by their training commander. The group began to march, but soon stopped and refused to continue. A soldier was ordered to take the names of those who had disobeyed orders, but they refused to identify themselves and were placed under arrest. Twenty-one of these men were eventually convicted and tried for violating the 64th Article of War (willfully disobeying a direct order by a superior commissioned officer). The resisters, also known as the DB Boys (Detention Barrack Boys), were sentenced to a dishonorable discharge, a forfeiture of pay, and confinement to hard labor for 5 to 30 years. In November 1945, their sentences were reduced by a special clemency action and in 1946 they were put on parole and released.

Immediately after their release Charles Edmund Zane (a lawyer and high school friend to resister Masao Kataoka) began to write briefs in defense of the injustice done to the DB boys. As early as 1946, Zane submitted applications to the Army Board for the Correction of Military Records for a hearing to convince the board that the verdicts of the court martial be reversed. In May 1949, the men were informed that the hearing would not be granted. Despite the dismissal of the court, Zane continued his legal research by writing to different government agencies and requesting court records in hopes of an eventual court hearing.

In the 1980s, over thirty years after the DB Boys trial, Paul T. Minerich (an attorney and son-in-law of resister, Tim Nomiyama) continued the DB Boys case. In January 1981, the Army changed the sentences for 11 of the 21 resisters dishonorable discharge to honorable discharge. The remaining ten did not wish to change their status. The eleven men then testified before the Army Board for the Correction of Military Records and, in February 1982, the board ordered that they receive credit toward active service for the years that they were confined after their court martial. The Board also changed the record to show that they had been honorably discharged due to expiration of their enlistment rather than release from their confinement. What Zane started in the 1940s, Minerich resumed and finished in the 1980s during an era of Japanese American redress and reparations.

Resisters (DB Boys)

Hamai, Shigeo Hayakawa, Kenjiro Hirouchi, Frank F. Ishiyama, Yoshikuzu Itano, Henry Kataoka, Masao Mitsuhiro, Mitsuru Morinaka, Henry Morita, Masuo Murata, Harold Nakamura, Richard Tatsuo Nomiyama, Tim T. Nozawa, Hakubun (Hugh) Ogawa, Ben B. Okamoto, Masami J. Oyama, Masao Sakuma, Sasayuki Sumida, Masao Sumoge, Fred Fumio Taniguchi, Katsumi Tsunehara, Harold T.

From the guide to the Paul T. Minerich papers, 1944-1998, (Japanese American National Museum (Los Angeles, Calif.))