by Richard W. Millar, Jr.
Art Nakazato’s father is a retired nuclear engineer. His mother is a retired high school biology teacher and counselor. His only sibling, a brother, is a liver transplant surgeon. Art, as you know, is the first Japanese American to be appointed as a United State Magistrate Judge.
I hate it when I have to write about a family of underachievers.
His parents are both native Californians. His mother is from the Stockton area and his father from Sacramento, though they did not know each other at that time. After America entered World War II, his mother and her family were “relocated” to the Rohwer Relocation Center, an internment camp conveniently located in southeastern Arkansas. Accordingly to Wikipedia, Rohwer held over 8,000 Japanese Americans “forcibly evacuated from California.”
Art’s father was about to graduate from college when he, too, received notice that he was to be sent to an internment camp. Because internment would prevent his graduation, he went to the Dean and asked to graduate early. He was forced to strike a deal which allowed him to graduate a month early but at a cost of lowering his grades one grade for each of his courses. He thus received a degree in chemical engineering and then was immediately sent to the Tule Lake War Relocation Center near Newell, California. (In writing this, I could not help but think how the word “intern” has such different meanings depending upon whether it is used as a verb or a noun and whether the accent is on the first or last syllable. No wonder foreigners have a problem with our language, but I digress.)
While he was interned at Tule, Art’s father was drafted.
Because of his degree in chemical engineering, Art’s father was stationed in Ohio with a chemical warfare unit. Later, many of the members of his unit were transferred to either New Mexico or Manhattan to, as it later was disclosed, work on the atomic bomb. After they compared notes, the remaining men in the unit discovered those who were not transferred were either of Japanese or German ancestry, presumptively too risky to obtain the necessary top secret clearances. Ultimately, his father did receive the top secret clearance.
Art’s father and mother met at the University of Michigan and Art was born a “valley boy” in Canoga Park. He moved with his family to Walnut Creek when he was 4 or 5 years old and graduated from high school in Concord, California. Before his senior year, his father took a job in Pittsburgh. Art stayed behind with friends so that he could finish up his senior year. He was a league champion wrestler in high school going to the state tournament twice. After graduation, he decided to go to the University of Pittsburgh because he missed his family and because of its wrestling program. He received his B.A. from Pittsburgh in 1975 with a double major in economics and English literature, then went to Temple Law School serving on Law Review and earning a J.D. in 1978. After that he was a “Philadelphia lawyer” for a couple of years until the winters motivated a return to California. He wanted to go back to Walnut Creek, but found that the walnut orchards had given way to development and ultimately decided to move to Los Angeles where he perceived there was a more active litigation practice. He worked in a few large firms, two of which have since dissolved and ultimately formed Kirchner and Nakazato in 1985. He moved to Newport about 10 years later and was appointed a Magistrate Judge on August 13, 1996.
A lifetime “jock,” he took up skiing when he was 52 years old. He did not do it earlier because he couldn’t afford it when he was young and one of his wrestling coaches told him that if he ever even thought about learning to ski during wrestling season, the coach would break both his legs before he broke them skiing. After skiing about two years, he was able to handle black diamond runs and thought he was a pretty good skier. He was abused of that idea on a trip to Alta when he was skiing down a mogul infested black diamond run with the wind whipping about him impressed with his own speed and a one legged skier “blew right past me like I was standing still.”
He also keeps in shape by running 4 or 5 miles at, as he puts it, “a fast clip for someone with short legs.”
Art does not, however, speak Japanese. Once standing at a stop light in Tokyo, surrounded by what seemed like a couple of million Japanese, a stranger came up to Art babbling in Japanese, his gestures indicating he was lost and seeking for directions. Unfortunately, the fellow had picked probably the only one out of the crowd who did not speak the language.
While still a law student at Temple, Art learned firsthand the dangers of circumstantial evidence. The law school was in a high-rise building and one day following an evidence class dealing with circumstantial evidence, Art got on the elevator to ride it down to the basement where his locker was located. A “very scruffy looking guy” that Art had never seen before also got on the elevator and before getting off whatever floor he selected, passed, as Art demurely described it, a prodigious amount of gas, the effects of which remained within the close confines of the elevator following Mr. Scruffy’s departure. When the elevator stopped on the first floor with Art as the only passenger, three “very attractive” students got in. When they started gasping from the aroma, Art felt constrained to say “it wasn’t me,” but, of course, there was no one else in sight. Art said the students avoided him ever after and since then he has viewed circumstantial evidence with a jaundiced eye. (He probably never looks at elevators the same way either, but again I digress.)
Today, Art wrestles with a new opponent, a rare and nasty form of lymphoma. He has completed a cycle of a new chemotherapy regime developed in Germany with the next stage being a stem cell transplant at the City of Hope designed to substantially reduce the chances of any relapse. He discusses his disease with a matter of fact candor, and I can report that his sense of humor in still intact. In fact, I am sure that he will soon be back at those OCAABA dinners where he and Kaz Makino engage in comedic one upmanship as they insult the provenance and quality of the raffle items.
Mr. Millar is a member of the firm of Millar, Hodges & Bemis in Newport Beach. He can be reached at millar@mhblaw.net.