Swing/AWT/SWT :: Cannot Convert Unicode

Recently I switched a RCP/swing app from using hypersonic to mysql. The problem is that there are some unicode characters in the data. The data now displays with the unicode characters as unicode in the app. I tried printing out the data from the bean and it comes out the same way on the console. If I cut/paste the string from the console and place another print statement inside the bean I get output with unicode from the field and formatted output from the other print statment. Why???

public String getText(){
System.err.prinltn(text); //this is the actual value that comes in from the database
System.err.prinltn("u00e");//this is the cut/past value of what the above line prints except this shows in the console correctly
return text;
}