<Begin Segment 30>

AH: Most people... now, I know you've established the fact that you didn't have a lot of close friends and you were kind of a Lone Ranger in a lot of ways. I mean, in school and even before that...

JA: But not Lone Ranger in a way with the Japanese community. I was very in thick with the Caucasian group.

AH: Yeah, but now when you're in camp, you're... of necessity, you're concentrated literally and figuratively with a lot of other people of Japanese ancestry. Now, everything I've read on the registration thing is this caused a lot of block meetings. And it caused a lot of discussions. And the army sent representatives there, and they usually had a Kibei sergeant that was with them, and they would go to the different groups in the blocks and stuff, and that, and then people had to make decisions. And Minidoka is always brought up as a camp in which they produced 300 volunteers, more than any other camp. And a lot of people drew the conclusion, rightfully or wrongly, that this therefore was a "happy camp," and everything. And that, that Stafford had things under control and this went through beautifully and stuff. Now, I'm trying to get a sense of... okay, I'm trying to leave you with this because we're going to, we're gonna change some... but leave this question with you. I'm trying to understand what you were going through at that particular -- were you talking to other people? Were you talking with your family about the consequences of you saying "yes-and-no," or was this just something that you were doing in a vacuum? [Interruption] So, were you doing this in isolation, or were you doing it in a social context? Were you were dealing with your family, you were dealing with some of the other people your age on the block and talking about this?

JA: Well, actually, you know, these questionnaires that was given to us, it was something that the manager of the block said, "Hey, this is it. On this day you're going to fill out these questionnaires." And when I got to 27, 28, they were the two questions, right away I could see that the government was making it that we were disloyal, that's why they did what they did and that was... that 28 would be incriminating the Japanese Americans. I saw that. And I was going to... I had, even at that time, redress in my mind. Therefore, if I had answered that "yes," hey, there's no redress, and therefore the only answer, only answer, okay, I say the only answer is "no" by Japanese Americans. But 99 percent said "yes," so in other words, they incriminated themselves saying that the government had every right to put the Japanese Americans in the camp and do whatever they wanted because they were dangerous, and I saw that.

AH: Did you ever try to persuade other people of your position at that time, or not?

JA: Okay, now, the next thing I did was when Gordon Hirabayashi, Min Yasui, and Fred Korematsu, they were released from jail, and Min Yasui was from, he came back to Minidoka.

AH: And we came back to Min Yasui. Which is good. [Laughs]

JA: So, what I did, I went to talk to Min Yasui. And at that time, this, there was this talk about reactivating the selective service and all. So I said, "I know over in Heart Mountain they're saying as an American you violated me." And I said well, Yasui, Gordon Hirabayashi and Korematsu, they had moral case -- but not legal. And when I compared their case against what was going on at Heart Mountain, they had a moral case. So I told... I got words to Frank Emi, whether by telephone or whatever it was, and I asked, "Well, do you know that you got a good moral case, but you don't have what you call legal?" So I said, "My way is that I'm going to agree with the government. Okay government, you took away my citizenship, assigned me 4-C, and 4-C said no military obligation and I'm going to go according what the government says." No military obligation, fine, that's it. So I said, "You don't have to generate any money to fight the case," and, well, by that time, Frank said no, we'll just go through without so-so. I said, "Fine, you go ahead and I'll do my thing."

<End Segment 30> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.