<Begin Segment 11>

TI: And how about you? Were you changed by this whole experience, thinking how close you were to...

JY: No, not really, no. We didn't walk out of the camp or anything, so we just went back to the same old routine again, nothing changes, right?

TI: But still, it seemed like this might be a life-altering experience of being close to serving time in a federal penitentiary.

JY: Well, we didn't know that, right? If we heard about what's happening in Heart Mountain or Minidoka or Colorado, it might be a different story, but we don't know anything about it besides the early court cases, we're ahead of Heart Mountain, we're ahead of...

TI: And so when, later on, when you found out that there were draft resisters in other camps and they served time, what did you think?

JY: I tell 'em, "You dumb bastard, you're worse than I am." I'm an honest guy, these guys are dishonest. Kidding each other. They tell me, "You had a good judge, we had a lousy judge," you know. But what else, you know, we're just kidding around, but I made a lot of good friends, that I went to several of the meetings with them. I was the only one out of the Tule Lake that would go to any of the functions, the draft resisters functions. We had one in Cheyenne, good portion of them showed up in Cheyenne.

TI: And how about the other draft resisters when they heard your story that you were a draft resister and the judge let you guys go? What was their reaction?

JY: They said, "You're just lucky." Well, you read the book, the Eric Muller book, right? How the other judges treated them. I mean, it was terrible. That was, today's law, I mean, they would have been off the bench right now.

TI: Okay, so you returned... or before we talk about your work, so twenty-seven men were tried for draft evasion. And so you were all issued draft notices at the same time, how many actually went into the service of that first group? Do you know how many actually went into the service?

JY: Everybody that... 'cause we never kept in touch. Then I never had the list for the longest time. One of the draft resisters from Heart Mountain, Tony... anyway, he was in Denver looking through the records, looking for his Cheyenne report. And he ran across my name, "Oh, Jimi Yamaichi." I was listed on that document. So he got everything to do with the Tule Lake case, he copied it for me and sent it to me. That's how I know who was on the list. That was about, oh, five, six years, seven years, ten years after we got out of camp. 'Cause I knew him at the Heart Mountain through work or something. Jack Tono, his name was. Jack Tono. And Jack sent it to me.

TI: That's good. But not so much the draft resisters, the ones who went into the military. Were there very many from Tule Lake that went in the military?

JY: No, nobody. Nobody went to military. That was a closed case. I haven't heard, not one, 'cause we were right in the administration building, I would have known about it, heard about it.

TI: So after, after they sent the draft notices to you and others, did they just stop doing that at Tule Lake?

JY: Yeah, because nobody showed up. Maybe somebody did show up, I don't know. Maybe they, middle of the night, took off and joined the army. That we don't know.

TI: But there were no more cases of draft evasion.

JY: No more cases. So I guess the draft board, 'cause the draft board changed to a local draft board. Because according to the law, we're supposed to maintain our old draft. I'm supposed to have my San Jose draft board give me my instructions, but according to that, we were changed to Alturas draft board. I have the whole documents.

TI: Yeah, it was fascinating when I read about this, and I heard about the Tule Lake draft resisters. That was really interesting.

SF: So since the community sort of changed their attitude about resisters, did your personal attitudes change about what you did over the years? You know, the '50s and the early '60s, the resisters thing really got big in the '90s.

JY: Well, yes, they did. Several of my friends there, one of, George Kurasaki passed on so I could say his name. But I didn't know he was a draft resister, but he didn't tell his family until six months before he died. The daughter, Janie, says, "My dad told me he was a draft resister." 'Cause I didn't think she knew. And I said, "Don't feel bad," says, "I was a draft resister myself, but I was exonerated. I didn't go to jail like your dad did." But many, I think that the saddest one is the Seattle case of Yosh Uchiyama... Yosh... shoot, I can't think of his name. Anyway, he was a draft resister from Heart Mountain, and went to McNeil Island. And his mom would come every week, once a week, it took her one day just to get up there on the bus, cross over on the ferry, from the ferry, get on to McNeil Island to go see her son. See her son one or two hours, that's it, and come home. And he was released, and then his mom told his friend that, "My son was released from jail." "Oh, your son was a draft dodger?" Says, "Yeah." Says, "We don't want you to come to our functions no more." She was exonerated -- not exonerated, she was more or less excommunicated from the organization. And then she committed suicide. She was so heartbroken, after struggling to go see her son every week, and then people told her, "Don't come to our organization no more," because her son's a draft...

TI: Now, was that, did you ever have that experience where you were, sort of felt that draft resisters were sort of ostracized or shunned by the community? Did you feel that?

JY: Well, I don't know. They don't tell me directly. Among themselves, they might say that I was a draft resister and so forth, but each one has their own choice of what they want to do, I guess. But I think, I think the harshest one is not being a draft resister, like a friend of mine, a very good friend of mine, he was drafted, went to Shelby, trained, and he was on the boat, and the war ended, and then there were the 442 guys that fought over there in Europe, says, "You can't call yourself 442, you didn't kill no Germans." I mean, what the hell. Says, "I was going in good faith. I was going overseas, I was on the boat already, I was going and the war ended, so what?" "Well, still, you didn't shoot nobody, so you're not..." things like that. People made harsh remarks like that. So I'm pretty sure they're making harsh remarks to me about it. Not to me directly, but behind me. So it's hard to say.

SF: Most people probably didn't know you were a resister though, right? Because if you came back to Tule within a week and started doing the normal stuff, then...

JY: Nobody knew. Nobody knew, because the Hoshidan was so... blanket the news, nothing like that came out. Only thing that came out was the local Eureka paper. And the guy gave me all the clippings of what, pretty much, Eureka paper. "They were freed," it's a fairly decent article, but I don't know, I misplaced it someplace. One of these days I'll find it. It wasn't all that bad, even a local paper.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.