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CO: So, how long did you continue in your editor's position with the newspaper?

JO: Well, the newspaper merged with the Hokubei Asahi at that time, which was strongly pro-JACL. And the merged paper was known as the New World Sun. I remained with that until mid-January of 1936 and then I quit. Well, the reason I quit -- and I think you should ask the question, "Why did I quit?" [Laughs] There was a reason. And that is that in the New Year's edition, a op-ed letter appeared in the paper in which it criticized the newspaper because of my performance or whatever, my editorship on the paper. Then about the middle of January, we received a letter from Stockton by a fellow named Okomoto. Now this criticism letter was signed by a fellow named Okomoto, Tom Okomoto, Stockton. But there was an actual Tom Okomoto living in Stockton. And he complained that all his friends were ostracizing him because of this criticism letter. And for one thing, Stockton area was, you could say, fairly pro-myself. So that naturally this criticism hurt this one fellow so he wrote in and asked for an apology from the, from the newspaper and asked that they state that he did not write it, write that letter. As a result of which we concluded that this was a manufactured letter and the editors of the... Japanese editors, editorial board which had combined with the Hokubei editorial board, I went to the New World Daily editorial staff, and they suggested that I talk to the publisher, that the publisher was a fair man and he would do the right thing. The publisher was a former publisher of the New World Daily. So I met with him at his apartment and he listened to my story. And when I had finished, he didn't say anything for a while and then he told me, "Why don't you sue the paper?" That's his paper. He said, "Why don't you sue?" In other words, he was going to condone this practice. I was so disgusted I went back to the editors of the New World Daily and told them that as far as I'm concerned I don't work for a publisher of this sort. So I quit. And they promised that they would call a staff meeting, full staff meeting, and thrash the issue out. And I was in Seattle at the time. And two weeks later, they surely called a staff meeting. And it was a humdinger, the report was a humdinger. You could ask Howard Imaseki, who's in this city. The English editorial staff was completely, more or less completely, changed. In other words, Howard was demoted; he continued on for about a year or so and then he left. When he left, not a single member of the original staff remained. They all left, all fired or something.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 1994, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.