Densho Digital Archive
Emiko and Chizuko Omori Collection
Title: Jimmie Omura Interview
Narrator: Jimmie Omura
Interviewer: Chizu Omori (primary); Emiko Omori (secondary)
Location: San Francisco, California
Date: March 21, 1994
Densho ID: denshovh-ojimmie-01-0021

<Begin Segment 21>

CO: When did you first find out that the stuff was getting you into real trouble?

JO: Who?

CO: No, you know, when did, like, the Justice Department approach you about all this?

JO: Well, I was... it's a strange thing, you know. I was in the Carol's Malt Shop, and two detectives came in, locked the door, and one approached me. He wouldn't touch me, but he, because he was so close, you know, I drew back. And as I was drawing back, I finally wound up in one of the back booths. And there's a telephone above my head, and I tried, I tried to reach it to call an attorney. But he wouldn't allow me to touch it. You know, by waving his hand above it. And he never touched me, actually, but he obstructed me. And this went on from 9 o'clock to about 11 o'clock. And he wouldn't let me speak to anyone. And finally he asked me for my social -- my selective service card.

CO: Did they take you someplace?

JO: Well, I'm coming to that.

CO: You spent two hours in this malt shop?

JO: Yeah, and when they first came in, they had said there was a pro-Japanese statement made in this establishment. And I said, "But I wasn't there." They says, "I know that." Then they kept pressing me. Then they asked me to show my selective service card, which I did, and they says that that was not my name on the card. And about 11 o'clock, or a little after 11 o'clock, he called the United States attorney. And then he allowed me, I guess, he was told to allow me a phone call, so allowed me a phone call, and I called an attorney. In the meantime, the attorney called the United States attorney. This is after 11 at night. And the United States attorney said that if I would agree to show up at his office in the morning at 8 o'clock, he'd call the dogs off, you know. So I agreed. The next morning we went to the, his office and after a little preliminary argument, why, I gave him where I was born, etc. where I worked. After that he let me go and started an investigation by the FBI. And then the Los -- San Francisco FBI did not send their official declaration clearing me until November, at which time the United States attorney refused to press charges. The reason for all of this was that, see, I was born Yutaka Matsumoto, but I'm known as Jimmie Omura. And I had signed my selective service as Jimmie Omura. But in 1943 when I felt the hot breath of the JACL on my back, I had it legally changed. So that by the time this matter was brought up I was legally changed Matsumoto Omura.

CO: When did you feel the effects of the editorials that you'd been publishing? Started to get you into trouble, didn't it?

JO: Well, I knew that taking the position was a hot one, you know. But I thought it -- it was something that I believed in and I didn't believe that Japanese Americans should kowtow to the government. Their basic rights were being challenged. And I think that when your basic right is being challenged, you should stand up and be counted.

CO: So what actually happened? You were arrested?

JO: Well, I wasn't immediately arrested. I knew at the time I was writing the editorials that there were many organizations after my skin, including the Y-, mostly the Christian group, the YWCA. A national officer came to Denver University and said, "We've got to stop Jimmie Omura from writing those editorials." She wrote that into the latter part of her speech. At the time, we were aware that the government was trying to have me indicted. But they had been trying to indict me from before anyway, before the Fair Play Committee. They were trying to indict me -- they had a case called James Omura and the Rocky Shimpo. Which got combined with Okamoto et. al. in the conspiracy case. So I was always aware, and I knew we were treading dangerous ground, but I felt that we were just skimming the edges, not, not actually going beyond what you call sedition. When we felt this, I had the publisher contact the WRA to ask them their opinion whether the editorials in the Rocky Shimpo was seditious. They all said it bordered on sedition but was not sedition. In the meantime, the JACL was howling about sedition, and the Justice Department was talking about sedition, so that you could pretty well assume that the JACL and the Justice Department were pretty well tied together. The JACL was the first to mention sedition.

[Interruption]

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 1994, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.