<Begin Segment 13>

EO: Okay, and going back... let's just clarify this. Did you, were you drafted?

FE: I was never in danger of being drafted. In fact, of the leaders, I think, four of us wouldn't, probably never been drafted because two were way overage, one was in their forties and one was probably closer to fifty, I don't know, somewhere around there. And myself and Paul Nakadate, we were married, we had children, so... I had two children, Paul had one. And they were not drafting fathers with dependents at that time. So we would have, wouldn't have been involved in the draft at all.

EO: So why were you doing this?

FE: Well, we felt, at least I felt so strongly about the injustice of it that I just had to do something and it was no problem, it was just something that had to be done and it was just spontaneous. Felt that the principle of the Constitution was kicked around long enough that we thought we have to dig in and fight back at some point.

EO: Okay, so is that how your fellow members felt, too, the ones that were not eligible?

FE: Yes, they all felt pretty much the way I did. That's why we were more or less the steering committee, because we felt very strongly about it. Although when it came right down to the outright refusing to respond to the draft notices, we did have some discussion. Some of them felt that that was going too strong and they didn't like it, but I think the majority of us felt that we had to take a strong stand and we sort of won out at the discussion.

EO: Were there any restrictions in your steering committee? Were Issei restricted?

FE: Yes, the Fair Play Committee itself was more or less just for the citizens, the U.S. citizens, therefore no Isseis were members of the Fair Play Committee. As I explained before, as Mr. Kubota volunteered to help us translate these things into Japanese and then he made, translated these things into... Japanese-speaking people so they could listen to him, he spoke in Japanese to 'em. So, but he understood the chance that he was taking but he also said that he was... really felt that we were doing the right thing so he wanted to, even if it jeopardized his position, he was more than willing to help us out.

EO: What do you mean by "jeopardizing his position"?

FE: Well, being a "enemy alien," he could have been charged with something much more serious than what the American citizens would be charged with. Maybe sabotage, or might even, something worse. He could have been put in a much... maybe more dangerous situation, but he was very adamant that he wanted to help us out because he knew that what we were doing was right.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 1994, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.