Densho Digital Archive
Emiko and Chizuko Omori Collection
Title: Frank Emi Interview
Narrator: Frank Emi
Interviewers: Emiko Omori (primary), Chizu Omori (secondary)
Location: San Francisco, California
Date: March 20, 1994
Densho ID: denshovh-efrank-01-0014

<Begin Segment 14>

EO: What happened to Kiyoshi Okamoto?

FE: Now, Kiyoshi Okamoto and Sam -- Kiyoshi Okamoto and Sam Horino were whisked away to Tule Lake one day, without even a chance to say goodbye to his parents. He was just arbitrarily just taken away. The reason that Sam -- the reason that Kiyoshi was taken away was because he was the chairman of the Fair Play Committee and they figured he was a troublemaker, ringleader. And in Sam's case, he walked out of the camp one day and nobody stopped him and he walked back in, and nobody stopped him, so... and then he went talking about it, so he was considered also a troublemaker and he was taken away to Tule Lake with Kiyoshi Okamoto.

EO: Tell us about this walking in and out of camp. Didn't you do that?

FE: Yes, Minoru Tamesa and I decided to walk out of the camp, we had a reason for this. First I'll tell you what happened. We went by the sentry and we started to walk through and he stopped us, and said, "You can't go out." And we answered that we had a perfect right to go in and out, we're American citizens, we didn't do anything wrong. And he still refused to let us go, so we said, "Well, what's going to happen if we insist on going out and keep walking?" He says, "I'll have to shoot you." So there was no point in getting shot, so we let him take us into the guardhouse and we stayed there for a couple of days, and one thing, we did get much better food in there than we got in camp. So, I had a hearing with... both I and Tamesa had a hearing with Robertson on this particular thing. I think at that time we had about four or five officials there facing us, the project director, the project attorney, the security captain, the military police there -- the head of the military police. And somebody else, I forget who it was, maybe it was the camp police there that was there, too. And also, at that time, Nobu Kawai, who was the assistant editor of the Heart Mountain Sentinel who was instrumental in really chastising us... he was there, he said, "as just a observer." And we had quite a long interview at that time.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 1994, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.