<Begin Segment 5>

EO: So, tell us how registration came to Heart Mountain and what you...

FE: Well, when the registration was first introduced into Heart Mountain, actually, after I read the thing, I really couldn't believe that they were asking like question 27 and 28. It was up to that point I didn't really see any problem with it. But it was, I think the heading was, statement of "Evacuee for Leave Clearance," or something like that. I don't remember the exact wording, but the logo on top of that questionnaire was that of the selective service system, see? And when 27 asked about, "Will you go into combat duty wherever ordered?" I thought it was very stupid, and a very... arrogant question to ask of us, after we were thrown out of our homes and put into these concentration camps, without even a word about our citizenship rights or civil rights, or constitutional rights being restored. And then question 28 was very, another very ambiguous and a very senseless question, because it said, "Will you" -- one of the phrases was, "Will you forswear allegiance to the Emperor of Japan?" And something that we had never sworn allegiance to the Emperor of Japan, and how can we forswear something we had never sworn to before? So that didn't make sense. And then for the, our parents to forswear allegiance to Japan, that would have left them without a country, they'd have become stateless persons. So it really made me very angry just reading that thing, and that's when I got sort of involved into it.

That night, after studying it carefully, I formed my answers to both questions. I put down, "Under the present conditions and circumstances, I am unable to answer these questions." And I put that on both 27 and 28. And then I had thought that maybe many of the camp people might have a hard time answering these questions, so I got my younger brother and we put out, wrote out our answers, "Suggested answers to questions 27 and 28," and we made a bunch of copies and pasted up in the different mess hall doors and latrine doors, wherever people gathered.

EO: What was the suggested answers? What were they?

FE: Questions 27 and 28, put both: "Under the present conditions and circumstances, I cannot answer these questions." Because you are there under duress, without due process, and how can you answer questions like that under those conditions? Which was logical, I thought, at least in my way of thinking. And that was my, actually my first activity into the grassroots activism, I guess you might say. But this was, more or less was fostered on us through necessity, you know. It just got to a point where the government was compounding one injustice onto another one.

EO: So what happened?

FE: Well, I don't know how many people read the, these posters we put up, but I imagine some of them might have got ideas from it, and answered it that way. And after that, I think it was at a community meeting, either, I don't remember for sure whether it was the Christian pastor there, or the associate editor of the Heart Mountain Sentinel, the camp newspaper, who was Nobu Kawai, who was the past president of the Pasadena chapter of JACL before the war. He was, it was either one of those two, gave a talk on why we should register and not cause any problems, you know. It was our duty to register, and not only that, but the WRA had, I think, said that penalties would be assessed or something if we didn't register. Which was a lie, because we found out later -- this was after the war -- that you didn't have to answer these, you didn't have to sign 'em. Anyway, at that meeting, after this fellow gave that talk on why we should cooperate, another older fellow -- found out later his name was Kiyoshi Okamoto -- got up and said that, "You know, the government evacuated us, put us in these concentration camps without any due process of law," and he says, "They trampled on all your constitutional rights." And this was the first time we -- at least I -- heard about due process or constitutional law or anything like that. But he gave some very good reasons for people to think about this registration before they signed it, you know. And we thought well, I guess I went there with maybe two or three, maybe four other fellows. And after the meeting we went and talked to him. And we found out he was very knowledgeable about all this constitutional law, and the injustice that was perpetuated on the Japanese Americans. So we got together and talked with him, and I think we probably got together with him a few more times. And at that time he was -- I understand that... I didn't ever hear him -- but I understood he was going around the camp, talking to whoever, whenever he could gather an audience, about the due process bit. And he called himself "The Fair Play Committee of One" at that time.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 1994, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.