<Begin Segment 8>

EO: Tell us about the draft.

[Interruption]

FE: Early in January 1944, the army had decided to apply the draft into the concentration camps at more or less the suggestion of the Japanese American Citizens League. The reason for that was because at first they had asked for volunteers from the different camps and they had expected a big enlistment because of the record in Hawaii, where thousands volunteered because, after all, they were never evacuated or put in concentration camps like we were. So the Japanese American Citizens League at that time had made an offer to the United States Army to have volunteers from the camps be put into a suicide battalion and to hold the families of the hostages, the families of the volunteers and friends held as hostages to insure their loyalty. Which the army refused to do since we're not in the practice of holding hostages or forming suicide battalions. And this was suggested by Mike Masaoka, who was the head of the Japanese American Citizens League at that time. So that didn't go nowhere. And the volunteers, was a very dismal showing in the volunteers, I think, I don't know -- 800 or so volunteers. They had expected thousands from each camp. Yes.

EO: So let's just back up. Can you just say a statement -- that was around the loyalty questionnaire, wasn't it? That was the recruitment for the volunteers?

FE: No, actually, the loyalty questionnaire didn't have much to do with the volunteering. Even if you answered "yes-yes," it didn't really mean that you were volunteering.

EO: Wasn't it that they were coming around to recruit for the volunteers at that time?

FE: As far as I know, I'm not sure about that, maybe James might be able to clear that up later. All I know is that the volunteer program was a disappointment, so they, that's why they instituted the draft into the camps. And when we heard about this, it was really unbelievable. We didn't think that the government would really apply the draft into the camps on the same basis as the free people on the outside especially after having reclassified us from whatever we were -- 1-A or 3-A to 4-C which was an "enemy alien" classification. So naturally when this came up, the Fair Play Committee, which at that time wasn't too active, but when this came up we got very interested because it affected all of us younger people. So we took it up and we started to hold mass meetings in the camp. In the beginning we had to get permits from the administration project director to hold these meetings but when they got wind of what we were doing they refused to give us any permits. But we went ahead with the meetings anyway and actually they didn't try to stop us. And we were holding meetings maybe almost every night in various blocks for the first few weeks there. And in conjunction with the meetings we would issue bulletins explaining what the committee was doing and explaining our position, and in short, the first couple of bulletins, we were more informative. And at these meetings we would get the sense of the feelings of the crowd and it was like ninety-nine percent were really opposed to the draft because they thought that, "How come they put us in these camps, treat us like prisoners and now they want to draft us into the army like as if nothing happened? Without even talking about our rights, without even explaining that, what happens to our constitutional rights and our families." So the consensus was very negative on the draft.

And the third meeting, the third bulletin we issued was the one that became controversial because up to this point we had been informational and some of us decided we should take a stand and come right out and say that we're against this until our rights were clarified and our constitutional rights were restored. Naturally, we had some in the steering committee of the Fair Play Committee that questioned the advisability of going so strong, but finally after much discussion, those that felt that we had to take a strong stand prevailed and we came out with the resolution that, "We hereby refuse to go to the draft if and when we are called," in order to contest the issue.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 1994, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.