<Begin Segment 7>

Q: Gordon, what went through your mind as you wrote that statement? Why did you decide to write it?

GH: Well, with curfew, I'm there, but with the exclusion order, I have to either go underground and involve other people in terms of food and place to stay and so on, or I'd be somewhere where they'd pick me up anyway. So I decided remaining incognito was not the main thing, it was the protest stand. So I consulted my lawyer friend, Arthur Barnett, and he agreed to drive me over to the FBI office the morning after everybody was gone.

Q: You had already written the statement by that time and had thought out why you had done, or why you were going to dissent?

GH: Yeah. Well, I sort of knew what I was going to be, where I was going to go, so I prepared a statement for them and circulated a few copies to some of my close friends. One of those got to the FBI, so they already had the statement.

Q: How did the FBI get it?

GH: Well, they wouldn't tell me. They said, "We might use that source again, so we would rather not disclose it." So I never knew from them, although I heard from somebody else that I had dropped the statement getting off of a bus or something and somebody picked it up. And "Why I'm Refusing to Move Out," or something, the title of it. And they thought, "Gee, this should go to the FBI," so they got it.

Q: Why did you think that statement, to have it written with you was necessary?

GH: Well, they're going to ask me, what am I doing, and how come, and so on, so I just prepared the gist of my thoughts in one page. So that's the reason for that.

Q: Do you recall any of the wording right now?

GH: Yeah. I said that I had a certain philosophy as an American, that I felt it important for me to live according to that philosophy, some of the things that I learned in school. And if I weren't going to do that, then accept the second-class status, then I'd have to change my philosophy, my whole life outlook, and that was too complicated, so I decided I'd stick to my existing philosophy and belief, which was a common American belief. I wasn't thinking any different. And decided to follow it, even though that meant, obviously, arrest, and whatever would happen after that.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 1983, 2010 Densho and Steven Okazaki. All Rights Reserved.