<Begin Segment 4>

FC: How did you find out Min Yasui was an informant for the FBI?

JO: Well, we always knew that there was something wrong with him. And actually, what made us very suspicious of him was that he came to the Rocky Shimpo to complain about the Rocky Shimpo's emphasis upon the Fair Play Committee, and the fact that, like he said, the Rocky Shimpo don't publish anything contrary. So, so we had a long talk, and during that talk, he seems to accept everything I told him, that we can't publish anything if we don't have anything. And I invited him if he would write an objective article, that we would give him just as much importance to that as anything else, which he did, and which we published. But just before he left -- I thought everything was in good shape, but just before he left, I was holding the door open to the street, he turned around and says, "I'm going to see you go to prison one way or another." Over the weekend I thought about that, that bothered me a great deal, and on Monday morning I came to work and I told the publisher, "I think this man is a, an informant, and so we ought to try to confirm it." So the publisher says that she had a direct line to the FBI agent, so she would call the FBI, which she did, and she passed the information to me that the FBI says that he's not in yet, and for her to call the marshal's office.

[Interruption]

FC: You asked your publisher to call the FBI. Okay, let's take it, pick up the story there again.

JO: I didn't ask the publisher to call the FBI, she volunteered to call the publisher, because she knew an FBI agent. And she made the call and they told her that Mr. Yasui isn't in yet, that he's a little bit late this morning and that we should try the marshal's office. So I decided to call the marshal's office. And when I called, they told me that, "Mr. Yasui is very late this morning. It's possible that he sometimes goes to the FBI first before reporting in." And by that we already knew that he was an informant, that he was making these scheduled stops from the marshal's office to the FBI as a rule and so forth.

FC: You suspected Yasui, you felt Yasui was an informant, and yet he had violated the curfew, created a test case, had presented himself to the world and Japanese America as a resister. What happened?

JO: I looked into Min Yasui's case, and after reading his case I decided that this man wasn't doing this for the benefit of the Japanese Americans, he was doing it for himself. His case clearly shows that within forty-eight hours he changed his mind, and when asked if he regretted doing it, he says he regretted what he had done. But he had already done it so naturally he was tried.

FC: Who asked him?

JO: Two FBI agents who incidentally were his former classmates at the university.

FC: University of Oregon.

JO: Right.

FC: Could you say that?

JO: University of Oregon.

FC: Say, "Coincidentally were his former classmates at the University of Oregon."

JO: Coincidentally, they were former classmates at the University of Oregon.

FC: And how did you know this conversation took place?

JO: It's in the records.

FC: The transcript of the trial?

JO: Transcript of the trial, and previous to the trial. It's all in the record.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 1993, 2005 Frank Abe and Densho. All Rights Reserved.