<Begin Segment 6>

FA: And "Let Us Not Be Rash," what prompted you to write that editorial?

JO: Well, we were receiving very negative reports in the newspaper, in the Denver Post, of these five Amache boys who refused to go to their induction. And they were making very outlandish statement about being disloyal or being loyal to the emperor or some other things like that. I didn't believe that they meant it, they were saying that because they were frustrated, I would say. And at the same time, we got an AP report, and the report was on Minidoka. It was stated that thirty at Minidoka have refused to report because they wanted to protest, not exactly to protest, but I imagine it was to protest, and asked expatriation, which meant giving up the citizenship and everything else and leaving the country, I suppose. I didn't believe in that. And so one of the things I noticed is that everybody was jumping on the people who were resisting. No one was offering any alternative. So I scratched around, anguished over it, and finally came up with the idea that if I throw out the constitutional theme, maybe they would grab it. So that's what I did. "Let Us Not Be Rash" was no ordinary editorial. I had to write it carefully because of the situation. And it turned out that the editorial became probably one of the most read, most analyzed, most summarized editorials during the war years.

FA: Jimmie, spell it out for me. What was the tightrope you had to walk when you were writing that editorial? You knew you were walking a thin line. What was that thin line, one side or the other?

JO: Well, we couldn't say directly anything that would be critical of the United States government policy, so we had to be oblique about it. And that's the approach we took. For instance, I couldn't tell the people to organize, but in essence I was telling them to organize.

FA: And several days later, you received this notice about the Fair Play Committee from Sylvia Toshiyuki?

JO: No, I received the notice about the Fair Play Committee on March 3rd from her. And then Kiyoshi Okamoto wrote directly to me, and he was under the impression that I already knew about it because he says he sent the material to the Rocky Shimpo in December, but in December I was not connected with them, so I didn't know anything about it.

FA: As you continued following and printing stories, printing the releases from the Fair Play Committee, were you aware that you were risking yourself as a journalist for prosecution by the government?

JO: I was aware all the time because I wasn't some wet-nosed kid out of the country. [Laughs] I was in journalism.

FA: So why did you keep doing it?

JO: Well, it's a matter of conscience. We believed that the, that the government was wrong and I did from before, since the Tolan Committee, it was obvious there. And actually, through the period between, why, I was very much disappointed that the Japanese Americans didn't stand up for their rights. I wasn't exactly thrilled about their taking up the draft case because I knew the consequences of a draft case, but I also understood that that was the last hitch that they had left that they could hold to, or become a part of, and so I supported that.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 1993, 2005 Frank Abe and Densho. All Rights Reserved.