<Begin Segment 8>

FA: You told us you were arraigned in Denver.

JO: Right.

FA: Then you went to Wyoming and you had to be re-arraigned, and tell me who you went before, and what he said to you when he heard your case.

JO: I forgot his name.

FA: No, it doesn't matter his name, but it was a U.S. commissioner.

JO: Yes, I was re-arraigned in Cheyenne before a U.S. commissioner and he told me that he had read my case and if it was up to him, he'd throw it out of court.

FA: And why did he say that?

JO: He volunteered it.

FA: Yeah, but I mean, okay, so what did you gather from that?

JO: Well, I knew they didn't have any evidence of the charge, so I was happy that someone else also agreed with me. [Laughs]

FA: When you received your indictment, or when you were arrested, when you first learned that the government was going to indict you and arrest you for the charge, what did you think about that, being a journalist? Being a journalist, how did you react to the fact that they were going to charge you for...

JO: I always knew that eventually they would come around to something like this, so naturally through all this I was very careful that I didn't step over the line. But, so therefore they had to come and manufacture something to tie me into it, and when they indicted me, well, I said, "This is stupid." The grand jury that did it -- the only thing I could think at the time was that it was a matter of racism, and I worried a great deal about racism, about going to trial. That's the only thing that worried me, whether I would be convicted on this type of evidence simply because I was a person of Japanese ancestry.

FA: You knew they had no evidence against you, but what was the principle that you relied on? In the back of your mind, Jimmie, that you knew that they could not convict you on?

JO: Well, the only thing I could rely on was the freedom of the press, and I instructed the lawyer through my wife to put up a defense for freedom of the press.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 1993, 2005 Frank Abe and Densho. All Rights Reserved.