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FA: Tell me about James Omura, just briefly, your opinion of James Omura.

MW: He was a man ahead of his time. I do, I do envy the enormous insight he had without even having the advantage of a college education, to see through these government edicts. Whereas you had the Ph.Ds and the academic types who should have known better, who had studied the Constitution backwards and forwards. But you needed a James Omura. A simple unassuming person who was suspicious of, you know, these braggadocio types who stuck themselves ahead of others and assumed leadership when he felt that the leadership demanded true leading of the people to a restoration of rights that was being shorn. And that was Omura's terrible, terrible dilemma. He was a nobody. He knew that he was just a journalist, but he had a terrible, terribly refined and sensitive conscience. And he felt that we need leadership. We've got to stop this. We can, we can still stop it if we would all get together. But he was a lone voice crying in the wilderness.

FA: Would you say that Frank Emi provided leadership at Heart Mountain?

MW: Oh, indeed he did. Yes, because, well, you know. You've seen the bulletins.

FA: Did you include Jimmie Omura in your book?

MW: Jimmie Omura... you see, I have to explain that when I wrote my book I had so much material. And what I wanted to do was to break new ground. I wanted to be able to cover areas which had not been touched upon. Oh, I was so intimidated when it came to Heart Mountain because Douglas Nelson had his book published. Prior to that, Roger Daniels had his book published, Concentration Camps U.S.A., in which he quotes quite a bit from his student Douglas Nelson. And I thought, "Oh my gosh, here's an area where I need so much research but I could never do justice to it as Douglas Nelson has done. I would not be breaking new ground." I had written a footnote saying that since this area has been covered by Roger Daniels and Douglas Nelson so carefully, I prefer not to tread on areas that have been so scrupulously researched. Well, darn it, it happened that my editor -- and it was partly my fault because I should have kept track of everything that she had excised as being a little too much -- and it wasn't until the book had come out that I realized, oh, that particular footnote crediting Nelson and Daniels had been excised.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 1998, 2005 Frank Abe and Densho. All Rights Reserved.