<Begin Segment 8>

FA: I want to go, we'll go to that demonstration in a minute. Two more questions about the "loyalty oath." What have you found -- after this is all over, after the registration is completed -- what was discovered about the need for replying to the "loyalty oath"?

MW: What was discovered?

FA: Was, did the, did the Issei and Nisei have to answer questions twenty-seven and twenty-eight?

MW: Of course not. Because the War Department itself decided on February the 23rd that it's not compulsory. It should not be compulsory. Yet -- I will never understand, I suppose it's like anything else -- the project directors wanted to outdo each other. And it is laughable, but at Tule Lake, Project Director Best, he knew very well about the army announcement that it was not compulsory, but he was so angry at this organized resistance which spread from block... well, first it started as barracks, barrack number 23, barrack number 24, barrack number 25. Then it became blocks. And the organization was absolutely incredible, so that entire barracks would know that if the internal security should come in the middle of the night to pick up supposed ringleaders, that So-and-so should immediately go to the mess hall and start ringing that bell. And that meant that everybody should jump out of bed and surround that barrack. And of course the two or three internal security guys were so intimidated by just a mob that they simply couldn't get to the ringleaders. Of course, the ringleaders changed their beds. They never hid, they didn't stay in their apartment. They had friends who would allow them to sleep in their bed once night, or another night they would change. So that Tule Lake group had it incredibly organized to the extent that many of them had their bags packed. The leaders all knew that sooner or later they'll get caught, they'll get caught, so they had their bags packed. But when they were caught and they were sent off in the back of a truck, everybody came out to give them a rousing send-off and they were proclaimed martyrs. [Laughs] So yeah, that guy Best, Project Director Best, had the nerve to make so many disloyals. He would send people to places like Bismarck. Bismarck is the last stop to Japan, or Santa Fe, that's the last stop before Japan. And he kept sending these "troublemakers" out 'til April 6th. And you know that the registration began around February the 11th. So you can imagine the number of people he was able to get rid of.

FC: What camp, at what camp was the registration form first introduced?

MW: I think the registration was first introduced at Tule Lake. And Mr. Best went from mess hall to mess hall to personally announce the fact that, "There's going to be this registration and that each one of you is obliged to go and register." Well, Tule Lake, after all, they had quite a number of Kibei there and they had their own mind. And they just said, "There's something fishy about this," and they just decided that, "No, not our mess -- not our block. We just will as a block refuse to go." And that spread to the next block, you see. And they finally sent in the army with trucks, and they picked up the men. I mean, they would go to, like, Block 23 and they would grab the men. I mean, they would go into the homes and grab those young men and put them on the back of the car and I mean, I must say, it makes me cry every time I think of it. But their little sisters, their brothers, would just hang onto their seventeen-year-old, or eighteen-year-old, nineteen-year old-brothers. They couldn't stand seeing these armed troops hauling their brothers away, and they just clung to them. And they just -- it was tragic. But that, of course, intensified.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 1998, 2005 Frank Abe and Densho. All Rights Reserved.