<Begin Segment 13>

FA: Before I move on, quickly, you told us Mike Masaoka, his feeling about mass evacuation was "we'll be slaughtered," tell me what was Jimmie Omura's thought, his reaction to the idea of mass evacuation?

AH: He thought it was a disaster. He thought that was a slaughter in itself. The slaughter...

FA: Jimmie... say his name.

AH: Yeah. I think Jimmie Omura thought that mass evacuation really was a kind of self-annihilation and, by the community. And that he felt that the very least that should be done is to register dissent and say this was wrong and to fight this situation so that you established a precedent, you went on record, you didn't just cave in as accommodationists and sort of aid and abet the evacuation, you said, "This, you know, was constitutionally wrong, this was morally wrong." And he also felt that the assessment by Masaoka was one of convenience. That he did not see the hysteria, he did not see the danger coming from the larger community. He thought that this hobgoblinization was imposed upon the situation by Masaoka. And I think he took a much more sober look and probably in part it's because he knew the pulse of the community through working as a, as a newspaper man in the community.

FA: Great.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 1998, 2005 Frank Abe and Densho. All Rights Reserved.