Densho Digital Archive - Art Hansen Interview (denshovh-hart-01-0014)

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FA: Omura went to Denver like you said, couldn't start Current Life again, so what did Jimmie Omura do in Denver?

[Interruption]

FA: Jimmie Omura did a couple of things once he got to Denver. And I think one was to figure out a way to stay alive. And so his wife started a malt shop called Carole's Malt Shop, and there was a burgeoning community of Japanese Americans in Denver. I mean, it swelled from less than 2,000 to 8,000 really quickly. So there was needs that they had and services that they needed. But Jimmie Omura more importantly, I think, realized that what these people needed was employment. And so he started an employment bureau, and it was a voluntary thing. There was no charge assessed to people who used that service. And so it was really a free gift of grace to try to put these people who had come to Denver in touch with employers so that they could be gainfully employed. And then he made an attempt to broaden this to camp populations. And he only went to one of the camps the whole time, and he was never in a camp except for this time. He went to the Amache camp outside of Granada, Colorado, and he was there for a short while and they basically ran him out of the camp. So that was, he was disallowed from coming back in again and disallowed from, by the WRA, of entering any of the other camps. And he was sure and I'm pretty sure, too, from looking at what evidence I have which is largely circumstantial, that this was the action of the JACL. Said, "This is a troublemaker, keep him out."

FA: Almost a year prior to editing Rocky Shimpo, what was Jimmie's -- we heard Mike Masaoka supported the Nisei combat unit because it was segregated and they wanted to prove loyalty. What was Jimmie Omura's response to the idea of a Nisei combat unit?

AH: He was totally against it. He was against it from the time it was first announced. I mean, he wrote an editorial about it. He wrote a, he was a, not an editorial. It was a guest, he sent a letter into one of the --

FA: Let me stop you. Can you say --

AH: Jimmie said --

FA: No, just tell me, I don't have -- tell me, what was Jimmie Omura's response to the Nisei combat unit?

FC: And use the word "combat unit," "segregated combat unit."

FA: Jimmie Omura's response to the segregated combat unit...

AH: Jimmie was against a segregated combat unit, and he went on record explaining how he was against it and he even wrote directly to Secretary of War Stimson to tell Stimson that he was against it.

FA: Why was Jimmie against it?

AH: Jimmie was against the segregated combat unit because it ran in the face of several things. One is that it ran in the face of the fact that here were people who were stripped of their rights as citizens and it ran in the face of common sense and common decency. But also, he was against it because it was a retro-, retrograde measure. That what they were doing, these were people who before the war and after the Selective Service Act had been passed in 1940, Japanese Americans were in integrated units, and all of a sudden they were going into a segregated unit. He was virtually sure that it would be used as a suicide squad. And it was, they were going to be fodder in the war. So he, on all sorts of grounds, on civil rights grounds, on common sense grounds, etcetera, it was anathema to him.

FA: Did he think it was a symbol of racism?

AH: Of course. I mean, it was... the thing that he was using Current Life to do was to propel the Japanese American community out of the ghetto intellectual and otherwise and this was bringing 'em right back into it through segregation.