<Begin Segment 16>

FC: You said Omura, you described him as Thoreauean, living like Thoreau. Any other similarity or did he take actual inspiration from any of Thoreau's works?

AH: In my conversations with him and in reading the stuff, I never heard him talk at length about Thoreau as a source of inspiration. What he talked about more was the transcendentalists, and he lumped Thoreau in with Emerson and Alcott and others. And in the 1930s, I think he hitchhiked back across the United States and it's kind of interesting the places that he chose to go and the reasons he chose to go there. One of the places he went was Washington, D.C., and he went and paid homage to all the pantheon of American heroes. You know, Lincoln and Washington, Jefferson, it was very important. He also goes to Greenwich Village. Because here was another pantheon of people who talked about, you know, freedom of expression, who were artists and writers and there was always that side of Jimmie. I don't think it was one of his better sides. I read some of his poetry and it probably was something that he had a higher opinion of than other people. But he also went up to New England, and he went to see Walden Pond and he went to the patriotic sites up in that area where the "shot heard round the world" was at the Concord bridge. He went there, I believe he said that he went to Emerson's home and everything. So it's kind of an index of what he found really very important.

The thing about Thoreau that -- and the reason I used it was not just because of the direct inspiration but just that Thoreau himself was, was a very singular person and a person who was self-focused and self-concerned and everything, but had the strength of his convictions. And I would suspect that if I keep digging into the records I'm going to find some more things about Thoreau's impact on Jimmie, I just haven't found it yet. But there's a lot to wade through.

FC: Jimmie's best, you said Jimmie's poetry was so-so to not very good. What do you think his best writing was?

AH: When he was pissed off at something and when he was indignant, and was writing as a journalist. I think he was a superb editorial writer; he's just a powerful editorial -- those, that's his poetry. His poetry is so wooden, it's so romantic at times, it's embarrassing. His journalism on the other hand, when he hit his stride in his journalism, the words just poured forth, and the fearlessness and where the words came from, from the belly, and everything. And they weren't just thoughts and everything. They were powerful. I mean, I think that those words in his editorials are the ones I think that give him equal claim, really, with his actions such as going to the Tolan Committee hearings as anything. They were just, they were fabulous. And not only, not only with the Rocky Shimpo, but when Jimmie was an editorial writer in the 1930s for the, for the various vernacular presses in Los Angeles and San Francisco. And, you know, those were extremely powerful editorials that I think -- and in Current Life. I mean, that's it. If you take that as his corpus of his work, the editorials, I think you've got a, the best of Jimmie.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 1998, 2005 Frank Abe and Densho. All Rights Reserved.