<Begin Segment 2>

FA: Mike Masaoka and the JACL urged cooperation with evacuation.

BH: Uh-huh.

FA: Why did they, why did they do that? Why did the JACL do that?

BH: What choice did you have? When you're faced with a young guy with a gun pointed at you, and he's got a very nervous trigger finger, and they say, "This is what you guys are going to do," you don't say, "Now wait a minute, I'm going to stand on my constitutional rights." That's a very difficult situation, and Masaoka and the others were aware of the constitutional implications. As I said at the luncheon today, there are times to hold, hold your cards and there are times when you have to fold your cards. I think Masaoka felt that he had to fold his cards at that time.

FA: Were you ever faced with a soldier with a gun, an itchy finger? Was Mike ever faced with a gun -- a soldier with a gun? I mean...

BH: Well, that's a metaphor. I did face people with guns, yes. There were guys with guns that escorted me into the assembly center at Puyallup. But who was it? Bendetsen, in his speech at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, said, "We had two plans: one was the plan we executed. The other plan was to get these people out of here on twenty-four hours' notice."

FA: That's what Mike always said, but Bendetsen's speech only says that we were prepared to begin evacuation of the West Coast within twenty-four --

[Interruption]

FA: Mike always talked about the army's contingency plan, quoting Bendetsen's speech about moving people out. But Bendetsen's speech only says, "We will begin the evacuation within twenty-four, forty-eight hours." Not accomplishing it.

BH: Uh-huh. Well, I haven't read Bendetsen's speech, so I can't comment. But it was very obvious to us in Seattle how ill-prepared the army was, and how intent they were on carrying out their mission. Let me give you an example. I sat in on a meeting between the army people and the Seattle police, and they were talking about the evacuation. And the Seattle police said, "In this particular area of the city, we have, let's say, 1,500 Japanese." And they would make up one unit for the evacuation, and they had map on the wall. And looked at the map, and it was a map of the Western Avenue area, where about a thousand Japanese came in during the day to work in the produce, wholesale markets. At four o'clock in the evening, everybody went home. There was nobody there, but the police didn't know that. And it was a revelation as to, about how well -- how ill-informed they were, and the kind of information they were feeding the army.

FA: We checked, and again, Mike talked about the army contingency plan. But we checked, and the army only had forty-nine tanks at the time. And general George C. Marshall said they had 174,000 men in the army at the time. To evacuate 120,000 Japanese Americans? I mean, it wasn't, it was not possible for the army to evacuate us all in twenty-four hours. And yet that's the argument --

BH: How did we know? How did we know? They said, "We're gonna move you out," who were we to say, "You only got forty-nine tanks, try it."

FA: You didn't know. Couldn't have known.

BH: Couldn't have.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 1994, 2005 Frank Abe and Densho. All Rights Reserved.