<Begin Segment 11>

FA: When did you first get the idea to protest?

JO: Well, I don't think I thought about protesting. It just happened that I was geared that way, I guess. [Laughs] Because I felt that... in fact, I didn't think of appearing before the committee. We discussed it in the office of Current Life and I had ruled that the, since the Executive Order 9066 had just come down the pike, you know, two days ago, that the Tolan Committee effort was a exercise in futility, so why waste our time appearing before it. So I had no intention of appearing, and then at work at 4:15, I got a call from my office, head office, to the shipping shed, and it was my boss on other end and he said to me, "Jim," he says, "you're wanted by a Congressional committee, there's a courier waiting for you at the office." That was my first indication that I was needed or wanted or something, you know. [Laughs] Yeah, surprised me.

FA: You didn't even volunteer for the Tolan Committee.

JO: No. Last minute request. In fact, in the Seattle report, the Tolan Committee, that they had requested me.

FA: Very quickly, what was the purpose of the Bay Region Council for Unity?

JO: Well, I'm responsible for naming it because I passed the resolution, I made the motion for that name, and it was accepted. The original purpose was... it came from Isamu Noguchi, the sculptor, and in fact we were meeting at his Grant Avenue studio. He wanted to form what was called the Nisei Writers and Artists Mobilization for Democracy. When it was, he came to my office and we discussed it and although I didn't tell him at that time, I had in my mind that this sounded too much to me like propaganda. He said he had direct communication with what's-his-name in Washington, D.C., and the man in charge of facts and figures in the Library of Congress.

FA: Archibald MacLeish.

JO: Yes, Archibald MacLeish, and that the Nisei group would operate through the Hollywood group, take orders, go through that channel. That seemed to me, propaganda. And I'm not strong on propaganda, whoever -- whether it's JACL, whether it's the government, I'm not strong on propaganda. Because propaganda is not truth. So, so I proposed that it be called Bay Region Council for Unity and then become community endeavor to express our feelings, you know, apart from the JACL. I didn't want it to be part of JACL. There was an effort to make it into a JACL subordinate.

FA: What was the danger of making it a JACL organization?

JO: Well, then there's no purpose in that because we don't have any influence. They could say, "Well, that's fine, but we're going to do it this way," and there's nothing we could do.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 1990, 2005 Frank Abe and Densho. All Rights Reserved.