<Begin Segment 8>

FA: Wait a minute, this is, William Hohri said that you were the first to call for redress back in May of '42.

JO: Yes, yes. That was it.

FA: What were you after? What did you say? What did you say?

JO: We were after rectification of constitutional wrongs and reparation as a result.

FA: How were you going, how were you going to go after that with this Washington lawyer?

JO: Well, yes, the law firm was going to file suit and they expressed a willingness to file that suit and gave us terms that I felt, in fact, comparing to later day, it was very reasonable. Although at that time the dollar was different, you know.

FA: Did you ask for the JACL's help in doing this?

JO: No, of course I wouldn't.

FA: Why not?

JO: Well, for the simple fact that the JACL had declared itself willing to fully cooperate with the government. There was no purpose, we were doing the contrary thing to fight the government.

FA: What did you think about the JACL's willingness to cooperate fully with the government?

JO: I thought they betrayed Japanese America.

FA: Go on. Why?

JO: Well, because they didn't stand up and represent Japanese Americans, they sold themselves to the government. A lot of people may not agree with it, but I was right there.

FA: They said that they really had no choice.

JO: Oh, there were choices. After all, there were about at least three or four lawyers who were willing to take a case against the government at that time.

[Interruption]

FA: The JACL says that we had no choice but to go along because they had the guns on our backs. Did you agree with that at the time?

JO: Absolutely not. Not then or now.

FA: Why not?

JO: Well, I didn't have any sense that there was a gun leveled against us, for one thing. But I do know that they used that theory because, well, personally, I think that the JACL used the Japanese Americans for their own purpose, and for that reason I have a very great difficulty in agreeing with the stance that they took. In my estimation, the... I believe that the JACL used fear as the weapon to coerce the Japanese Americans into captivity. And although I understand to a great extent the fact that many household had no men leading it and that the womenfolks had small children they were concerned about and they were forced into whatever, I feel that they didn't have any choice, but I think the Japanese Americans as a whole did have a choice. The least in my opinion is that they could have protested, and if they had protested, that fact today would mitigate to their favor, but I'm afraid that overall, when you assess the evacuation, you're going to have to say that the Japanese went meekly into camp.

Insofar as using fear, I think the JACL has been using it, they used it then, used it later, and using it now to justify their action by saying that they were afraid the army would come in with guns and cannons and rifles and assassinate, massacre us, is what Masaoka states in his response. And I don't think that there's any foundation for that. The reason why I say this is because the Japanese, the United States government was very much concerned about prisoners of war in the hands of the Japanese. They did everything possible to prevent their mistreating American prisoners. The State Department files will show that they were concerned, their, their policy was aimed toward not aggravating the Japanese government, and this would be contrary to Masaoka's theory that they would have assassinated Japanese American on the West Coast.

FA: Masaoka says that the good treatment that we got, it was necessary to cooperate and cooperate cheerfully in order to get the kind and gentle treatment that we did get.

JO: I have great doubt believing that it was kind and gentle treatment in those camps. Though I wasn't there, I've heard many stories of people who came out of there, and they don't feel that that was a picnic.

FA: Cressey Nakagawa, we had a videotape in San Diego where he says it was the government you should be blaming, not the JACL.

JO: Well, the primary responsibility lies with the United States government for violating our constitutional rights. But the JACL went hand in glove with the government and I can't see how you could divorce that from their responsibility when you're weighing the facts.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 1990, 2005 Frank Abe and Densho. All Rights Reserved.