<Begin Segment 9>

FA: The JACL, tell me a little bit about the JACL before the war.

JO: The JACL was officially organized as a national group in about August, first of September of 1930. It so happened that I arrived in Seattle on September 2nd, day after, and J-Town was buzzing with what they had done. They, as far as the community was concerned, they were not in favor of Japanese American Citizens League and they were very critical about some of the doings that went on during the convention. The JACL was never a dominant or major part in the lives of the Japanese Americans until the war. And the only reason they, it became important is because the government nominated them to be sole spokesman. Prior to that, the JACL was so low-key that even the people who were leaders in the JACL whom I went around with, they never spoke about the Japanese American Citizens League, it was not a popular subject to discuss.

FA: You don't like the JACL, it's known, but were there any JACL members that you did like?

JO: At that time there were a lot of people I liked that turned out to be JACL leaders later, see. [Laughs] They were JACL but, you see, they never announced themselves, so I, and I could care less at that time whether they were JACL or not, we were just friends. Well, I could tell you one thing, I liked Ken Matsumoto.

FA: Why?

JO: Well, I met Ken, Ken was not a part of the Japanese community. He was a jewelry salesman and he was an outside man, and for one thing, he was a very friendly sort of person and I don't know, you just gravitated toward him.

FA: When did you first meet Mike Masaoka?

JO: I met Mike for the first time at the second meeting of the Bay Region Council for Unity, when he came rushing in. I had the floor, he stopped 18 inches in front of me and took over, and I couldn't move out, so I just stayed right there while he made his spiel.

FA: Let me back up with something different, Jimmie. Were there other groups in the community besides the JACL before the war, other, especially after Pearl Harbor, that formed in response to community leadership? I mean people were saying that the JACL was the only leadership there was. Weren't there other members of leadership?

JO: There were number of other groups in San Francisco alone. We formed the Bay Region Council for Unity and then there was the Coordinating Council of the Buchanan YMCA. Down south there were competing organizations such as the Retail Produce Workers of Los Angeles, the Buddhists, and one other. I can't think of...

FA: Why, what happened? Why weren't they becoming the community leaders?

JO: Well, at the time the suggestion came up, Tom Clark, who was representing the FBI on the Coast, brought up the name of the Citizens Federation or something like that, and the JACL badmouthed them and I don't know if Tom Clark ever followed that up or not, the organization he knew of. But there was also an organization here in Seattle, the Junior Chamber of Commerce, which was not pro-JACL at all, they were more or less anti-JACL.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 1990, 2005 Frank Abe and Densho. All Rights Reserved.