<Begin Segment 6>

FA: One more quick question: what... I never quite understood what he lied about in his testimony. I mean, what did he lie about?

FE: Okay. He lied about that Mr. Kawamoto's statement that he said that I advised Dave Kawamoto that I will take care of him. That never occurred. And what else did he say on there that I can't quite remember?

FA: That you had asked him to go out and get him some bottles of mimeograph ink.

FE: That's true. I did. See, that part is true. I asked him to buy some mimeograph ink. And he said, "Okay." He was very cooperative. He came back and says, "I couldn't get any, Frank. They didn't have any." That part's true. But the other parts where he says I coached guys, I told them to answer... I didn't even contact with these guys. You know, most of the resisters, I didn't have contact with them. We just presented our message at these meetings. That's why most of those guys in the group, I don't know. I never, I never coached them like he said. And that's why he was so aggravating, so I was astonished that he would come out and say these real bare-faced lies.

FA: The bit about those mimeographed things to do with you were, whether or not you published the bulletins. You, you published the bulletins.

FE: With the help of a few others, like some people helped type. But usually Paul, Paul Nakadate, I, Min Tamesa and Horino were the most active ones. We would get together and we would, you know, write out the message on the bulletins. Yeah.

FA: Oh yeah. I wanted to ask you about that, like you talked about at dinner the other night. What part do you remember that you contributed to the writing of the bulletins?

FE: That part where it says, "We hereby refuse to go to the physical, into the induction if and when we are called." Now, this was the fund-, we had quite a controversy in the steering committee. Like, I think Paul and Ben Wakaye were hesitant on that. They didn't want to go that strong. And my brother tells me that Min Tamesa told him, "If Frank talked to me like he talked to Paul Nakadate and looked at me like that," he said, "I'd either run away or haul off and hit him." [Laughs] Anyway, after much discussion we got to the point where we put that phrase in. And then Paul -- I give him credit for this -- he said, "Well, we'd better put in the thing about in order to contest the issue." So we went along with that. We thought that was good, that was good thinking.

FA: So it wasn't just to refuse the draft, but you refused the draft because of this condition.

FE: Right. Right.

FA: Makes it clear. And, "One for all, all for one." It's a very striking motto that you guys put out there. Whose idea was that?

FE: I think it was mine. I'm not sure, but I believe I got it from some novel or something and I figured that, and then I remember distinctly getting that two Bill of Rights thing in there, you know. Bill of Rights phrases in there.

FA: Well, you, you said that you never pressured any other guys --

FE: That's right.

FA: -- to buck the draft.

FE: Right.

FA: But "One for all, all for one," that suggests group action, that we all gotta stick together. And there's a certain pressure that we get, for us to stick together.

FE: Well, it could be. It could be.

FA: Nothing... can't I read something sinister into that?

FE: No, I don't think so, because as the Fair Play Committee, as a group, we ought to stick together, but we don't pressure anybody to come with us and join us. Even within the group, if they, at the last minute, wanted to go answer the draft, why, we didn't object to that. We didn't say, "No, you gotta stick with us," or, "You're being disloyal to our group," or anything like that. It was, we really left it up to the individual. We gave them guidelines, you know, on what's happened, how your rights were trampled on, and we had no due process, and under these conditions we feel that the draft shouldn't apply to us until our rights are restored. Yeah.

FA: And one more question about the writing of the bulletins. Generally where did you meet to write them?

FE: I think we usually ended up at Mr. Kubota's place because he had a large barrack there, barrack. And I think he had a pretty big table there that we could lay out everything and work on, and some of us would type, some would -- oh, we used to have a time cutting stencils. You know, none of us were experienced with that so I don't know how many stencils we spoiled, but it was a chore, it was a real chore putting these things out. And we had borrowed a mimeograph machine from Reverend... in camp, Buddhist reverend. Of course, we didn't tell him what we were going to use it for, you know. We tried to obtain a machine from two other sources, but they wouldn't lend it to us, but this person was very generous. He says, "Okay, go ahead and use it." So we borrowed that, but... I remember that very distinctly. That was a chore, cutting stencils. [Laughs] I don't know how many we spoiled, but even, even the finished product, you see some errors on there, you know. 'Course, we were all very unsophisticated. We were all novices all this stuff. Even like on constitutional issues, we were real amateurs. We didn't know too much about it. We were just very fortunate that Mr. Okamoto was in our group. And he was real well-versed in the Constitution. And being a member of ACLU, he knew all the "ins" and this stuff. So that really helped us.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 1993, 2005 Frank Abe and Densho. All Rights Reserved.