<Begin Segment 8>

FA: The, getting back to the Fair Play Committee bulletins...

FE: Uh-huh.

FA: You mimeographed them, ruled out of stencils.

FE: Right.

FA: How, how did you distribute them? Did you go out and pass them out in the cafeteria or mess hall and, you know...

FE: Yeah. I think we had various members come and we pushed them out and asked them to spread it around their block. And also we put 'em up in latrines, doors, and mess hall doors, and we used to cover the camp pretty good.

FA: Your, your recollection is biased, of course. What was the reaction of the people you gave it to in general? What was their reaction?

FE: Actually, they didn't show too much emotion. They just accepted it and said, "Okay, we'll pass it out, pass it out." And, you know, with people that weren't involved in the draft themselves, they weren't too vocal one way or another. We asked 'em to do this, and they said okay, they would do it.

FA: Bill Hosokawa and others have said the FPC organized in the dark. Heart Mountain Sentinel.

FE: That's what the Sentinel said, yeah.

FA: That you organized in the dark, you hang around in the latrines, do your dirty business in the shadows.

FE: That's what they accused us of, but...

FA: Did you?

FE: Nope. We were out in the open. Our meetings were public, in the mess halls. And we had no -- the only time we had meetings in the dark was when we got together at Kubota's house to plan strategy. [Laughs] We didn't do any of these stealthy stuff, you know. It was all in the open. So that's why I think the Appellate Court reversed our convictions, because everything was out in the open.

FA. George Yoshinaga says you folks were all pro-Japan and all attended Japanese school.

FE: You know, that's true. Everybody that I know of attended Japanese schools in, during that period. Even the... all these guys that went into the 442. And in fact, I had one of my friends call up the Hawaii, his brother in Hawaii and asked over there, and he said, "Yeah," he says, "almost hundred percent went to Japanese school." And yet, look at the 100th Battalion. They all volunteered, so George Yoshinaga is trying to use that as one of the reasons that the San Jose boys resisted the draft, but this was all hogwash, you know. It had nothing to do with how you felt.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 1993, 2005 Frank Abe and Densho. All Rights Reserved.