<Begin Segment 2>

FA: Art, just go ahead and give me, tell me your answer again. Start with the words, "I expected to be arrested."

AE: Well, I was all set to get picked up like the rest of them. And I told my wife that I'll have things packed, if I have to go I have to go. And there was no question in my mind that I wouldn't be picked up, but being in the background of the whole thing --

[Interruption]

FA: You talked to your wife about it and your bags are packed, but...

AE: But fortunately, I wasn't picked up.

FA: Talk about it again.

AE: I generally worked in the background, I never was a frontrunner, and that pleased me fine. And fortunately for that, I wasn't picked up. So the other fortunate thing was that at that point where I wasn't picked up and the other leaders were picked up, there wasn't anybody that I could see that could take on the meetings, continue the meetings, inform the parents what was going on, negotiate with the attorneys, and then keep the whole thing alive. So I was very fortunate to be in a position where I could help them do that. So then after that, after we all went to trial, then I was surprised at the lies that were told by Jack Nishimoto, and my confidence in the government was utterly destroyed. So...

FC: You personally knew that what Jack Nishimoto had said, testified, to be a lie?

AE: No, Frank told me.

FC: Oh, Frank told you.

AE: Yeah.

FA: You sat through the trial.

AE: Yes, but it's a very faint memory now. I can't recall anything definite about it. And...

FC: Tell us the last time you saw Kiyoshi Okamoto.

AE: Oh, that must have been about thirty years ago. He looked like a man that didn't conduct himself as a well-dressed man at all. I believe he was prospecting, and at that time I saw him with a old jeep. And he was a -- if you could call it an old prospector, he was it. But he was the, he was the brain behind the initial Fair Play Committee. And then from there, Frank talked to him and the germ of the idea was spawned.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 1993, 2005 Frank Abe and Densho. All Rights Reserved.