Densho Digital Archive
Frank Abe Collection
Title: Art Emi Interview
Narrator: Art Emi
Interviewers: Frank Abe (primary); Frank Chin (secondary)
Location: Los Angeles, California
Date: August 1993
Densho ID: denshovh-eart-01-0003

<Begin Segment 3>

FA: Art, you supported the Fair Play Committee, you could have been arrested. Why did you do it?

AE: Well, when Frank and I talked about all this, there was no question in my mind what I was going to do. And so it didn't matter at all about the consequences. And later in life I made a picture to my kids, that you decide what to do, right or wrong. Draw a line right down the center, one side is right, one side is wrong. And then decide which side you should fall on. Now, that'll easily solve your problem. There is no gray in between. It's either right, or it's either wrong. So that was the decision I -- it wasn't even a decision. I mean, there was no question in my mind about it. It was a thing that had to be done. And Frank and I went on a midnight excursion through all the latrines, actually, where we put up these bulletins to have a meeting at a certain place at a certain time. And nobody else knew about it except Frank and me. That, who put it up.

FA: The Heart Mountain Sentinel editorialized, they said that these people operate in the cover of night in latrines. They were talking about you. [Laughs]

AE: Yeah. But the thing is, we went because, simply for the fact that we didn't want to be intruded on. We wanted to get the bulletin on, and the bulletin was for the public. So there is no hiding anything.

FA: Let me ask you again, in terms of -- tell me again what you expected, and how you risked arrest, and begin with the words, "I fully expected to be arrested," or something like that.

AE: Well, I fully expected to be arrested with the, like the rest of them, only they were picked up first. And I told my wife that, "Okay, I'm ready to get whatever they do to me, but this is what I believe in and it's gotta be done." There is no question in my mind that I would do anything else differently. What's right is right, what's wrong is wrong and the government is wrong.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 1993, 2005 Frank Abe and Densho. All Rights Reserved.