1,300 SEATTLE JAPANESE PLEDGE LOYALTY

[Photo caption]: So massed that they overflowed into an adjoining gymnasium (rear) 1,300 Seattle Japanese are shown as they pledge allegiance to the American flag last night, and vowed to fight for American victory over their ancestral empire.

Thirteen hundred Seattle Japanese, standing massed in the auditorium of their newly dedicated Buddhist Church at 14th Avenue South and Main Street and overflowing by the hundreds into the adjacent gymnasium, pledged themselves last night to battle against the islands of their fathers and to maintain allegiance to the United States.

The crowd -- almost a quarter of the city's total Japanese population -- rose and applauded grimly as the Japanese chairman of the meeting read a resolution condemning the treachery of Japan at Pearl Harbor.

A majority of those who attended the meeting, called by the Japanese-American Citizens' League, were American-born. There were men in business suits, youths in slacks and sweaters, girls with dresses with smacked of the campus. Outside, their American automobiles lined the streets for blocks, and their conversation as they entered was interspersed with American slang.

Gray Heads, Too

But there were hundreds of gray heads, too -- fathers and mothers born in Japan -- faced with wrenching apart the bonds of sentiment and memory.

But there were hundreds of gray heads, too -- fathers and mothers born in Japan -- faced with wrenching apart the bonds of sentiment and memory.

There was an indefinable air of tenseness about the meeting. Speakers -- members of the Japanese organization, Mayor Earl Millikin, Superior Judge Clay Allen, and Mrs. Leah McKay, representing the Red Cross -- did not mince words.

The mayor, commenting on the absence of violence between whites and Japanese in Seattle, warned that if the war grows long the United States "may find its tolerance growing thin and continued good relations may depend not only upon your loyalty, but your discretion."

Takeo Nogaki, chairman of the meeting, and James Y. Sakamoto, editor of The Japanese-American Courier and leading spirit of the Japanese-American Citizen's League, told the crowd that it should plan to "repudiate" any members of the colony who were disloyal to the United States.

'Own Intelligence Service'

"We have organized an intelligence service of our own," Sakamoto said. "Its members are not known even to me. But we intend to protect the country and ourselves by reporting any un-American activity to the proper authorities."

Judge Allen, who spoke of foreign-born soldiers who had fought for the United States in wars of the past, expressed a thought which, must have been in many minds in the auditorium as he said:

"You were born in the United States, hundreds of you, but you still look Oriental. Perhaps you feel, now, that your country has repudiated you. That is not true. I think we are the most tolerant people in the world.

"But you must remember that the time for argument about this war, even among Americans of long ancestry here, is over. You who have come here to live among us by choice must realize that you can make only one decision -- that is to do your part in defeating Japan."