IN DEATH THEY WILL LIVE

A day or so before our Japanese colony was evacuated, we told a small group of solemn-faced nisei: "Not until some of you fellows get out there in the front-line trenches and die for America will people really realize that there IS a difference between a Tokyo Jap and a Japanese-American citizen."

We didn't like to say that, for the little group included some mighty good friends of ours. But they had asked us to explain how loyal American citizens of Japanese ancestry could overcome the prejudice which an unthinking portion of the public was building up against them. That "death sentence" was our answer.

We still think death of nisei in American uniforms will be the only conclusive way to wake up such bigots as General DeWitt (the American Army general who said, "A Jap is a Jap.") and to calm the hatred aroused by the brutal murder of our American airmen by those malevolent mice in Tokyo.

Feeling as we do, it was with a fateful feeling that we read the quotation secured from Takashi Sakuma, young Islander as he marched away from the relocation center at Hunt, Ida., a volunteer in Uncle Sam's Army (the same Army, incidentally, to which General DeWitt belongs). Said young American Soldier Sakuma: "I think what we do for our country now will determine the path of the nisei tomorrow."

By death only will the nisei be left to live in freedom and respect in America.