SPEAKER_02 0:01

This is History for the Reckoning, a podcast that dives deep into the history that's hard to hear but critical to understand. Season one, American Concentration Camp: The Story of World War II Japanese Incarceration. Listeners, thank you for joining me for another addenda episode. I'm your host, Spencer Ford. Huge shout out to Frank Abe for sharing all the details about the many ways in which Japanese and Japanese Americans chose to resist the immoral and unconstitutional acts that the government had taken in the incarceration during World War II. I'd like to share with you now the story of who I think is one of the greatest civil rights figures in American history, who was mentioned in that episode, a man named Frank Emmy. So he was one of the heads of the Fair Play Committee, the very organized set of resistance that happened at the concentration camp in Wyoming known as Heart Mountain. He's probably my hero in all of history, so I hope you enjoy this cut of his story that I was able to cut together from recordings that are stored on denshow.org, this massive repository of Japanese American history. They've so graciously allowed me to use Frank Emmy's oral history that I've cut down so that you can hear it in his voice and in his words.

SPEAKER_00 1:14

I was born in Los Angeles, right near the business section now that's 6th and Olive in 1916, September 23rd, 1916. About three, four years prior to the war, we had started a uh just a produce market in uh an empty building at Levanton Alvarado in Los Angeles. And after a couple of years, business was pretty good, so we decided to make it into a full uh service uh market. Morning of December 7th, we had just opened up the market at 8 o'clock Sunday. We see those days we worked seven days a week, about 14, 16 hours a day. I turned on the radio and uh I forget exactly what time it was, eight or nine o'clock, we heard flash bulletin. There's Pearl Harbor is attacked. We're at war with Japan. And uh I didn't pay much attention to it. I thought, oh, here's another age of drama. But as it gradually sunk in that we were at war with Japan, I we started getting a little bit worried, uh, not so much for ourselves, but for our parents. We were wondering what was going to happen to them. As far as uh the children were concerned, we were born here so we didn't uh have too much uh we didn't worry about it too much. By and large, the customers were very uh sympathetic. They said they knew we were, had nothing to do with it, that we were uh Americans just like them, and uh they they reassured us that their patronage would still be there. Really really didn't feel too much racist bias or any racist incidents at our store. Until uh the uh order to evacuate came out, 906 EO 906 came out, and people uh knew that we had to evacuate, so we started getting people uh that were interested in the business making us some ridiculous offers. In fact, uh one fellow came and offered us $500 for the whole thing and we go I almost threw him out of the store. We knew it was a military order and uh figured that uh there's nothing that we could do as far as uh evacuation was concerned. As uh I said, we we weren't very sophisticated in matters of the law. We figured that our leaders, such as Americans uh the uh Japanese American Citizens League, that had been uh promoting uh that we cooperate and evacuate and not make any uh trouble, so uh we figured they knew best they were the attorneys and the doctors and the well-educated people. So uh at that time uh I had just gotten married. Uh we heard that certain areas were going to different camps, so we uh decided to uh move in with our parents for the few weeks that was left before the evacuation, so we moved in with them and uh we were evacuated from there to the Pomona Assembly Center. Around the 9th of August, I believe it was, we were loaded onto trains and uh took the slow ride to Wyoming. Well, when we got there it was very uh seemed like it was unfinished at first, but we found out that's the way it was going to be. The uh the uh first winter we were there, I think it snowed in uh the middle of September. We didn't even have an overcoat. We were from Southern California in the hot, hot uh weather that we left there. We had to take showers in the barracks on the outside and walk home from the that shower and toilet uh barrack to our own barracks. So when you took a shower and your uh hair was slightly wet, by the time you got to your barrack, it was uh like icicles. And if your hand happened to be w wet yet, or I touched that metal door, it would stick to the metal door. Being an activist was the furthest thing from my mind at that time. I didn't uh uh participate in anything in resembling politics, out of camp or in camp. When the registration was first introduced into Heart Mountain, I actually uh uh after I read the thing, I really couldn't believe that they were asking like question 27 and 28. Up to that point, uh I didn't see any problem with it. When 27 asked about will you go into combat duty whoever ordered, I thought it was a very uh stupid and uh uh a very uh arrogant question to uh ask of uh us after we were thrown out of our homes and put into these concentration camps without even uh a word about uh our citizenship rights or civil rights or constitutional rights being restored. And then question twenty-eight, one of the phrases was, will you uh forswear allegiance to the Emperor of Japan? And uh something that we had never sworn em allegiance to the Emperor of Japan, how can we forswear something we had never forced sworn to before? So uh that night, after studying it carefully, I formed my answers to both questions I put down, under the present conditions and circumstances, uh I am unable to answer these questions. I had thought that maybe uh uh many of the camp people might have a hard time answering these questions, so uh I got my younger brother and we wrote out our answers, suggested answers to question 27 and 28. And uh we made a bunch of copies when he pasted them up in the different uh mess hall doors and uh latrine doors, wherever people gathered. Anyway, uh at that meeting, after uh this fellow gave that talk on why we should uh cooperate, uh, another older fellow who found out late later his name is Kyoshi Komoto, got up and uh said that uh, you know, the government evacuated us and put us in these concentration camps without any due process of law. And he says they uh uh trample on all your constitutional rights. And this was the first time we, at least I heard about due process or constitutional law and things like that. Uh we did uh get together with them a few times now and then, and uh not very much until uh this uh issue of the draft came up. Early in January 1944, the Army had decided to apply the draft into the constitution camps at more or less the uh suggestion of the Japanese American Citizens League. And uh when we heard about this, it was really unbelievable. We we didn't think that uh the government would uh really uh apply the draft into the camps on the same basis as the free people on the outside, especially after having uh reclassified us from uh whatever we were, 1A or 3, 3A to uh 4C, which is an enemy alien classification. So uh naturally when this came up the Fair Play Committee uh, which at that time wasn't too active, but so we took it up and uh we started to hold uh mass meetings in the camp. Uh in the beginning we had to get permits from the administration project director to hold these meetings, but uh when they got wind of what we were doing, they refused to give us any permits. But we went ahead with the uh meetings anyway, and uh actually they didn't try to stop us. Uh the third uh meeting, third bulletin we issued was the one that uh became controversial because up to this point we had uh been informational and uh some of us decided that we should uh take a stand and come right out and say that we're against this until our rights were clarified and our constitutional uh uh rights were restored. We came out with the uh resolution that we hereby refuse to go to the draft in uh if and when we are called in order to contest the issue. We were uh up late almost every evening and we were busy uh pounding out stencils uh for the bulletins and uh I don't know how many stencils we spoiled for each one that we completed, but uh none of us uh we had a rickety old typewriter and uh none of us were real good typists, but we managed to put it out. Uh you we used to have uh full house at these uh uh meetings that we held in the mess halls. Mess halls had held three, four hundred people, and I guess uh many times we had standing room only because uh uh this interest was so great. We thought that we would probably get uh uh great majority to refuse to uh answer their draft notices. But as it turned out, why uh not everybody ref resisted. When their notices started to come, then uh many of them uh kind of got afraid of going to jail. So they uh answered the draft, hoping maybe they won't pass the physical. In our case, uh there was uh in the fair play committee that boys that refused to go, they just stood up for a principal and uh went to jail instead. While this all this was going on, we were uh sending out uh news uh releases to the different newspapers because we wanted the public to know what was going on in camp, that how we were treated and how we as prisoners were being uh told to go into the army as if uh we were free citizens on the outside. The only paper that uh published our releases was uh the the Raki Shimpo, in which James O'Mur was the uh English editor at the time. And uh he uh not only printed the releases that I sent him, but uh uh uh he would uh editorially uh support us saying that we were fighting for a constitutional principle and uh we he thought we had a right to use that. The Pacific Citizens would uh would never print any of our releases, no. The editorial, all right, but they editorialized, but they editorialized calling us saboteurs and uh disloyal, seditionists, etc. We were trying to get uh the ACLU to g give us some legal aid, but uh uh they uh actually uh tried to uh discourage us from uh pursuing our battle here. I was uh never in the in danger of being drafted. In fact, of the leaders, I think uh four of us wouldn't probably never have been drafted because two were way overage, one was in the forties and one was probably close to the 50, and they were not drafting uh fathers with dependents at that time. Kyoshu Komoro and Sam Horino were uh whisked away to uh Thule Lake one day without even uh chance for Sam to say uh goodbye to his parents. The reason that Kyoshu was taken away was because he was uh chairman of the Fair Play Committee and uh they figured he was the r uh troublemaker ringleader and uh in Sam's case he walked out of the camp one day and uh no nobody stopped him and he walked back in and nobody stopped him. So uh and then he went talking about it, so uh uh he was considered also a troublemaker and he was taken away to Thule Lake with uh Kyoshiokamoto. Minoru Tamesa and I uh decided to uh uh walk out of the camp. We uh uh went by the sentry and started to w walk through and he stopped us and uh said you can't go out. And we answered that uh w we sh we had a perfect right go in and not so we're American citizens, we didn't do anything wrong. And uh he still refused to let us go, so we said, Well, what's gonna happen if we insist on going out and keep keep walking? Because I'll I'll have to shoot you. So uh it wasn't point no point in getting shot, so uh we let him take us into the guard house and we stayed there for a couple of days. And uh one thing we did get much better food in there than we got in camp. But as the rap notices start to come in, I think the first group was a group of twelve that uh resisted. Uh the majority went. And uh then the next there was a group of fifty-three that resisted. And uh that's when I started sending out uh these news releases to the papers explaining the situation. During during the trial of the 63, uh a group of newspaper men that were there were so uh impressed by the uh story of the uh internees that uh the WRA had to actually send a PR man out there to convince the newspaper man that this was not the sentiment of the camp as a whole, that these boys were just the uh troublemakers, you know, etc. Their attorney had uh requested a directed trial because they thought the jury would be uh influenced by the war. And uh that's the reason they uh didn't opt for a jury trial. We understood they had a grand jury indicted us in in secret. FBI came and arrested us, and we were uh taken to Cheyenne by car. And uh while we were waiting for a trial, they put us in a county jail and while there uh there was a resident of uh Japanese uh used to come and visit us and brought us onigiri, Musubi Japanese uh food, and uh used uh cure us up there. And later we took a uh photograph with him. At the trial, each one of us were put on the stand, and they the uh prosecution had expected us to uh probably deny everything, so they had brought a uh uh so-called witness primarily against myself, just only against me, because at the time the FBI had questioned me in camp, I did not give them any information at all. This witness uh was named Jack Nishimoto, and we were wondering wh what he was doing there at the trial. No reason for him to be there because uh none of us uh ever uh had any dealings with him except uh at camp, I used to, in fact, do favors for him. I would bring him some tofu when I was working at the tofu factory because he lived in a barrack behind me. Then when he got up in the stand, he started uh uh telling all kinds of lies, uh things that never happened, and he said that I uh uh told him that uh that if this doesn't come out the way uh I wanted to come out that I was going back to Japan, which was also a barefaced lie. Well, when uh the pro when the defense took the uh stand, we completely did the unexpected. Instead of uh trying to hide anything, we came out and said, yes, we did it. So we put out the uh bulletins, so we put out we had mass meetings, we explained about the situation, the draft situation to the people, and we uh encouraged people not to go, et cetera, et cetera. Well, the prosecution was a little uh taken taken aback because they didn't expect us to come out and admit all this. And we said that we did this because we felt that the uh draft was as applied to the camps was unconstitutional, that uh it was wasn't right, was uh unfair and unjust and immoral. But we heard that one weekend uh this judge, Eugene Rice, had gone duck hunting with the district attorney, who was prosecuting us. So when we heard of that, why uh our attorney said, well, you know, there goes your case. Uh uh we'll probably have to take this up to the appellate court. And sure enough, we were convicted of conspiracy to violate selective service, aiding and abetting and counseling others to resist the selective service law. And uh we were uh given a sentence of four years in a federal penitentiary. We were uh in the uh federal penitentiary at Leavenworth from uh November of 1944 until December of 1945, at which time the appellate court reversed our conviction, and uh in their reversal they said that one who violates a law that they think is unconstitutional in uh sincerely, in good faith, uh has a right to do so. And uh in the case of the 63 and the other resistors, uh they were all uh pardoned by President Truman in 1947 and given all their uh civil and political rights restored. So uh I guess we all came out of it in pretty pretty good shape. The only drawback in their case was that uh some of the old timers, strong JCL members and their even their relatives ostracized them, especially in the San Jose area. I took a lot of civil service tests a after I came back. And they always have have you been convicted of a felony? So I always uh write a paragraph on very, you know, as briefly as I can what happened. And uh it never did uh hinder me from uh being uh accepted. Of all the people that I've talked to, you know, about our case, about the resistors, almost a hundred percent of Caucasians or any other non-Japanese group would be very supportive. They would say that if they were in our position, they would have done the same thing. They'd never uh uh be put into the army under those conditions. If those that went in the army from the camps felt that that was their uh will, that was their choice, then you know we respect them for it. Same way they should they should respect our position. There shouldn't be any arguments.

SPEAKER_02 19:31

So thank you again to densho.org for letting me use these priceless recordings of Frank Emmy telling his story in his voice and his words. I hope you enjoyed it. So now I'd like to tell you about another history-related podcast that I hope you'll listen to. It's called the Obit Project. It's by Jod Abumrad, who made Radiolab, if you're familiar. It's the story of Montanans after they die. So looking into those who have passed on and this legacy they left behind, the story of their lives. So history and living memory, the same way that we're telling a story that is evolving today, that is still happening, and involves people that are still alive and with us. This is a bunch of stories of recent memory, those who lived in Montana and affected the entire world sometimes. So I hope you're going to enjoy this trailer for the Obit Project.

SPEAKER_01 20:15

In the Obit Project podcast, young journalists tell stories about the lives of real Montanans after they die. I'm Jad Abumrad. I've always thought, frankly, that Obit curves were a little bit snoozy. So I teamed up with my old friend, UM Journalism School Professor Joel Banville, to help young journalists make a new kind of Obit through sound. These are rich, honest stories about ordinary people who lived and died. Listen to the Obit Project wherever you get your podcast.

SPEAKER_02 20:45

Season one of History for the Reckoning is made possible by support from the JCL Mount Olympus chapter, as well as generous financial support from the Takahashi Family Foundation and the JA Community Foundation. The music was produced by Patrick Coffin. If you want to support the show, follow us on Instagram at History for the Reckoning. Sign up for our newsletter at History for the Reckoning on Substack, where you'll also find the show notes for each episode. Or support us financially through Patreon at patreon.comslash history for the reckoning.