Heart Mountain Fair Play Committee facts for kids
The Heart Mountain Fair Play Committee was a group formed in 1943. They protested against the draft of Nisei (U.S. citizens whose parents were Japanese immigrants) from Japanese American concentration camps during World War II.
Kiyoshi Okamoto started a "Fair Play Committee of One" after the War Relocation Authority (WRA) asked people to fill out a controversial loyalty questionnaire in 1943. Later, Frank Emi and other people held in the Heart Mountain camp joined him. The Committee got its name from this camp.
With seven older leaders, the Committee grew as draft notices arrived in the camp. To challenge being forced from their homes by the government, they refused to volunteer or join the draft. However, the Committee required its members to be loyal U.S. citizens who were willing to serve if their rights were given back.
By June 1944, many young men were arrested. The U.S. government charged them with a serious crime called draft evasion. The camp at Poston, Arizona, had the most draft resisters (106). But the Fair Play Committee was the most well-known group protesting the draft. Heart Mountain also had the highest rate of draft resistance compared to its population. Eventually, nearly 300 men from all ten camps resisted the draft.
Eighty-five Heart Mountain resisters and the Committee leaders were found guilty of breaking Selective Service Act rules. They were sentenced to three to five years in federal prison. In 1947, President Harry S. Truman pardoned them. But for many years, the Fair Play Committee members were often seen by some in the Japanese American community as traitors or cowards. This was especially true when compared to the famous 100th Infantry Battalion (the "Purple Heart Battalion") and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, whose motto was "Go for Broke."
After the war, Japanese Americans worked hard to rebuild their lives in American society. But in the 1970s, a movement began to seek fairness for their forced imprisonment. As former camp residents shared their stories, attitudes toward the resisters started to change.
Since the late 1900s, these draft resisters have been recognized as people who followed their conscience. They hold an important place in the history of the incarceration, even though their actions are still debated by some. In 2002, the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) formally apologized. During the war, the JACL had strongly opposed the Committee and worked with the FBI to help put its members in prison and later exclude them from the community.
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Why the Committee Formed
After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the United States entered World War II. Japanese Americans were quickly seen as enemies. This was largely due to existing unfair feelings and business rivalries. Especially on the West Coast, where most Japanese Americans lived, leaders pushed for a "solution" to the "Japanese problem."
On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066. This order allowed military leaders to create areas from which people could be removed. Over the next few months, about 112,000 to 120,000 Japanese Americans from the West Coast were forced into inland concentration camps. Two-thirds of them were American citizens, born in the U.S.
Heart Mountain was one of ten camps run by the War Relocation Authority (WRA). This government agency managed the imprisonment program. At many camps, Japanese Americans had to build their own prison barracks. By early 1943, Heart Mountain had over 10,700 people.
The WRA then started giving out a "leave clearance registration form" to adults in all ten camps. They hoped some Japanese Americans would move outside the West Coast to reduce overcrowding. This registration was first only for Nisei who volunteered to move.
However, as more soldiers were needed for U.S. forces in Europe and North Africa, WRA officials saw a chance to check the loyalty of imprisoned Japanese Americans. They expanded the "loyalty questionnaire" to find potential soldiers and "troublemakers."
The loyalty questionnaire was not popular among prisoners. This was mainly because of its last two questions:
- Would you volunteer for military service (Question 27)?
- Would you give up loyalty to the Emperor of Japan (Question 28)?
Many young men felt insulted. They were asked to join the army for a country that had imprisoned them and caused them to lose their homes and businesses. They also disliked the second question. It seemed to assume that Japanese Americans had been loyal to Japan, not the U.S. Others were simply confused. They feared that saying "yes" to Question 27 would mean volunteering for dangerous combat. They also worried that giving up loyalty to Japan would be seen as admitting guilt and could lead to deportation.
The Heart Mountain Fair Play Committee was formed because people resisted this loyalty questionnaire. Frank Emi refused to answer the questions. He wrote that he could not complete the form "under the present circumstances." He put up flyers telling others to do the same.
Kiyoshi Okamoto was already a known figure in Heart Mountain. He had helped organize a "Congress of American Citizens" to protest the lack of information from the WRA. Okamoto continued to protest the loyalty questionnaire and the unfair treatment of Nisei citizens. He called himself a "Fair Play Committee of One" in November 1943. Emi and others later joined Okamoto. They began holding small meetings to discuss their complaints against the WRA.
These meetings stayed small until early 1944. That's when Nisei men, who had been put in a lower draft class after Pearl Harbor, were added to the draft pool. They started getting draft notices in the camp. The Fair Play Committee formally elected its seven founders (Okamoto, Emi, Sam Horino, Guntaro Kubota, Paul Nakadate, Min Tamesa, and Ben Wakaye) as its leaders on January 26.
Their first public meeting was held on February 8, 1944. Sixty young men came to hear the Committee leaders argue against forcing citizens to join the army when their rights had been taken away. As more Heart Mountain men were drafted, interest in the Fair Play Committee grew. A rally on March 1 attracted over 400 people. Public meetings continued. The Committee became a formal group. Members paid a $2 fee and had to be loyal U.S. citizens willing to serve if their rights were restored.
Standing Up for Rights
The Fair Play Committee started meeting regularly in February 1944. They held evening meetings in mess halls at Heart Mountain. Many young men attended, wondering whether to report for their required physical exams. These early meetings discussed how it was unfair to remove them from the West Coast. They also talked about the discrimination of allowing Nisei to serve only in separate army groups. And they questioned the lack of information about when they would be released from camp.
At first, Okamoto, Emi, and other FPC leaders avoided directly telling people not to follow draft orders. They feared punishment from military or WRA officials. These officials were busy moving Japanese American protesters considered "disloyal" to the high-security Tule Lake Segregation Center.
On March 4, 1944, the Committee changed its approach. They announced their plan to "refuse to go to the physical examination or to the induction if or when we are called in order to contest the issue." On March 6, the first two resisters refused to report for their physicals. By the end of the week, ten more joined them.
Many Japanese Americans in the camp and outside it criticized the Committee's stance. The camp newspaper, the Heart Mountain Sentinel, published articles and letters against the Fair Play Committee. As more people attended FPC meetings and protested, Sentinel articles called Fair Play members "confused" and "deluded youths" who "lacked courage." The Japanese American Citizens League's (JACL) national newspaper, the Pacific Citizen, also wrote against the resisters.
After almost a month, U.S. Marshals entered the camp on March 25, 1944. They arrested the first twelve draft resisters. While these resisters waited in local jails, Frank Emi and two other Fair Play leaders tried to walk out of Heart Mountain to protest their status as prisoners. Camp administrators moved Kiyoshi Okamoto to Tule Lake. Still, the number of young men disobeying draft orders grew throughout April, reaching sixty-three by June.
During this time, Okamoto wrote to Roger Nash Baldwin, the head of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). He asked for "legal help in challenging the fairness of drafting internees." Baldwin replied in a letter that was reprinted by the JACL. He said, "The men who have refused to accept military draft are within their rights, but they of course must take the consequences. They doubtless have a strong moral case, but no legal case at all." He refused to have the ACLU represent them. Records later showed that the JACL and ACLU worked together on this response to stop the resisters' appeal.
Adding to the anti-resister talk, a Pacific Citizen article on April 8, 1944, called the resisters "draft dodgers." It said they had "harmed the cause of loyal Japanese Americans everywhere." (By this time, over forty Heart Mountain residents had refused to join the draft.) Ben Kuroki, a Japanese American war hero, said of the resisters: "These men are Fascists in my estimation and no good to my country." However, James Omura of the Denver-based Rocky Shimpo wrote articles supporting the FPC's demand that Nisei rights be restored before they were drafted.
In the largest federal trial in Wyoming history, the sixty-three arrested resisters were found guilty of draft evasion. Judge Thomas Blake Kennedy (who called the defendants "you Jap boys") sentenced them to three years in federal prison. On July 1, 1944, the Heart Mountain Sentinel wrote that the actions of the 63 defendants were "as serious an attack on the integrity of all nisei as the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor." Twenty-two more young men were tried later and received the same sentence. This brought the total number of Heart Mountain draft resisters to eighty-five.
On May 10, 1944, the seven leaders of the Fair Play Committee and James Omura were charged by a Wyoming federal grand jury. In July, they were arrested for planning to help others break the Selective Service Act. (Omura and the FPC leaders were older and not subject to the draft themselves. The "conspiracy" charge allowed the government to prosecute them.) Their case was heard in October 1944. Omura was found not guilty, but the seven Fair Play leaders were found guilty and sentenced to two to four years in federal prison.
After the War and Recognition
In 1945, the Denver Court of Appeals overturned the convictions of the seven Fair Play Committee leaders. They found that the jury in their trial had been told not to consider civil disobedience (peaceful protest) as a valid defense. The eighty-five younger Fair Play members remained in prison. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear their appeal. However, many were released early for good behavior in July 1946. The rest of the Heart Mountain resisters, and over 200 from other camps, were not released until December 1947. That's when President Harry Truman granted them a full pardon.
The West Coast was reopened to Japanese American settlement on January 2, 1945. Over the next months, the WRA concentration camps slowly emptied. People either returned to their old hometowns or moved to cities like Chicago and New York. Those who returned early faced severe shortages of housing and jobs. This was made worse by ongoing unfair treatment. When released, the Fair Play members faced a tough job market and unfair housing rules. They also faced widespread hostility from other Japanese Americans.
The brave actions of the 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442nd, like rescuing the Lost Battalion, were widely publicized during the war. These Nisei soldiers were seen as helping to end the imprisonment by showing a positive image of patriotic Japanese Americans. The draft resisters, however, were seen by many as having worked against this goal. They were thought to have created more difficulties for Japanese Americans who wanted to be seen as loyal. Also, in February 1946, the JACL voted to publicly condemn the Fair Play Committee and all who had protested their wartime imprisonment. The JACL held this position for over fifty years.
Despite tensions, former FPC members rebuilt their lives. Most did not talk about their wartime resistance. Public opinion remained mostly against the Committee until the 1970s and 1980s. That's when Sansei (third-generation Japanese American) activists began to reexamine the reasons for their resistance. This movement led to the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. This law gave a formal apology and money to camp survivors. Interest in the Fair Play resisters grew in the following decades. By the 1990s, many Nisei veterans' groups began to see the resisters as having shown a different kind of courage and patriotism during the war.
Around this time, the JACL started to consider making peace with the resisters. In 1994, Frank Emi and Mits Koshiyama (another Fair Play member) were invited to speak at the JACL's national meeting. Five years later, a resolution to apologize to draft resisters was proposed at a regional JACL meeting but was quickly stopped. A successful resolution was finally brought before the national board in 1999 and narrowly passed a vote at the JACL's 2000 convention. In May 2002, the JACL held a public ceremony to apologize to the Fair Play Committee and other wartime resisters.
The last surviving member of the Heart Mountain Fair Play Committee, Frank Emi, passed away on December 1, 2010.
In Books and Plays
- John Okada's novel, No-No Boy (1956), is set after the war. It is about a main character who was imprisoned for refusing the draft.
- Allegiance (2013) is a musical that opened in San Diego, California. It later opened on Broadway.
