FE: And when 27 asked about, "Will you go into combat duty wherever ordered?" I thought it was very stupid, and a very... arrogant question to ask of us, after we were thrown out of our homes and put into these concentration camps, without even a word about our citizenship rights or civil rights, or constitutional rights being restored. And then question 28 was very, another very ambiguous and a very senseless question, because it said, "Will you" -- one of the phrases was, "Will you forswear allegiance to the Emperor of Japan?" And something that we had never sworn allegiance to the Emperor of Japan, and how can we forswear something we had never sworn to before? So that didn't make sense. And then for the, our parents to forswear allegiance to Japan, that would have left them without a country, they'd have become stateless persons. So it really made me very angry just reading that thing, and that's when I got sort of involved into it.
That night, after studying it carefully, I formed my answers to both questions. I put down, "Under the present conditions and circumstances, I am unable to answer these questions." And I put that on both 27 and 28. And then I had thought that maybe many of the camp people might have a hard time answering these questions, so I got my younger brother and we put out, wrote out our answers, "Suggested answers to questions 27 and 28," and we made a bunch of copies and pasted up in the different mess hall doors and latrine doors, wherever people gathered.
EO: What was the suggested answers? What were they?
FE: Questions 27 and 28, put both: "Under the present conditions and circumstances, I cannot answer these questions." Because you are there under duress, without due process, and how can you answer questions like that under those conditions? Which was logical, I thought, at least in my way of thinking. And that was my, actually my first activity into the grassroots activism, I guess you might say. But this was, more or less was fostered on us through necessity, you know. It just got to a point where the government was compounding one injustice onto another one.
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