Chapter 2

“THIS IS URGENT”

A dapper dresser and a debonair ladies’ man who loved to hear himself talk, Mike Masaoka had learned to command a room as a championship debater in high school and college back in Utah. The confidence he gained from years of success in pressure-filled competitions was evident as he addressed the fifty or so Japanese American farmers, agricultural laborers, and merchants on hand to hear him speak in the North Platte church basement on Sunday morning, December 7, 1941.

The gathering in the basement meeting hall of the Episcopal Church of Our Savior was the final stop of Masaoka’s whirlwind tour of the Great Plains hinterlands in his role as national executive secretary of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL). If everything went according to plan, he would wrap up his business in North Platte that afternoon, then catch a train for San Francisco, his home base these days.

The twenty-six-year-old Masaoka had departed California in late November with two goals: to assure local government officials in Colorado, Wyoming, and Nebraska that the people of Japanese descent in their areas were loyal and patriotic Americans, and to establish new JACL chapters to defend the interests of the region’s Japanese American communities if the worst-case scenario became a reality. That scenario was war between the United States and Japan, which the Sunday morning newspapers suggested might be imminent after months of contentious negotiations.

Masaoka remained skeptical that the country of his birth would end up in a war with the country of his parents’ birth, and he conveyed that sentiment to his audience. But even if the odds of war were remote, he said, it would be to the advantage of audience members to form local JACL chapters to defend their economic interests and civil rights. He explained how the JACL was cultivating relationships with government officials around the country to reassure authorities that people of Japanese ancestry would be loyal to America should there be a war with Japan.

He spoke with authority, and with his dark business suit, white shirt, necktie, and thick shock of wavy black hair, he looked the part of someone who knew what he was talking about. He prominently displayed a Stars and Stripes flag pin on the left lapel of his jacket to leave no doubt of his loyalties. For a Japanese American in the public eye, such a statement had become increasingly important as America’s relations with Japan deteriorated.

In his comments in the North Platte basement, Masaoka was upbeat about the crisis, but there were things that he couldn’t share with his audience. Like the fact that representatives of various federal government agencies and entities had summoned him to furtive meetings in recent weeks.

 

MASAOKA HAD BEEN SPEAKING about ninety minutes, pointing occasionally to a wall map to highlight locations where he hoped audience members would help form new JACL chapters, when two white men entered the room and approached the podium.

Masaoka was puzzled. He asked the men what they wanted.

“Are you Mike Masaoka?” one of the men asked.

“Yes,” he impatiently replied.

“Would you mind coming outside with us for a minute?”1

Masaoka assumed the men were local newspaper reporters who wanted an interview, and their lack of manners irritated him. He asked them to wait outside until he was finished.

“This is urgent,” one of the men replied. “I’m afraid it can’t wait.”

Without another word, the two men took Masaoka by each arm and escorted him from the meeting hall.

Puzzled, Ben and others filed upstairs and wandered out into the street to see if there was an explanation for Masaoka’s abduction. That’s when they heard the news. As Ben later recalled, “We went outside of the church building and heard the radio reports and said, ‘My God, Pearl Harbor [has] been bombed by the Japanese.’”²