Frank S. Emi
| Frank S. Emi | |
|---|---|
| Born |
September 23, 1916 Los Angeles, California, United States |
| Died | December 1, 2010 (aged 94) West Covina, California, United States |
| Education | Los Angeles City College |
| Organization | Heart Mountain Fair Play Committee |
| Known for | fighting effort of U.S. government to draft Japanese American detainees during World War II |
Frank Seishi Emi (September 23, 1916 – December 1, 2010) was a Japanese American civil rights activist. He was a leading figure of the Heart Mountain Fair Play Committee, an ad hoc group who protested the drafting of Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II. Emi argued it was unconstitutional to conscript men who had been stripped of their civil rights into military service and advised Nisei who received draft orders to demand they be released from camp before reporting for duty. He was convicted of conspiring to violate the Selective Service Act and served eighteen months of a four-year sentence in federal prison. For many years, Emi and his fellow draft resisters were condemned as troublemakers by the Japanese American Citizens League and the larger Japanese American community, but his legacy has more recently come to be seen as an important example of civil disobedience.
Frank Seishi Emi was born in Los Angeles on September 23, 1916. When he was four years old, his family moved to the San Fernando Valley, where they farmed and eventually opened a produce market. He attended San Fernando High School for two years, until his family moved again to open a grocery store in Long Beach. He graduated from Long Beach Polytechnic High School and entered the Los Angeles City College's pharmacy program. After his father was seriously injured in a car accident, Emi left school to run the family's produce market in downtown Los Angeles.
By 1941, Emi was running a successful business. He had just invested $25,000 to expand the market when Pearl Harbor was attacked on December 7, 1941. He was not immediately worried, recalling later, "we didn't have an inkling that we ourselves were going to be bothered because we Nisei had been born here in this country and we were citizens." However, after Executive Order 9066 put into motion the removal of Japanese Americans from the West Coast, he was forced to sell the family business for $1,500, about six cents for each dollar of the produce market's real value. Emi moved into his parents' house with his wife and two children once evacuation orders began to circulate in early 1942, to ensure the family would not be separated and sent to different camps. They were held at the hastily constructed Pomona Assembly Center for three months, before being sent to the Heart Mountain Relocation Center, halfway between the cities of Cody and Powell in Wyoming, in September 1942.
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