Cover: “Therefore, we members of the Fair Play Committee hereby refuse to go to the physical examination or to the induction, if or when we are called, in order to contest the issue.” Frank Emi, Fair play committee Bulletin #3. March 1944. “The Nisei are well within their rights to petition the government for a redress of grievances. The Constitution gives us certain inalienable and civil rights. The government should restore a large part of those rights before asking us to contribute our lives to the welfare of the nation.” James Omura, 1944. For the next 50 years the resisters were nearly forgotten, and the Nisei soldiers were given credit for securing the postwar acceptance and assimilation of the Japanese American community. Frank Abe, the 3rd- generation Japanese American who produced Conscience and the Constitution, grew up being told that his parent’s generation had passively submitted to the wholesale, denial of the of their rights during WWII without protest or resistance. Later, as first an advocate for government redress for the camps, and then as a journalist, Abe was astonished to learn that the area where he grew up, the Santa Clara Valley in Northern CA, was the home of many former Heart Mt. resisters, several of whom did not wish to be identified. He and others organized ceremonial events in 1992 and’93 to welcome the resisters back home. In 1999 a movement to have JACL apologize for its suppression of wartime resistance failed, but delegates of the JACL’s Nat’l Convention voted to apologize in July 2000. “I am proud that I am an American of Japanese ancestry. I believe in this nation’s institutions, ideas and traditions; I glory in her heritage; I boast of her history; I trust in her future.” Mike Masaoka, Civil Rights Advocate, Staff Sergeant, 442nd Regimental Combat Team. Timeline – 1868, 1870, 1924, ’30, ’40 – ’45, ’47, ’52, ’88 and 2000.