Katsuki James Otsuka (January 22, 1921 – May 25, 1984) was a

Nisei Japanese American During the early years of World War II, Japanese Americans were forcibly relocated from their homes in the West Coast because military leaders and public opinion combined to fan unproven fears of sabotage. As the war progressed, many of the ...

Quaker Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belie ...

who was jailed as a

conscientious objector A conscientious objector (often shortened to conchie) is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, or religion. The term has also been extended to object ...

during World War II, and later became a war tax resister. During World War II, after the signing of

Executive Order 9066 Executive Order 9066 was a United States presidential executive order signed and issued during World War II by United States president Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942. This order authorized the secretary of war to prescribe certain ...

, Otsuka was interned at the

Tule Lake War Relocation Center The Tule Lake National Monument in Modoc and Siskiyou counties in California, consists primarily of the site of the Tule Lake War Relocation Center, one of ten concentration camps constructed in 1942 by the United States government to incarce ...

. Otsuka was classified by the draft board as a conscientious objector subject to "noncombatant service in the armed forces", but he was unwilling to participate in the armed forces in any capacity and argued, unsuccessfully, that he should have been classified as a conscientious objector subject to "civilian work of national importance." Unable to change his classification, and unwilling to serve in the armed forces, he surrendered to the New York District Attorney and pleaded guilty to a violation of the draft law and sentenced to three years in prison. Otsuka testified: Again imprisoned in 1949, this time for not paying $4.50 in taxes as a war protest, he stayed in prison a month longer than his 4-month sentence because he refused to pay his fine. Two months after his release, on August 5, 1950 (one day before the fifth anniversary of the dropping of the

atomic bomb A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb ...

Hiroshima is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture in Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 1,199,391. The gross domestic product (GDP) in Greater Hiroshima, Hiroshima Urban Employment Area, was US$61.3 billion as of 2010. Kazumi Matsui h ...

), he was arrested with two other protesters for passing out leaflets at the Y-12 nuclear weapons facility in

Oak Ridge, Tennessee Oak Ridge is a city in Anderson and Roane counties in the eastern part of the U.S. state of Tennessee, about west of downtown Knoxville. Oak Ridge's population was 31,402 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Knoxville Metropolitan Area. Oak ...

. These leaflets read, in part:

I have come to Oak Ridge... to dramatize to my fellow citizens that our tax money is being used in large part for the destruction of the world. At 10:45 on an August morning in 1945 the first atomic bomb was used for human destruction. I came today to burn, at that hour, 70% of a dollar bill, symbolizing the percentage of taxes that, according to our President, Harry Truman, is being used for military preparation and for fighting the "Cold War."Bennett, Scott H. ''Radical Pacifism: The War Resisters League and Gandhian Nonviolence in America, 1915-1963'' 2003, p. 190

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Otsuka, James 1921 births American conscientious objectors American human rights activists American Quakers American tax resisters Japanese-American civil rights activists American people of Japanese descent 1984 deaths American Christian pacifists Japanese-American internees War Resisters League activists 20th-century Quakers

See also

References