Biography
Frank Seishi Emi was a Los Angeles grocer interned at the Heart Mountain War Relocation Center in Wyoming. In January 1944 the U.S. government began drafting Japanese-American men out of the camps. Emi co-founded the Heart Mountain Fair Play Committee, which counseled draft resistance unless internees' constitutional rights were restored first. Eighty-five Heart Mountain internees refused induction; sixty-three were convicted in the largest mass draft-resistance trial in U.S. history (June 1944). Emi and six other Fair Play Committee leaders were separately convicted on October 26, 1944 of conspiring to counsel draft resistance and sentenced to 4 years federal prison; held at USP Leavenworth. The Tenth Circuit reversed the leaders' convictions on December 26, 1945. President Truman pardoned the 63 resisters on December 24, 1947.
The prison admission records identify historical Leavenworth register 61431-L. They record receipt at Leavenworth on December 19, 1944. This is a facility-arrival milestone, not an established first date of overall U.S. custody or a complete sentence-service total. National Archives prison file.
Forced-removal chronology
The institutional biography records confinement at Pomona Assembly Center on May 10, 1942, followed by arrival at Heart Mountain on August 21, 1942. These are confinement-stage milestones, not a complete continuous-custody span or a change to the draft-resistance case. Heart Mountain institutional biography.
