Biography
James Matsumoto Omura was a Japanese American journalist and the English-language editor of the Denver newspaper Rocky Shimpo, who used his editorials to defend the right of the Heart Mountain draft resisters to challenge their treatment. For this he was indicted in 1944 alongside the seven Fair Play Committee leaders on a charge of conspiracy to counsel draft evasion. At the Cheyenne trial Omura mounted a First Amendment defense and was the only one of the eight defendants acquitted. Ostracized within his own community for years afterward, he was recognized decades later as a defender of press freedom and Japanese American civil rights.
