years (1929–1941) In 1929, several already-established Nisei organizations merged to form the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), most prominent among them Fresno's American Loyalty League (headed by Nisei UC educated dentist Dr. Thomas T. Yatabe, 1897-1977), the Seattle Progressive Citizens League, and the San Francisco-based New American Citizens League. Aiming towards professionals and small business owners among the Nisei, the JACL sought to promote free enterprise, self-reliance, and loyalty to the United States. The organization thus excluded a hyphen from its name. Due in part to the active support of James Sakamoto and other Seattle activists, the nascent JACL chose to hold its first national conference in Seattle in 1930. It soon after began work to expand the citizenship rights of Japanese and other Asian Americans, who were considered unassimilable to American society and therefore ineligible for naturalization under the Immigration Act of 1924. Their first target was the Cable Act of 1922, which revoked the citizenship of women who married men ineligible for citizenship, namely Asian immigrants. After a successful lobbying campaign, Congress amended the act in 1931. Next, the JACL began a campaign to allow Issei and other Asian American veterans of the First World War to become U.S. citizens. In 1935, the Nye-Lea Act secured citizenship rights for these men. World War II incarceration (1941–1945) Within hours of the Imperial Japanese Navy's attack on Pearl Harbor, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) began arresting Japanese American community leaders (mostly Issei Japanese language school teachers, priests, martial arts instructors, and business owners). Members of the JACL testified at government hearings to promote an image of Nisei as loyal and patriotic Americans, an effort to counteract rumors of fifth column activity that had spread in the wake of Pearl Harbor. At the same time, the JACL aided FBI and Naval Intelligence officials to identify potentially disloyal Issei, a move many Japanese Americans argued tried to buy political safety for a small segment of the community at the expense of its more vulnerable members. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, JACL leadership did not question the constitutionality of the exclusion of Japanese Americans from the West Coast. Instead, arguing it would better serve the community to follow government orders without protest, the organization advised the approximately 120,000 affected to go peacefully and distanced itself from those who actively opposed the order. In an interview after the war,