From Private Moments to Public Calls for Justice: The Effects of Private Memory on the Redress Movement of

A thesis submitted to the Department of History, Miami University, in partial fulfillment of the Requirements for Honors in History.

Sarah Franklin Doran Miami University Oxford, Ohio May 201

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ABSTRACT

FROM PRIVATE MOMENTS TO PUBLIC CALLS FOR JUSTICE: THE EFFECTS OF PRIVVATE MEMORY ON THE REDRESS MOVEMENT OF JAPANESE AMERICANS

Sarah Doran It has been 68 years since President Roosevelt signed , which led to the internment of more than 110,000 Japanese Americans. This period of internment would shape the lives of all of those directly involved and have ramifications even four generations later. Due to the lack of communication between family members who were interned and their children, the movement for redress was not largely popular until the 1970s. Many families classified their time in the internment camps as subjects that were off limits, thus, leaving children without the true knowledge of their heritage. Because memories were not shared within the household, younger generations had no pressing reason to fight for redress. It was only after an opening in the avenue of communication between the generations that the search for true justice could commence. The purpose of this thesis is to explore how communication patterns within the home, the Japanese-American community, and ultimately the nation changed to allow for the successful completion of a reparation movement. What occurred to encourage those who were interned to end their silence and share their experiences with their children, grandchildren, and the greater community? Further, what external factors influenced this same phenomenon? The research for this project was largely accomplished through reading memoirs and historical monographs. There has been a sufficient amount of information published about the actual internment experience, although few historians have focused on the transformation of the community from one of silence and shame to a group of individuals willing to stand up to the government. In order to analyze the communication patterns, numerous personal testimonies were viewed. There are many recorded interviews that are available due to the Commission on Wartime Internment and Civilian Relocation that were instrumental in building a solid argument and added a personal touch to the numerous governmental documents reviewed. It can be concluded that while a great multitude of factors led to the redress movement that culminated in the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, the education of the younger Nisei, or second generation Japanese Americans, or Sansei, third generation Japanese Americans, played a major role in this shift in communication patterns. Once they were introduced to the internment as a part of their own heritages and were able to contextualize the injustice done to their relatives and in many cases infant selves they were able to turn the shame their parents and grandparents into anger that served as a catalyst for change. Their college experiences also introduced them to other ethnic groups who retained pride in their histories and inspired the Japanese Americans to do the same, while also getting them involved in various civil rights movements that were concurrently changing America.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank everyone who was been supportive of me while I endeavored to complete this thesis. Thank you for encouraging me, for listening to me complain, and for reading the many drafts I have worked on.

To the many professors in the history department I have been lucky enough to work with Thank you so much for all that you have taught me over the last four years. I came to Miami in love with history, but I am leaving with deeper appreciation for the past and for those who have spent their lives studying it because of your passion for the subject and dedication to your students.

To my advisor Dr. Tammy Brown Thank you for agreeing to work with a student you didn’t even know on the most time consuming project of her college career. I will never be able to thank you enough for all of the guidance and support you have offered me over the last three semesters and I hope that you are as proud of this final work as I am. You never once acted frustrated with my failure to meet deadlines and never had anything but positive words about my work and for that I must also thank you. While I know I was not the perfect advise, we made it through this program together.

To Dr. Jensen I don’t know that I have ever had a bigger cheerleader. You are always so positive and encouraging that you make students want to perform their best for you. On days when I was discouraged by the daunting task ahead, you were always available to answer my questions and make me feel as though this was in my reach. The History Honors Students are so lucky to have you and I know that you will be missed the next two years.

To Dr. Charlotte Goldy As I have told you before, you are one of my favorite people. When I wasn’t sure if I wanted to write a thesis, you told me that I could do it, and because I have never wanted you to be disappointed in me or my work, I did. There has never been another piece of work in which I have had so much pride, so thank you for encouraging me. I will miss our visits, but promise to continue to send you book titles throughout the years.

Finally to my Parents Thank you for all of the love and support you have shown me over the years. I am the person I am today because of your guidance and the wonderful examples you set for me. I will never be able to thank you enough for all of the books you bought, drafts you proofread, and times you told me I could do anything I wanted to do.

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Table of Contents

I. Introduction: Executive Order 9066, Camp Experiences, and Early Changes Amongst the Japanese-American Community ...... Page 9

II. Chapter One, “Enryo”: Restrained Speech, Shame, and Assimilation ...... Page 33

III. Chapter Two, “Shikata Ga Nai”: Education, Organization, and the Public Sphere ...... Page 53

IV. Chapter Three, “Gaman”: Testimonies, Healing, and Redress ...... Page 76 V. Conclusion ...... Page 101

VI. References ...... Page 107

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Introduction Executive Order 9066, Camp Experiences, and Early Changes Amongst the Japanese-American Community

Figure 1.1: Dorthea Lange, Saulte of Innocence,April 1942 [data-base online] (library of Congress, Accessed 12 April 2011); Available http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/wcf/wcf0013.html, Image ID: Prints and Photographs Division (92) LC-USZ62-17124

Donna Nagata was six years old when she was first introduced to her mother’s

“camp” experience. Believing this camp to be one like the YMCA camps she had attended, she asked her mother “was it fun” and was dismayed when her mother responded “not really.”1 This exchange could have been a commonplace conversation between mother and daughter, yet it was not. It was a daughter’s introduction into the horrors of her mother’s past. The two were not discussing day camp where arts and

1 Donna Nagata, Legacy of Injustice: Exploring the Cross-Generational Impact of the Japanese American Internment (New York: Palgrave MacMillian, 1993), vii.

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crafts are the most important activity of the day, but rather they were talking about the mother’s time interned by the United States Government, an experience equated with imprisonment.2 Following the on December 7, 1941, President

Roosevelt, on the advice of the Secretary of War, called for the forced evacuation of the

Japanese Americans with Executive Order 9066. This order followed several attempted curfews that had proven difficult to implement and calls for Japanese Americans to voluntarily move further inland or back to Japan. The order “authorized and directed the

Secretary of War to prescribe military areas in such places...from which any or all persons may be excluded, and... the right of any person to enter, remain in, or leave shall be subject to whatever restrictions the Secretary of War ....may impose in his discretion.”3

The President approved it on February 19, 1942, and although there is no direct mention of the Japanese Americans in the order, as historian Greg Robinson writes, “the government officials involved well understood that the order was designed solely to permit mass removal of Japanese Americans.”4 It was war hysteria and fear that combined to create one of the greatest circumventions of civil liberties ever experienced in the United States.

2 Ibid., 5. 3 Executive Order 9066, February 19, 1942; General Records of the Unites States Government; Record Group 11; National Archives 4 Greg Robinson, A Tragedy of Democracy: Japanese Confinement in North America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 93.

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Figure 1.2: Map of the ten camp locations taken from All Aboard Magazine (Spring, 1944), Courtesy of Ms. A. Iwata, Japanese American National Museum (97.194.4) http://www.janm.org/projects/clasc/map.htm

The concentration camps in the U.S. were not the death camps that come to mind when one thinks of WWII. However, they did revoke the inalienable rights of United

States citizens and restrict the freedom of 110,000 Japanese Americans between 1941 and

1946. Ten camps were constructed for such a purpose and until they could be completed, large venues such as racetracks and fairgrounds were used as assembly centers for all those Americans of Japanese descent who were evicted from their homes and dutifully reported to be interned. After the war ended and the Japanese Americans were allowed to return to life in the mainstream, they found that much of what they left had been looted or destroyed.

For the $148 million filed in losses after the internment, the Japanese-American population only recovered $37 million.5 They faced not only the great burden of starting again with little money, but also had to face continued discrimination and the challenge

5 Michi Nishiura Weglyn, Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps (Seattle: Press, 1996), 19.

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of reintegration into the established American culture. Many of those interned cataloged this period of their lives with other taboo topics of conversation and were silenced by shame. In a study conducted on Sansei, the grandchildren of the first generation Japanese

Americans, it was discovered that “ a lowered sense of self-esteem stemming from the internment has been reported in both the Nisei and Sansei.”6 Nisei is the Japanese word used to describe the second-generation Japanese Americans. It was also a cultural trait of the Japanese to follow the mandates of those in authority and this custom was largely responsible for the fact that “ the evacuees turned themselves in at the appointed time and place with such orderliness as to astound the Army.”7 While those who were interned largely preferred silence about the internment, when the children of those who were interned discovered this part of their heritage, they asked questions. It was a subject largely overlooked in public schools and the vast majority of students were forced to ask reluctant family members to provide them with the details. All the same, Nagata found that “silence about the camps existed both within and outside of the Japanese American community.”8 The movement for redress stove to break this silence. This push for redress sought an apology from the government for the injustice done to the Japanese

Americans during the Second World War. A cash payout was eventually also won by the

Japanese Americans, but the movement was less about receiving monetary repayment as

6 Nagata, Donna K. Legacy of Injustice: Exploring the Cross-Generational Impact of the Japanese American Internment. New York: Plenum Press, 1993, 152. 7 Michi Nishiura Weglyn, Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996, pg 78. 8 Nagata, Donna K. Legacy of Injustice: Exploring the Cross-Generational Impact of the Japanese American Internment. New York: Plenum Press, 1993, 188.

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it was a recognition of the inalienable rights all citizens are guaranteed under the

Constitution.

Concurring civil rights movements undertaken by other minority groups in the

1960s largely sparked the movement for redress. It was not begun until such a late date because many Japanese Americans were too busy rebuilding the lives they had lost to petition the government.9 Furthermore, the topic was still too fresh to discuss, and the pain too real. As Donna Nagata wrote, “pursuing redress would necessitate the reopening of wounds that most wished to forget and could draw attention to Japanese Americans at a time when many saw assimilation as necessary to their reintegration.”10 It was commonly thought that if the victims of internment fought for redress they would only attract negative attention and would be viewed by the general public as segregating themselves from the very communities they were trying to blend into. These fears were overridden by urgency in the 1980s due to the large number of Issei, first-generation

Japanese Americans, and Nisei victims who were dying. Not only did the Nisei and

Sansei desire to see redress accomplished during their parent’s lifetimes, but they were demographically in positions that would allow them to devote time and energies to the movement. The Nisei had been able to make a place for themselves in society and due to their newfound economic and political power they had the time and resources to pursue this fight. By the 1980s, many of the Nisei were in their retirement years and the Sansei had reached adulthood, where they “were in positions to express their concerns as

9 Mitchell T. Maki, Harry H.L. Kitano, and S. Megan Berthold, Achieving the Impossible Dream: How Japanese Americans Obtained Redress (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 58. 10 Ibid.,87.

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well.”11 At this point in time there were several Congressmen of Japanese American descent who could also assist with the passage of a bill that would offer the Japanese

Americans the ends they sought. With this changed dynamic in the Japanese-American community, a bill was sent to the House of Representatives in 1983 to provide redress, but it stayed there for four years without passing.12

Finally in 1988, the Civil Liberties Act was passed. This act gave to each surviving victim of the internment $20,000, accompanied by a formal apology from the

President. Included in this bill was also a fund designated for educational purposes.

Although the monetary gift was far from enough to cover the financial or emotional distress the government had caused the Japanese Americans, there was a sense that “a formal apology without payment would be a hollow gesture.”13 Unfortunately, after the passage of the bill little else changed. Some families refused the money because it was not nearly enough, but others received the $20,000 and tried to move on with their lives.

All the same, after 68 years there is still little discussion or education regarding the plight of the Japanese Americans and the actions of the United States government that forced them to endure such hardships.

The question I wish to pose is How did the memory of the internment, as passed between parent and child, lead to the redress movement of 1988? What happened to the memory of the internment within the Japanese-American community that led to increased calls for reparations? Did the discussions within the home lead to the heightened support

11 Ibid., 204. 12 Ibid,. 193. 13 Ibid., 196.

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for justice or was the Civil Liberties Act simply the culmination of the prior attempts at redress?

I must answer that the drive for redress was sparked by an increase in communication within the home. It is my belief that because the Sansei had time to fully understand the implications of the internment and the Nisei had time to cope with their pasts, that after so much time spent waiting in silence, the time had come to take personal action. There has been a lot of research done on the redress movement itself; however, I want to understand the personal drives and paths that are responsible for the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988.

This question’s answer is directly related to the future of human rights in the United

States. If the nation can justify the violation of the rights of citizens in this instance and have the Supreme Court deem that action constitutional, what rights can truly be considered inalienable? Furthermore, if all that is required to rectify that injustice is a small cash handout, what is to say the government won’t find it a worthy investment the next time such an event occurs? Chief Justice Charles Evan Hughes once said, “You may think that the Constitution is your security—it is nothing but a piece of paper. You may think that the statutes are your security-they are nothing but words in a book.”14 This statement could not ring more true for the Japanese-American citizens during World War

II. Two-thirds of those interned were American citizens by birth who assumed their rights would be protected under the Constitution. They were wrong.

14 Review, by Samuel J. Konefsky, The Yale Law Journal, May 1952, http://www.jstor.org/stable/793521?seq=3 (Accessed April 16, 2010)

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Fred Korematsu was one such citizen who sued the federal government in 1944 under the belief that his conviction was unconstitutional. He was convicted because he failed to report after Executive Order 9066 mandated that all citizens of Japanese descent leave the restricted areas. Before the Supreme Court, Korematsu argued that it was a clear violation of his right to due process to intern him, along with the other 110,000

Japanese-American citizens, without trial. His argument, however, fell on deaf ears, and the Supreme Court ruled that it was constitutionally acceptable to intern the Japanese

Americans. Through this decision they created the strict scrutiny test. This test maintains that if there is a compelling governmental interest and it is narrowly tailored, the government has the right to take from citizens certain rights.15 Although the majority opinion claimed there was a military necessity behind its decision, it was based on falsified documents and the justices’ own personal biases. There was absolutely no evidence of the military necessity of the internment of the Japanese Americans, which requires that one views this event as a great mistake within the history of the United

States, one that plausibly could repeat itself. Korematsu himself believed that as long as the decision from his case stood in the federal court “any American citizen [could] be held in prison or concentration camps without a trial or a hearing.”16 If the memory of this injustice was glazed over for little more than the cumulative $1.2 million that was given to victims, there is no knowing that the government will not see fit to act in such a fashion again in the future due to the relatively low cost.

15 Dr. Augustus Jones, Classroom Discussion, February 26, 2010. 16 Peter Irons, Justice at War: The Story of the Japanese American Internment Cases (. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), 371.

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One of the most recent events to strike the nation in a parallel manner occurred on

September 11th, 2001. This was the first attack on U.S soil since Pearl Harbor, which was of course the advent of the plan to intern the Japanese Americans. Following September

11th, there was much fear and suspicion towards Americans of Middle Eastern descent that was reminiscent of the feelings that surrounded the Japanese Americans after Pearl

Harbor. Although there was not a violation of human rights like the internment after

September 11th, there were many small ways in which loyal American citizens were penalized for a heritage over which they had no control. The racial profiling that occurred in this country after September 11th mirrored the way in which the Japanese

Americans were treated after the bombing on Pearl Harbor. In both cases, the large majority of the minority population played no role in the event itself, yet they were discriminated against because of their racial ties. One Japanese-American internee described his camp experience in the 1940s as demeaning, saying “I felt like I was a piece of shit, actually. As kids we made the best of what was available, but deep down it still felt like I was filthy.”17 This feeling has since been recreated in a number of loyal

Americans who have been victim to discrimination for purely racial purposes. The threat of separation still exists in the integrated world of today because there is precedent in the court that would stand for racial prejudice when there is “a compelling government interest” in taking such an action.18 Although Korematsu had his conviction vacated by the state of California, the Supreme Court has yet to overturn its decision, meaning that

17 Greg Robinson, A tragedy of democracy: Japanese confinement in North America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 162. 18 Donald P. Kommers, John E. Finn, and Gary J Jacobsohn, American Constitutional Law (New York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2010), 211.

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such a precedent could be followed again in the future. When the courts ruled that the internment was constitutional, even though their due process rights were violated, they placed at risk the rights of all American citizens. Inalienable rights do not deserve the title if there are external events that can lead to their revocation.

Historiography

Much has been written on the Japanese Internment as an event. There are monographs covering why this event occurred and memoirs of the personal trials that resulted from being interned. The work that has been done on the relatively young event is impressive, yet few works explore the personal and private side of the redress movement. The redress movement was more than just bureaucratical procedure and the work of organized societies. It was a manifestation of the desire within the Japanese-

American community for justice and this personal aspect of the movement is what makes the movement so important.

For many Americans of Japanese descent, family members who were interned would only refer to their time at the relocations centers as “camp”. This led to misunderstandings about the camp experience much like the one between Donna Nagata and her mother. It was a desire to repress the memories and spare children from the shame parents had felt that this period of life was intentionally skipped over. Donna

Nagata argued in her monograph Legacy of Injustice: Exploring the Cross-Generational

Impact of the Japanese American Internment that because many families refused to discuss the internment within the home, children learned of the event first through popular culture or overheard conversations, and to these children the silence did not make

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the past disappear, but rather it inspired them to press for reparations to be made. It was

Nagato’s finding that cross-generational lines were more readily open in families where both parents had been forced to leave their homes, but this number was still lower than would have been expected. All the same, no matter how children learned of the internment, the Sansei were more likely to be more distinctly Japanese or pursue jobs that were connected to the experiences their parents had in the camps. Of those interviewed as part of the Sansei Research Project, several stated that they “saw their parents’ camp experience as creating extra pressure to prove oneself in terms of education, career, and citizenship.”19 Many of the Sansei pursued work in the fields of law and politics because of their desire to correct injustice or strove to fulfill the goals their parents had before the internment made those dreams unrealistic. This book has already proven to be essential to my thesis in its content and analysis of surveyed material.

To understand the Japanese-American internment as an event, it is essential to study the court cases that granted to such actions their cloak of constitutionality. Without court cases like Korematsu v. United States, the legitimacy granted to the forced removal of the Japanese Americans from their homes would not have been grounded in the very document that was written to prevent such actions. In his book Justice at War: The Story of the Japanese American Internment Cases, Peter Irons argues that the four cases brought before the Supreme Court by Japanese Americans violated the civil liberties of those citizens because the government falsified documents and withheld vital information. Had this information been correct or available it would have led to the cases

19 Nagata, Donna K. Legacy of Injustice: Exploring the Cross-Generational Impact of the Japanese American Internment. New York: Plenum Press, 1993, pg138.

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being dismissed or at least decided in a fashion more beneficial to the plaintiffs. It was in fact Irons who discovered many of the hidden documents when he began helping with cases aimed at vacating the prior convictions. Irons was one of the first to take a stand against the Supreme Court cases that gave validity to the internment and used his law degree to represent many victims of the same. Through this book he explores the causes and effects of the four main cases regarding the internment that were brought before the nation’s most powerful court. Not only is his a story of legal woes, but also included are repressed documents and government secrets that greatly contributed to the unethical forced movement of so many Japanese Americans. While not a historian by degree, Irons has earned great respect as a legal historian for his work in uncovering primary sources that led to the vacation of Fred Korematsu’s conviction by the California Supreme Court.

Michael Romanowski’s dissertation “The Ethical Treatment of the Japanese

American Internment Camps: A Content Analysis of Secondary American History

Textbooks,” was extremely helpful in understanding how children learn of the internment outside of the home. This work outlines the ways in which the internment is presented in five popular American history textbooks, studying the language used, the amount of space devoted, and the representations of the Japanese from before Pearl Harbor to show the great inadequacy with which high school curricula examines the internment.

Romanowski argues that by using negative language before introducing the internment, children are already given a negative image of the Japanese, that the limited amount of space is not enough to show the true horrors, and that the textbooks don’t encourage children to ask critical questions about the internment, but rather to accept it as it is read.

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Romanowski found that among the five textbooks, there was very little difference between the presentations of the internment. The length devoted to the internment only varied from three to five paragraphs, with the exception of American Voices, which in the author’s opinion is the only textbook to accurately depict camp conditions, the racial catalyst to the move, and raise moral questions about the actions taken by the government. This dissertation raises the question of how school age children are exposed to the internment as a historical event and clearly shows that the current educational tools are not conducive to a complete understanding of the event.

For more background on the internment, Michi Nishiura Weglyn’s Years of

Infamy: The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps is a helpful read. This book is full of details beginning before Pearl Harbor even occurred, but shows that even during that time the government had begun investigating the Japanese Americans.

Through discussing secret documents, camp conditions, personal prejudices, and the reentry of those interned back into society, this work argues that evidence supports the claim that there was no legitimate reason for the internment and further that the damage done psychologically and economically was more severe than commonly assumed. By reading this book, the reader has a basic understanding of the event as it occurred and was experienced. It does cover the reparation movement, which makes for a more complete coverage of the internment. It also has a large section dedicated to the Japanese

Americans who lived in Hawaii but were not forced to relocate due to the fact that the economy of the state would have crashed had the population, which constituted the labor, left. It is interesting that this was the case given the geographical location of Hawaii and

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the overwhelmingly large Japanese-American population that called the island chain home. Yet the apparent discrepancy is cleared up when Weglyn reveals that “removing more than 35 percent of the population of Hawaii not only would be a logistical nightmare but also would cripple many industries needed for the war effort.” 20 In combination with the local government in Hawaii, the media refrained from spreading rumors and really helped shut down the war hysteria that was so devastating in the continental United States. This angle added a new dimension to my understanding of the forced internment and showed how truly economically motivated the entire process was.

In looking at the current scholarship, Alice Yang Murray’s collection of selected reading in What did the Internment of Japanese Americans Mean? was both efficient and informative. This work was designed to introduce the issue students in middle and high school by giving excerpts from relevant and recent articles or books on the subject and posing questions as to how they all can be seen to find common ground between how historians answer the questions and what further questions are generated. Murray argues that the internment cannot be studied without looking a the five questions posed in her book, and that the answers to those questions can only truly educate the reader if he is willing to do further research on his own. Included in this book are works by five different authors, three of whom are considered to be investigative historians recognized as bringing the facts of the internment to the general public in the beginning of the period of historical inquiry into this event. Each excerpt is introduced with background

20 Alice Yang Murray, ed., What did the Internment of Japanese Americans Mean? (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2000), 8.

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information and a clearly laid out thesis, plus guided questions in the hopes that the students will be hooked on the topic and pursue further research. It also has a very extensive further reading section which explains which books a student might desire based on his particular angle of interest.

In contrast to all of the works that look at the internment through a wide-angle view, the books dedicated to specific places or people are helpful in creating more personal connections between the reader and the subject. It also facilitated seeing the impact of this event on an individual level that can then be expanded to understand the problem on a larger scale. David Neiwert’s Strawberry Days: How Internment

Destroyed A Japanese American Community does just that. This story is the narrative of

Bellevue, Washington, spanning from the arrival of Japanese Americans in the area to the present and develops the economic justifications for the internment, as well as the demographic changes that resulted due to the internment. He argues that the internment destroyed communities that prior to Executive Order 9066 were flourishing and that the removal of the Japanese Americans led to farmlands being cleared of their communities in favor of more suburbia. To his credit, Neiwert was able to look at the effects of the internment in Bellevue and relate them not only to the city as it is today, but also to other cities from across the West Coast where the same consequences were experienced. His mastery of narrative and personal testimonies created a monograph that was not only interesting but also highly informative.

Many of the books written on the internment are written exclusively from the viewpoint of the Japanese Americans or the United States Government. They include

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the facts, the ramifications, and the tales of survival, but little of the effect the internment had on other groups. However, A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America by Robert Takaki analyzes the internment while looking at the violation of other civil rights. This book covers many events in American history, but ends with a chapter on the internment of the Japanese Americans with notes on the Civil Rights Movement of 1964 that African Americans were pursuing. He contrasts the two movements, but also broadens the scope by exploring the differing ways the two groups are viewed by the public. Takaki argues that the history of the internment, or any event in the American past, cannot be viewed as separate from all of the other events of the time. In looking at the internment, he finds that the identity of Japanese Americans as the “model minority” largely came from their assimilation, which was a clear consequence of their internment.

He also looks at the great contradiction that exists in the fact that there were Japanese

Americans who liberated Dachau in the war for democracy while their families and friends were imprisoned by their own country. In the same vein, Takaki looked at the importance of the Japanese Americans in Hawaii and made the argument that they could not have been interned since the labor provided by the Japanese Americans was

“absolutely essential for rebuilding the defenses destroyed at Pearl Harbor.”21 All of the points he makes connect in a multicultural world and have ramifications that are still experienced today. It was refreshing to view the internment as an event that affected more than just the Japanese Americans. If the consequences affect all Americans, as they

21 Ronald Takaki, A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America (New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 1993), 379.

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in reality do, then all Americans have a reason to care about the internment of one minority group.

Furthering the expanded view of the internment, it is impossible to fairly judge the actions of the United States government without understanding what life was like on the home front during the war. There are few ways that better show the reader what life was like than personal testimony and this is exactly how The Homefront: America During

World War II is written. The authors, Mark Harris, Franklin Mitchell, and Steven

Schechter introduce the various sections but let those who experienced life in the United

States during the Second World War speak for themselves. The authors use these testimonies to argue that World War II was the most significant era for those who lived during it and through its consequences at home, such as the end of the Great Depression, the development of atomic weapons, and shifting work patterns, it affected all Americans who lived after the end of the war. Most directly related to the Internment is the chapter entitled “Democracy and Hypocrisy,” which is more expansive than just looking at the internment. It also explores the segregation of African Americans in the armed forces, and the scrutiny that the conscientious objectors faced. Although one interviewee admitted, “We Americans were basically racist in our attitude towards the Japanese,” there are many others who believed that what the government was doing was right.22

While I firmly disagree with those who hold such a position, for the sake of balance it is important that they too be included in my thesis.

22 Mark J. Harris, Franklin D. Mitchell, and Steven J. Schechter, The Homefront: America During World War II (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1984), 23.

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The study of memory is imperative to my thesis, thus making Caroline

Schaumann’s, Memory Matters: Generational Responses to Germany’s Nazi Past in

Recent Women’s Literature an easily applicable read. As I have previously said, I am not trying to make the claim that the internment of the Japanese Americans was equal in its horror to the Holocaust; it was not. However, the memories surrounding the two camp experiences parallel one another. Schaumann takes six works written by women and uses the differing backgrounds of the authors to juxtapose the memories so prevalent in their works. She argues that although the memories of the six authors’ represent differing angles and experiences they exhibit a comparable thought process regarding memory and juxtapose the desire for repression of those memories and reconciliation with reality, which can come only through an acceptance of one’s past. One of the works reviewed,

My Father’s Country: The Story of a German Family, by Wibke Bruhns, relates well to the internment of the Japanese Americans since it explores the creation of memory in a home where silence was dominated a childhood and memory had to be developed from scratch.

My approach to this subject will be new because the research that has currently been conducted is focused almost entirely on the ways in which the internment affected its victims and their descendants. The other side of the current state of research is entirely political in its nature. While these are very important aspects of study, it is my opinion that they have largely been covered. What has not been documented is the connection between the discussion of the internment within the home and the redress movement that can be seen to have resulted from that discussion. It is my desire to

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combine these two sets of research by exploring the intrapersonal drives that led to political change. The internment was both a personal tragedy and a gross wrong doing on the part of the government. Since it is by its very nature both personal and public at the same time, why shouldn’t the scholarship surrounding the internment reflect the same?

3. Methodology

In studying the redress movement, I will look at the ways in which families communicated their time of imprisonment to their children. The Sansei Research Project, which is analyzed in Donna Nagata’s book Legacy of Injustice, looked at the ways in which parents of those interned spoke to their children about the internment. In many cases, the subject remained one that was closed. Parents sought to keep that part of their history from children so that children would be spared the shame of their parent’s internment. Families in which one or both of the parents were interned generally introduced their children to the concept of the internment before the children had the opportunity to learn of that heritage through an outside source. For this reason, I am really interested in studying the family dynamic in the post-internment years. How children learned of the internment and how victims phrased their stories interests me, because there has been much written on the silence of that generation. The current research suggests that those who were interned prefer to not speak about that period of their lives, but what happened when they did? Did the shame and anger dull? These are questions I will be able to answer through reading diaries and personal letters written by victims of the internment and their children.

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Following the redress movement, there was a great push to collect these mementoes of individual experiences. Many of the museums and social justice organizations have made these primary sources available through online research collections. The Japanese American National Museum has made several collections of letters available. The Primary resources I used the most for my project were testimonies and interviews complied in the Densho Archive. This archive is open to the public and has hundred of photos, written documents, and video recordings. The items in the collection span from the time immediately preceding the internment through the redress movement and thus was essential to the timeframe of my thesis. One other great set of primary sources is the Norman Y. Mineta Papers. Mineta was a congressman from

California who was instrumental in the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988.

Published interviews are also easily accessible through other monographs and websites.

One internee said, “No matter how many times I hear, speak, or read of the internment, there is an inevitable feeling of overwhelming hurt, sadness, anger, and fear that wells up inside of me,” but did they all feel this way?23 That could not have been the case for all

Japanese Americans since many Nisei did not participate in the redress movement, but I will only be able to make a historical hypothesis about the dividing line on this issue after

I discover through those private documents and biographies how the Japanese Americans remembered the event.

There have been several documentaries made that I also hope to watch for clues as to how the redress movement was begun. One, entitled, Something Strong Within,

23 Nagata, Donna K. Legacy of Injustice: Exploring the Cross-Generational Impact of the Japanese American Internment. New York: Plenum Press, 1993, pg 149.

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documents the internment in an emotional as opposed to factual manner. In order to understand the need for redress and the communication patterns of those who were interned I will need to be connected to the event in an emotional capacity that mirrors their attachment, while also striving for a fair and balanced point of view. This documentary follows three victims of the internment and describes the effect of the conflicting desires for advocacy and restraint. Both of these played a major role in the redress movement and it will be imperative that I understand how the two interacted in order that I understand the impact of the redress movement and the Civil Liberties Act of

1988. Not only were home movies incorporated into this documentary, but there are also home video clips available on the Japanese American National Museum website that speak to the memory of the internment and how it was shared between family members.

The film From Resettlement to Redress will also be insightful as to describe the process within the larger community. This film features main of the leaders of the Japanese-

American community, which will be useful in the second and third chapters of my thesis.

Although it is not the main point of my thesis, to answer my question I will have to study the legislative actions that were pushed for by the Japanese-American community before the redress movement. The third chapter of my thesis will focus on the congressional side of the redress and for that reason I will be looking at the

Congressional records about H.R. 442 and the other bills that were proposed before the final version was accepted. This will also require that I sift through the various documents created by the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of

Civilians, the 1978 JACL Convention minutes, and information relating to the first

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redress bill, which was introduced in 1974 by George E. Danielson of California.24 Many primary sources exist on these topics since most of it belongs to the public record. While the personal motives behind the bulk of these bills, conventions, and various other governmental documents are still to be discovered, the documents themselves are readily available both in previously written monographs and online. The transcripts from the public hearings are available through the United States Government Archives and will be truly vital in demonstrating the validity of my thesis.

4. Organization.

In organizing my thesis, I will be taking a largely chronological approach. It is my belief that it will be most logically understood if I start with a brief introduction to the internment and move towards the present incrementally. I will only discuss the internment in the introduction since it is not my ultimate focus, and I know that if I were to talk about it at any length it would distract from my ultimate point. I will, however, use some thematic methods of organizing the information within the chronologically separated chapters. For even though 46 years passed between the execution of Executive

Order 9066 and the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, the feelings of shame and anger can be seen throughout. I will also be dividing up those chronological sections based on private interactions between individuals within the family and families versus those interactions between the Japanese-American community and the government of the United States with my primary focus being on the former of the two.

24 Mitchell Maki, Harry Kitano, and S. Megan Berthold, Achieving the Impossible Dream: How Japanese Americans Obtained Address (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 68.

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The first true chapter of my thesis will be on the communication patterns within the home following the internment. It will be here that I explore how families discussed the internment and the ways in which individuals as well as the family as a whole have managed to cope with the great injustice in their heritage. By exploring how families discussed the internment I will be able to discern what the personal motivations for redress were and how one’s family life affected the presence or absence of those driving factors. I will also be looking at the ways in which parents described their internment experience to their children and the outside influences that may have affected that revelation within the family.

The second chapter will focus on the move towards the redress movement. This chapter is organized around the move of information and personal stories from within the home to the greater Japanese-American community. Here, I will be looking at the education of the Sansei and how the more liberal environment of college led them fight for redress. I hope to better understand what made those who led the fight answer the call and how those who accepted the silence internalized the wrongs committed against them.

This chapter will also look at the impact other ethnic groups fighting for their civil rights had on the Japanese American. Because other ethnic groups were willing to display civil disobedience in order that they be recognized, the Japanese Americans were able to use their models to build their own movement. Although no great reparation was made until

1988, the United States government did enact several laws to benefit the minority group in the wake of the end of World War II. In that period of time, the government paid back some of the claims made for damages, repealed Title II of the Emergency Detention Act,

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and overturned the Alien Land Law, which had mandated that Japanese Americans could not own land. However, it was less the passage of these bills and more a coming together of the community that enables the Japanese Americans to be successful.

The third Chapter exclusively covers the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. I will begin this chapter by analyzing the political environment out of which it developed. Why had the Japanese Americans been unsuccessful up until that point? What changed in 1988 to allow the passage of this act? Who joined the fight that so shifted the balance of power as to finally achieve redress? There are personal factors attached to the political movement for redress that I will explicate. This chapter follows the Civil Liberties Act from its introduction to the first payments made to the survivors and hopes to show the intricacy of congressional recognition.

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Chapter One “Enryo”: Restrained Speech, Shame, and Assimilation

Figure 2.1: The Young Kansas Citizens’ Club in Missouri provided a recreational outlet for resettled Japanese Americans. (, Photographs of Japanese-American Evacuation and Resettlement, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley)

“Before the war he took my mother out once a week to the movies. Since the war, my mother has only seen one movie. Before the war my father didn’t drink. But he died two years ago of alcoholism. And I was never really aware of the causes until I started asking about the camp.”-Alan Nishio, Activist, 197225

On March 20, 1946 Tule Lake Relocation Center closed its doors.26 The gates were opened. Life behind barbed wire was over. Freedom was at last at hand for the

25 25 Michi Nishiura Weglyn, Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996, pg 280. 26 Daniels, Roger, and Sandra Taylor, and Harry Kitano, ed. Japanese Americans: From Relocation to Redress. Seattle: University of Washington Press. 1991, pg xxi.

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Japanese Americans27. Yet, there was little cause for celebration. The homes they had once known were gone. Family heirlooms they were unable to pack had been stolen or sold for little to nothing. The community to which they once belonged did not want them to return. As hard as life was behind the barbed wire fence, the vast land of hostility and prejudice that faced Japanese Americans as they reentered the free world was more daunting. Although they hated the dust, lack of privacy, and primitive conditions in which they lived, many Japanese Americans did not want to leave the camps. Rather, they were being thrown out. The United States government had taken them from their homes, and it now washed its hands of the problems the internees would face once reintegrated into a world that had moved on during the years they were interned. The

War Relocation Authority, which was charged with the oversight of the camps, as well as the relocation of the internees, knew that it would be a difficult task to reintegrate

120,000 citizens into mainstream America, but the closing of the last camp necessitated that Japanese Americans find a new home. The Japanese Americans may no longer have been held prisoner in a physical capacity, yet their captivity was far from over. As Alan

Nishio’s reflection makes clear, life was never the same.

Starting Over

After leaving the internment camps, families had little more than the meager belongings they had packed some years before, they were limited to only what they could carry, and the $25 they were provided for travel from the camps they had

27 A Note on Definitions. Issei is the Japanese word used for first generation immigrants. This would be the generation of individuals who came to America from Japan beginning in the 1880s. The Nisei are second generation Japanese Americans who were born in the United States. Sansei is the word used to describe third generation Japanese Americans. Nikkei is used to describe Japanese emigrants and their descendents who continue to live in a country other than Japan.

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called home. Combined with the fact that few individuals had been able to make more than $19 a month inside the camps, the possibilities for finding housing were limited.28

Not only were Japanese Americans faced with economic challenges, but rampant racism still existed, which further limited their options. Those who left homes with neighbors, often returned to find their homes looted, destroyed, or sold to other people. Having no course of action through which they could regain their property, many were homeless and forced to find a new community. Enterprising businessmen along the West Coast had reaped the benefits of the Japanese Americans’ hardship. Before Pearl Harbor Japanese

Americans produced more than half of the commercial truck crops in California even though they were only 1% of the population.29 By 1940, the farms in California,

Washington, and Oregon owned by Japanese Americans were valued at $72.6 million.30

Agriculturalists were able to purchase Japanese-American businesses at low cost, pilfer the belongings of those who were interned, and benefit from lessened competition in the agricultural realm without the high-producing Japanese Americans in the picture. One example of these unfair deals is Masuo Yasui who was a very successful businessman in

Hood River, Oregon. He sold a 160 acre ranch he had just purchased for $35,000 for

$10,000 and commented that even though he felt he was practically giving his land away,

“in view of the current chaotic and uncertain conditions, under which we are now

28 According to the US Census Bureau, the average income for a family in 1946 was $3, 000. That would mean that they made on average $250 a month, which is more than 13 time the wages paid to the interned Japanese Americans. This makes it obvious that $25 would have been insufficient funds for families trying to reintegrate into society. More information can be found at http://www2.census.gov/prod2/popscan/p60- 001.pdf. 29 Michi Nishiura Weglyn, Years of Infamy:The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996, pg 37. 30 Nagata, Donna K. Legacy of Injustice: Exploring the Cross-Generational Impact of the Japanese American Internment. New York: Plenum Press, 1993, pg

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placed...[he]...decided to consider it.”31 Many other landowners were forced to do the same since there was no time to make more beneficial arrangements.

The majority desired to stay in California, crediting its climate and familiarity

(since the vast majority of Japanese Americans had originally located there).32 In a 1946 memoranda to members of Congress, Dillon Myer, the director of the War Relocation

Authority, wrote “at present, there are about 51,800 evacuees who are living in areas away from the coast, and 57,000 who have returned to West Coast states.”33 Even though this number shows that Japanese Americans often relocated in Western States this does not indicate that they were welcomed. In California, Fred Howser, the Attorney General predicted that there would be “mass slaughter” and Congressman Engle warned of

“wholesale bloodshed and violence.”34 Between January of 1945, when the restriction on

Japanese Americans in California was lifted, and July of that same year there were thirty- one “major terrorist attacks upon California relocates.”35 This is only the number of reported crimes, and it can be assumed that the number of unreported crimes was much higher since few Japanese Americans would have felt comfortable reporting such acts shortly after their release. In fact in March of 1943, Las Vegas “pronounced itself one hundred percent anti-Japanese,” making its hostility known to Japanese Americans who

31 Kessler, Lauren. Stubborn Twig: Three Generations in the Life of a Japanese American Family. New York: Random House, 1993, pg 123. 32 Michi Nishiura Weglyn, Years of Infamy:The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996, pg 274. 33 Memorandum, To Members of Congress from the Three West Coast States, not dated, c. 1946. Papers of Dillon S. Myer. 34 Michi Nishiura Weglyn, Years of Infamy:The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996, pg 233. 35 Tetsuden Kashima, “Japanese American Internees Return, 1945 to 1955: Readjustment and Social Amnesia,” Phylon 41 (1980): 109.

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were being released from their internment camps.36 This was a sentiment felt not only by the people, but also by the local government.

Due to the brutal nature of coastal racism, large numbers of internees moved east to cities like Chicago and . Cities provided a chance to blend into a more diverse community, more job opportunities, and Japanese Americans were even welcomed by some due to a preference among city dwellers that Asian Americans move in so as to block the African American population from doing so.37 However, many communities outside of the West Coast were only slightly more tolerant since they lacked knowledge of Japanese Americans and questioned why they would want individuals who were considered threats to the nation as their neighbors.38 Those who did leave often did so at the pain of leaving behind their familiar support systems, provided both through family as well as the Nikkei community, Japanese immigrants and their descendents, as a whole. Illinois became the home to the largest number of settlers after California, with

12,500, followed by Colorado and Utah, each with less than half that number.39 Salt

Lake City saw a great increase in the number of Japanese-American citizens as a result of the large Mormon population, which was relatively tolerant of the plight of the internees.40

This chapter is focused on exploring the ways in which memories where repressed following the closing of the internment camps by the WRA in 1946. Japanese Americans

36 Sandra C. Taylor, “Leaving the Concentration Camps: Japanese American Resettlement in Utah and the Intermountain West,” Pactific Historical Review 60 (1991): 188. 37Ibid: pg 182. 38Ibid,:175. 39 Memorandum, To Members of Congress from the Three West Coast States, not dated, c. 1946. Papers of Dillon S. Myer. 40 Sandra C. Taylor, “Leaving the Concentration Camps: Japanese American Resettlement in Utah and the Intermountain West,” Pactific Historical Review 60 (1991):184.

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were faced with the brutal reality that they once again had to start over. For the majority of adults who were interned, their time behind barbed wire was a period of their lives to leave in the past. They did not desire to dwell on what had been, because the future lay ahead of them. This chapter seeks to prove that their successful assimilation into mainstream American culture can largely be credited to their fear of being discriminated against as being Japanese during their period of resettlement. It is also focused on the way memories of the internment were shared within the family unit. This is done by examining the silence that surrounded the topic for many years and the ways through which the event was introduced to children who did not experience the internment or had no recollection of the internment.

Silent Assimilation

Even though the racial tensions presented the Nikkei with tough decisions to make, most desired little more than a chance to obtain the “American Dream.” These former internees spent the majority of their time and energies in the post-internment years just trying to rebuild their lives. There were jobs to be found, life savings to be replaced, and communities into which they desperately tried to assimilate. The economic struggles of the Nikkei in the years immediately following the internment have been well documented.41 However, it was the psychological ramifications that made the greatest difference when they were restructuring their lives. There was a belief that if only they

41 Further information can be found in : Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. Personal Justice Denied. Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1982; reprint, with a new foreword; Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997. Books that also cover this topic include Dorothy Thomas’ Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement, Japanese Americans, From Relocation to Redress Edited by Roger Daniels, and Michi Weglyn’s Years of Infamy. There are also numerous other hearings published by Congress’ Committee on the Judiciary available.

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had been 200% American before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, such terrible injustice would not have been done to them. The WRA used their failure to assimilate fully as a defense of the internment. One government sociologist in May of 1942 stated that “the

Japanese were never Americans in California,” and went on to explain that the internment would help them to assimilate because it would force them to disperse into new geographical locations both during the war and after their release from the camps.42

The internment did indeed cause Japanese Americans to assimilate. The internees strove to regain some of the honor they had lost during their time interned.

John Okada described their desire to assimilate in his book The No No Boy, when he said they were “becoming ‘better Americans than the regular ones because that’s the way it has to be when one looks Japanese.’”43 This desire to assimilate was coupled by a sense of intense interest in what their white neighbors thought about them. Due to this attention, many of the older Japanese Americans who had been placed in the internment camps believed it was in the best interest of the community as a whole to leave the internment in the past. The phrase, which would have been familiar to the internees, was

“Shikata Ga Nai,” which translates to “You cannot help it.”44 This belief made it clear that there was no reason to dwell on the past, for what happened was already done, and there was no chance that the situation could be changed.

42 Taylor, Frank J. "The People Nobody Wants”Saturday Evening Post". (1942): 67. 43 Michi Nishiura Weglyn, Years of Infamy:The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996, pg 273. 44 Takemoto, Paul H. Nisei Memories: My Parents Talk About the War Years. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006, pg 101.

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This desire to fully assimilate is what led to the creation of the mythical status of

“model minority” Japanese Americans earned.45 Model minority is used to describe a minority whose members are likely to achieve more success than other minority groups.

This can be economically, socially, or in their ability to assimilate into mainstream culture.46 Japanese Americans earned this title from the belief that it was their traditions and religious values that enabled them to assimilate after the war, overlooking the fact that they felt they had to assimilate in order that a similar injustice not happen to them again.47

Shame and Cultural Norms

However, there were many other reasons for the silence that prevailed among families and communities with regard to the camp experience. One of the main reasons the interned Japanese Americans refused to speak about their time of internment was the great shame that they felt about that occurrence. Alice Takemoto says she never spoke of her camp experience because “when you have something bad done to you, you get to thinking you were bad. That it was your fault.”48 Japanese people believed that the shame of one member of the community brought shame to the whole community, and even second-generation immigrants to this country still adhered to this belief. It is not unusual to read testimonies by those who were interned who compare the trauma to that

45 It is important to note that while the term “model minority” was used in praise of the Japanese American’s ability to assimilate beginning in 1960, it is still a racist term since it creates a racial hierarchy with white Americans at the top. 46 Chou, Chin-Chien. "Critique on the Notion or Model Minority: An Alternative Racisim to Asian American?." Asian Ethnicity (2008): 219. 47 Ibid, pg 221. 48 Takemoto, Paul H. Nisei Memories: My Parents Talk About the War Years. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006), 157.

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of a rape victim. Edison Uno, a scholar who worked at California State University in San

Francisco, drew such a comparison. In the same way a victim of rape could not “talk about the experience because the mere articulation of what happened to her would bring out a question about whether she was responsible for the act,” Japanese Americans could not talk about the internment without having to answer questions about their failure to resist the internment or their loyalty to the United States.49 In both circumstances there is a feeling of guilt, as though the incident was brought on oneself, and therefore also strong feelings of shame.50 This shame grew both from the conditions in which the Nikkei were forced to live and the lack of resistance they organized against the internment order. For some, the fact that they voluntarily allowed their rights to be stripped led them to believe they were not victims, but were in someway responsible for their own incarceration. One fighter in the redress movement, Nelson Kituse, said in an interview, “as I look back I have a guilty feeling that I should have contested in someway. But at the time I just went along; I said that’s the law.”51

The belief that it is one’s duty to follow all dictates of authority is also part of the

Japanese-American culture. Just as the father was to be the unquestioned head of the household, the President was to be revered and his orders respected. In fact, on the day they learned of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Japanese American Citizen League sent to President Roosevelt a telegram that read, “in this solemn hour we pledge our fullest

49 Matsui, Robert. “Recalling the U.S. Internment of the Japanese.” November 4, 2001. John F. Kennedy Library and Foundation Responding to Terrorism Series. 50 Nagata, Donna K. Legacy of Injustice: Exploring the Cross-Generational Impact of the Japanese American Internment. New York: Plenum Press, 1993, pg 31. 51 Axford,Roger W. Too Long Silent: Japanese Americans Speak Out. (Lincoln, Nebraska: Media Publishing and Marketing, INC., 1986), 46.

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cooperation to you, Mr. President, and to our country. There cannot be any question.

There must be no doubt. We, in our hearts, are American.”52 White Americans, however, did not see this profession of loyalty to their country as overcoming their purported loyalty to Japan, as the hysteria took over in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. Nevertheless,

Japanese Americans tried once more to prove this loyalty upon their release from the camps. The War Relocation Agency responsible for organizing the internment camps advised the internees against being “conspicuous and accept[ing] the message that it was undesirable, perhaps even dangerous, to be identified as a Japanese American.”53 By accepting their past discrimination without complaint, Japanese Americans believed they were rebuilding their image among other citizens and regaining the trust of the government.

Repression of the Past

The private and traumatic experience of being interned was something many could not express because they did not have the language with which to do so. Joan W

Scott, a feminist scholar, explains the connection between memory and language as follows, “Experience is the subject’s history. Language is the site of history’s enactment.”54 What can be taken from this is that without a way to verbalize one’s experience the remembrance of said experience is impossible. The core of her argument is that experience is not simply one’s understanding of an event, but rather that

52 Conrat, Maisie, Richard Conrat, and Dorothea Lange. 1972. Executive order 9066: the internment of 110,000 Japanese Americans. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press for the California Historical Society, pg 57. 53 Murray,Alice Yang. Historical Memories of the Japanese American internment and the struggle for redress. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008, pg 198. 54 Ernst Van Alphen, “Symptoms of Discursivity: Experience, Memory, and Trauma,” in Acts of Memory:Cultural Recall in the Present, ed. Mieke Bal, Jonathan Crewe, and Leo Spitzer (Hanover:University Press of New England, 1999), 25.

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experience is discursive and must be capable of vocalization. If one is unable to talk about the event, then cannot be said to have experienced the event under this theory.

Ernst Van Alphen was able to apply this school of thought to the trauma of the

Holocaust, and while very different events, there are parallels to be found between his analysis and the lack of communication following Japanese American’s camp experiences. In both circumstances, discussion of the experience was taboo in the culture victimized by the experience. Alphen found that there was no way for the victims to speak without claiming victimhood or responsibility. This is also true of Japanese

Americans who lacked a way to distance themselves from the experience itself.55 By blaming themselves, Japanese Americans were forced into the role of subject when speaking about the internment, which only further caused feelings of shame and anger.

However, to victimize oneself was equally degrading and thus there was no way to talk about their experiences that did not conflict with the speaker’s personal conviction that they were wronged.

Former internees often use the term “defense mechanism” to explain their relative silence on the issue of internment. One such internee described the defenses such as

“repression, denial, rationalization, and identification with the aggressor,” as ways in which those who were victimized could protect themselves from the harsh reality of what was done to them.56 The community had a difficult time accepting the fact that a government, which they loved and trusted to protect them, could do something that betrayed them like this. This led some to believe that they had truly deserved to be

55Ibid,,30. 56 Maki, Mitchell and Harry Kitano, and Megan Berthold. Achieving the Impossible Dream: How Japanese Americans Obtained Redress. (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999), pg 52.

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removed from their homes and put behind barbed wire fences. This belief fostered a negative self-image, not only among the Issei, Japanese immigrants to America, and

Nisei, first-generation Japanese Americans, who were interned, but also in their children to whom this belief was passed. The Nisei taught their children that they should be proud of their heritage, yet at the same time, many stopped attending Japanese’s language schools and distanced themselves from other aspects of their Japanese heritage.

Repression of the injustice was just as widespread. In his book, Nisei Memories:

My Parents Talk About the War Years, Paul Takemoto describes the degree of difficulty that accompanied his attempts to get his parents to discuss their wartime experiences.

Takemoto’s father voluntarily served in the Second World War, while his mother was interned with her family for the duration of the war. Although his father is forthcoming with details regarding his military service, many of the questions Takemoto poses to his mother are left unanswered due to the fact that she blocked much of her experience.

Alice, his mother, explains that blocking the memories she had of her time interned was

“a defense mechanism. Otherwise it would have crushed [her]”.57 She was fourteen years old when her family was relocated to an internment camp, yet Alice admits to remembering almost nothing of their move or of certain camp experiences. She does not remember how she felt when she heard about Pearl Harbor or the return of her mother from jail, events that for most people would resonate for years. This is the norm rather than an exception. That one’s camp experiences could be a “powerful influence” on one

57 Takemoto, Paul H. Nisei Memories: My Parents Talk About the War Years. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006), 220.

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forty years after it had ended is a testament to the trauma that it caused to those forcibly relocated.

Communication Within the Home

Due to the shame felt within the community as a whole, and the repression common on the individual level, families rarely discussed the internment within the home. In many homes there was no discussion of the internment at all. Enryo is the

Japanese word that best describes the resettlement period because it means “restricted speech,” which was found not only publicly at this time, but also within the family unit.

Even in the cases where it was mentioned within the home, the parents would often only refer to their time interned as “camp” and would trivialize the experience with phrases such as “we managed.”58 One Sansei, second-generation Japanese American, reported that as he was growing up he had heard his parents use the word camp, but “as kids the only camp we know is summer camp.”59 Parents used this phrase to shield their children from the humiliation they had suffered, but through doing so, also kept from their children parts of their own histories. When Roger Daniels, a renowned historian of the internment, was teaching in the late 1960’s, he had two Japanese-American students who were emphatic that they were born in Los Angeles in 1943. Daniels, knowing that this was not true due to the timing, encouraged them to go home and ask questions. These

58 Kessler, Lauren. Stubborn Twig: Three Generations in the Life of a Japanese American Family. New York: Random House, 1993, pg 283. 59 Nagata, Donna K. Legacy of Injustice: Exploring the Cross-Generational Impact of the Japanese American Internment. New York: Plenum Press, 1993, pg 78.

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students were in college, yet had no idea that they had been born in internment camps.60

Many other such students existed.

Donna Nagata, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan, created the

Sansei Project, which aimed to measure the scope of the internment’s impact over three generations. There were 596 participants in the surveys and interviews conducted, and what Nagata found statistically shows how few families shared any communication regarding the internment.61 When interviewing Sansei for the project, Nagata divided them into groups depending on the number of interned parents they had. As is not surprising, the Sansei who had both parents interned were more likely to have learned of the internment within the home. Direct conversations regarding the internment were reported by slightly over half of the Sansei who had one or both parents interned. This suggests that not only those who had experienced it first hand, but also other members of the community shared the shame of the internment. Even though half of the Sansei with one or both parents interned reported that they had been told of the internment by their parents, “a substantial number of Sansei with interned parents did not view their parents as a primary source of information over time.”62 Thus, even when the event was introduced in the home, there was often limited conversation on the topic. According to the study these conversations only lasted on average between 10-30 minutes. This

“hiding” of their past, which is how many Sansei viewed their parent’s silence,

60 Maki, Mitchell and Harry Kitano, and Megan Berthold. Achieving the Impossible Dream: How Japanese Americans Obtained Redress. (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999), pg 57. 61 Nagata, Donna K. Legacy of Injustice: Exploring the Cross-Generational Impact of the Japanese American Internment. New York: Plenum Press, 1993, pg 57. 62Ibid, pg 79.

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“unwittingly taught their children to be ashamed of their own ethic heritage,” because it made it appear to the Sansei that the shame was their own.63

Through the course of the project, many Sansei admitted that they first learned of the internment through television, school, books, or their peers. Much like Roger

Daniel’s students, it was often the case that the Sansei had to raise the topic for the conversation to be held. Nagata’s Sansei Project found that in the group of participants who had one or more parents interned, it was only in one out of ten cases where the parents initiated the discussion.64 This environment of repression led many Sansei to feel as though they would bring harm to their parents if they asked questions, so they remained silent on the issue as well. The cycle of silence went unbroken because the topic was painful, real, and private.

In some cases, however, silence did not foster a spirit of “Shikata Ga Nai,” but rather spurred on the curiosity of the Sansei. With few other Americans discussing the internment at that time, the Sansei without access to outside information could only turn to their families to relieve them of their curiosity. One Sansei told Nagata that when he first learned of the internment, he had a difficult time discussing it with his parents because of their reactions. In telling him of the internment, they would mention the few positive aspects of their time interned and would gloss over all of the emotional and psychological problems the experience had caused. This Sansei described the feelings he has as being that “there was much more to their experience than they wanted to reveal.

Their words said one thing, while their hearts were holding something else deep

63 Maki, Mitchell T., Harry H. L. Kitano, and S. Megan Berthold. Achieving the impossible dream: how Japanese Americans obtained redress. The Asian American experience. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999, pg 285. 64Ibid, pg 83.

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inside.”65 By keeping to themselves, the Issei and Nisei protected themselves from remembering the horrors of camp, but they also stripped the Sansei of part of their heritage in the process. Jeanne Wakatusui Houston, the author of Farewell to wrote that book when her nephew, who was 25-years-old at the time, challenged her by saying, “I was born in Manzanar and I know nothing about it. Will you please tell me?”66

She was unable to answer his question immediately, but used her book as a teaching tool for many members of the Sansei generation whose parents didn’t share information about the camps with them. For example, one interviewee told Nagata that he had a biography due for class and desired to write about his father’s internment experience. It was his plan to “interview [his] father and to take his experience in camp...as part of history. But his father told [him] to just fabricate everything.”67 The fact that the father preferred that his son make up his own history rather than talk about the experience is revealing. While this example is extreme, and there were plenty of other Japanese-American parents who did feel comfortable helping with such projects it demonstrates the aversion those who were interned had to sharing their experiences.

Breaking the Silence

However, once the Sansei went to college or pursued their education outside of the home, many were exposed to an atmosphere that questioned assimilation. Leaving their family homes and being surrounded by other youths led to a politicization of this generation of Japanese Americans. For some students, this was through association with

65 Nagata, Donna K. Legacy of Injustice: Exploring the Cross-Generational Impact of the Japanese American Internment. New York: Plenum Press, 1993, pg 75. 66 Tetsuden Kashima, “Japanese American Internees Return, 1945 to 1955: Readjustment and Social Amnesia,” Phylon 41 (1980): 113. 67Ibid, pg 88.

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other ethnic groups fighting for civil liberties, but for others it was through meeting other

Japanese Americans who did have pride in their heritage. There was a belief among the

Sansei that learning could lead the community to action. In order to get a true sense of the internment this necessitated that members of the community who were interned shared their experiences. Because more time had passed and grown children were questioning the victims, more Nisei and Issei were willing to speak about realities of internment. The timing of the Sansei coming of age also greatly affected the lack of communication within the home. As Sansei were growing older, many of the Issei who were interned were reaching old age and had a desire to pass their knowledge to the youth. It is common for individuals who believe they are approaching death to desire to speak about their experiences and the case was no different within the Japanese American community. Congressman Robert Matsui noted that his “mother and father refused to talk about it with [him] until they were nearing their death.”68 The Nisei were also more established in their jobs and communities and thus could take the chance to discuss the internment without all of the fear that had been present up until that time. Since the

Sansei were now more mature, the Issei/Nisei felt less of a need to shield them from the pain of the internment. Further, most had already learned of the internment, so by discussing it within the home, those who lived through it were able to address problems in the ways it was portrayed and give personal stories to bring the incident to life.

There was also a great desire to combat the media’s portrayal of the success of the “model minority.” Many Sansei were disappointed with media coverage that implied

68 Matsui, Robert. “Recalling the U.S. Internment of the Japanese.” November 4, 2001. John F. Kennedy Library and Foundation Responding to Terrorism Series.

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that since Japanese Americans had been able to assimilate so well, the silence could be seen as success on the part of the United States. In fact, many of the members of the

Japanese American community, praised for exemplifying the ideal minority, were themselves subject to chronic anxiety regarding their acceptance and constantly seeking the approval of others.69 Edison Uno argued that by focusing on the statistics that showed the success of Japanese Americans the media was glossing over the “ethnic self- hate that represented the true legacy of the camp experience.”70 In fact, students at

UCLA founded a newspaper for Asian Americans in 1969 called Gidra and used it to present a nonconformist history that challenged the positive spin mainstream media gave to the assimilation of the Japanese-American Community.71

Many of those who were interned discovered that through discussion of the wrong committed against them, they were led to let go of the shame they had silently held for forty years and slowly transition into the healing process. Part of this break from a history of shame revolves around the Sansei identification as more “American” than their parents or grandparents. Since many families pushed their children to assimilate into the

American culture following the end of the internment, their children learned American beliefs about shame, which differ substantially from those of the Japanese. In American culture, shame is much more individualized and is generally held by an individual for a shorter period of time than in Japanese culture. For this reason, the Sansei did not have the feeling of shame to the degree their predecessors did. When they replaced a feeling

69 Murray,Alice Yang. Historical Memories of the Japanese American internment and the struggle for redress. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008, pg 199. 70 Ibid, pg 194. 71 Ibid, pg 203.

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of shame with anger caused by the injustice, they were in a position to affect great changes.72

Other civil liberties movements going on during this time period also influenced the Sansei. They instilled in the Sansei pride in their ethnic heritage and the belief that changes could still be made. The Civil Rights Movement was fighting for many of the same causes Japanese Americans supported such as recognition of their heritage and rights as full citizens. For this reason many of the Sansei brought their involvement in such a movement home and spread to their parents and other family members the belief that Japanese Americans no longer had to remain silent. Atrocities being committed against other racial groups at the time made the Sansei particularly aware of the potential for the wrongs done to their parents to occur again. When they saw the “fleeing figures of terrified Cambodian civilians, their life possessions reduced to knapsack,” the Sansei pictured more clearly their parents and grandparents being forced to do the same.73 Through all of the shelter their families provided them the Sansei developed a quick sense for racism and used the internment experience of their families to identify themselves with other citizens suffering under racial tensions.

In fighting to regain a part of their heritage in the home, the Sansei also opened the door to redress within the community. As the Sansei became more aware of the struggles of their parents, they were likely to begin discussions with them about the internment which served as an opening of old wounds and a politicization. Although it

72 Murray,Alice Yang. Historical Memories of the Japanese American internment and the struggle for redress. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008, pg 315. 73 Michi Nishiura Weglyn, Years of Infamy:The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996, pg 279.

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was not the case for all of the internment victims, generally, the ability to speak about the shame, pain, and humiliation they had silently carried for 40 years was a relief. There was a sense of openness within the household that radiated out into the community as the members shared their stories. While it was a reluctant recognition, many of the members of the older generation did realize that the Sansei were correct to desire to protect and remember the internment as a part of their own history and as apart of the history of their race.

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Chapter Two “Shikata Ga Nai”: Education, Organization, and the Public Sphere

Figure 3.1: Young Girl out side a court house where the panther 21 trial was being held. New York City, 1969. http://www.newsreel.us/panthers/yellow_power.jpg

“They saw their own frail grandparents in the fleeing figures of terrified Cambodian civilians, their life possessions reduced to a knapsack. Thus a generation tenderly sheltered by the Issei and Nisei from the raw realities of overt racism became more attuned to it subtleties than their parents ever were.”74—Michi Nishiura Weglyn, 1996

After the first years of the 1960s, Japanese Americans were sufficiently integrated into mainstream American culture. The Sansei, or third generation Japanese Americans, were much more likely to associate with American cultural values than their Japanese heritage and less likely to remain in Japanese-American communities than the Nisei, or second generation.75 Jeni Yamada, a Sansei and the daughter of an internee, described her

74 74 Michi Nishiura Weglyn, Years of Infamy:The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996, pg 279. 75 Nagata, Donna K. Legacy of Injustice: Exploring the Cross-Generational Impact of the Japanese American Internment. New York: Plenum Press, 1993, pg 54.

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association to her past in the following terms, “even though my face was Japanese, I didn’t feel Japanese. I didn’t know how to be Japanese.”76 Part of this stems from the increased assimilation that occurred after the internment, but it was also a consequence of the Nisei choice to stop teaching their children parts of their past in order to protect them from the realities of the internment.

This chapter will explore the ways in which discussions about the internment within the home were opened up to the greater Japanese-American community. Once the topic was discussed among the members of a household there was not only more information to be shared between the individual Sansei, but there was also an emboldening of their discussion. Because the individuals had the opportunity to speak about the internment, they were able to look around them at the other minority groups pressing for rights and liberties and could sympathize with their causes while developing their own. The quote that introduces this chapter reflects the ethnic turmoil that surrounded the Nikkei, or Japanese-American community, in the late 1960-70s. Between

1975-79 over 1.7 million Cambodians lost their lives due to genocide in their country.

The new government in Cambodia was attempting to replicate the communist regime in

China and demanded that all citizens labor on collective federal farms. Thousands of

Cambodians were forced to leave their villages and homes only to discover that they were without civil rights.77 The images of those individuals fleeing their homes with only what they could care directly harkened back to the internment experience of the Japanese

Americans and further encouraged them to become involved in movements that

76 Yamada, Jeni. Legacy of Silence (II). Last Witnesses: Reflections on the Wartime Internment of Japanese Americans. Erica Harth. New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2001, pg 51. 77 Yale University. "Cambodian Genocide Program." 2005.http://www.yale.edu/cgp/ (accessed March 05, 2011).

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supported civil rights for all. The Nikkei had for the most part suffered in silence through their own internment experience, but with the changing attitudes towards civil disobedience and the increase in civil rights movements found in mainstream American culture, they found the strength to make a stand for their own rights. This, inevitably, led to the strengthening of different Japanese-American associations and an increase of the number of Sansei who reclaimed their Japanese heritage.

Education as a Means of Opening Discussion

As mentioned in the previous chapter, the role of education was substantial in the advent of discussion regarding the internment. Once universities started offering classes on the Asian American experience, Sansei were able to find something of value in their racial heritage. There was no longer a need to distance themselves from the Japanese part of their past since the Japanese Americans had earned a status as model minority and were looked to as ideal immigrants for their work ethic and ability to assimilate. Many students where able to take what they were learning in the classroom into their homes to further the discussion about their parents’ personal experiences, which they then shared in the classroom and throughout the community. The opening of the channels of communication came from an emboldened Sansei generation who asked the questions they wanted answers to and focused their energies on discovering the pieces of their heritage that had been kept from them by their own parents.

Within the home this was the catalyst for great change. Once parents became activists, they more openly discussed the internment with their children and stopped

“shielding” them from the past. Jeni Yamada’s mother became an activist when she

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started writing about the injustice of her time in the internment camps, and Jeni wrote, “It wasn’t until my mother broke the silence and admitted her anger that I was able to explore my own anger.”78 A large part of the cycle of silence was that children were afraid to bring up the internment because of the sense that it was a painful and private topic. These more frequent and generally more honest conversations allowed the Sansei to ask the questions many had long been withholding. Even for children whose parents refused to discuss the internment, reading books such as the one written by Jeni

Yamanda’s mother in 1976, Camp Notes and Other Poems, could help ease them into a discussion with their parents. Many parents refused to talk to their children about the internment because they wanted to protect their children from the prejudice they had suffered, but if the child was already knowledgeable about the internment there was less of a reason to withhold personal experiences from them.

Much as college today is a diversifying adventure, the same can be said of the college years the Sansei experienced. Leaving home provided opportunities to meet individuals in other ethnic communities, and many of the Sansei who went to college witnessed other racial minorities that were organizing at this time. This inspired them to do the same within their own community. Richard Katsuda was one such student. When he attended Stanford in the early 1970s, he was exposed to the ethnic pride many other minority groups possessed. Both his parents and his sister had been interned, and although he was not born until after the internment camps were closed, he was still haunted by the silence that surrounded that event. After being placed in Chicano-themed

78 Yamada, Jeni. Legacy of Silence (II). Last Witnesses: Reflections on the Wartime Internment of Japanese Americans. Erica Harth. New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2001, pg 54.

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housing, he witnessed the level of ethnic pride many of the other residence had and wanted to learn more about his own heritage. This peaked his interest in Asian American

Activism and through his discussions he discovered that the more people talked about the internment the less they were ashamed of what had happened to them. The individuals he encountered traded their shame for anger and some even took their anger and became activists.79 Frank Kitamoto, another activist, said that he experienced a lot of discrimination because of the way he looked when he went to college. When his attempts at fitting in were unsuccessful he felt that he “had to find out more...[about his heritage]... since he could not escape being Japanese.”80

The Creation of Asian American Studies

In 1969, UCLA became one of the first universities to offer an Asian American

Studies degree in the United States. As explained in the department’s mission statement they hoped to “enrich the experience of the entire university by contributing to an understanding of the long neglected history, rich cultural heritage, and present position of

Asian Americans.”81 The classes for this degree focused on the history of Asian

Americans as well as their more recent struggles and successes. These programs grew out of a frustration students of Asian American heritage felt because of the Eurocentric tendencies of the regularly offered courses. Students had to fight to have such courses offered, but because they desired to have knowledge about their heritage they were

79 Murray, Alice Yang. Historical Memories of the Japanese American Internment and the Struggle for Redress. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2008, pg 351. 80 Frank Kitamoto. “Coping with ethnic identity: "wondering why in the world I had to be Japanese" interviewed by John DeChadenedes. 81 Nakanishi, Don. "UCLA Asian American Studies Center." 2009.http://www.aasc.ucla.edu/aboutus.asp (accessed March 4, 2011).

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dedicated to the creation of this program. San Francisco State College was the site of a five-month-long strike by a student group organized under the name of “People of

Color.” This organization included Japanese Americans, Chinese Americans, and

African Americans who suffered beatings and humiliation in order to show the university their dedication to the cause of “the study of people of color in America.”82 The Third

World Liberation Front, which organized the strike, had an established goal of

“autonomous ethnic studies programs...where the students could control both the faculty and the curriculum.”83 The strike at San Francisco State was so successful that it managed to shut down campus on three occasions as well as get the American Federation of Teachers to join their cause on campus.84 Although it was considerably less successful than the strike at SFSU, there was a similar strike held at the University of California at

Berkley, which demonstrated the dedication of minority students to seeing their history taught in the classroom.

These ethnic centers were important to the future of the yellow power movement because the young Japanese Americans were the ones fighting for recognition, and these centers not only provided them with more information, but also with colleagues with whom they could exchange ideas. Jim Matsuoka, a Nisei activist, was integral to the creation of an Asian American Studies program at California State and when asked about his involvement he explained that he approached the chair of the History Department and said, “there is a Black history course, there is a Mexican history course, where is ours?”

82 Mita, Brandon. "Filling the Pipeline: Asian American Empowerment and Leadership."2002.http://www.jacl.org/edu/edu-resources.htm#item8 (accessed November 9, 2010), pg 11. 83 Wei,William. The . Philadelphia:Temple University Press, 1993, pg 15. 84 Ibid, pg 15.

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Matsuoka took it upon himself to find a teacher for the course and, once the class was established, he divided it into two groups. His rationalization was that half of the students would be taking the course because they did not know much about the Asian

American experience, while the other half would be activist who already knew about the

Nikkei heritage, but wanted to study ways in which they could regain their heritage.85

The early curriculum was largely “an orientation of protest,” meaning that much of the resources and lectures came from responses to the Eurocentric history that was taught throughout the United States at the time.86 Luckily for schools like UCLA, the Japanese

American Citizens League formed the Japanese American Research project in 1962, which enabled the students and faculty to take advantage of the primary documents and testimonies collected in the aftermath of the internment.87

Through the course of the years following the offering of these courses, there was a return to traditional Japanese cultural beliefs among the Sansei who studied in these specific programs. Even though their parents had taught them to be as American as they could, the college-age students had a desire to reclaim their racial heritage and to accept that to be a Japanese American was about accepting both aspects of one’s ancestry.

Because of the increased interest in Japanese Culture, the Japanese American Citizen’s

League instituted a fellowship for Japanese American Students to learn in Japan in

85 Jim Matsuoka, “Attending the 1969 Manzanar pilgrimage,” Interviewed by Martha Nakagawa. 86 Wang, L. Ling-Chi . "Asian American Studies” American Quarterly". 33. 3 (1982), 339-354, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2712470. (accessed March 05, 2011), 349. 87 Japanese American Citizens League, "History of the Japanese American Citizens League." 2007.http://www.jacl.org/about/jacl-history.htm (accessed March 3, 2011).

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1967.88 A program like this would have been unthinkable in the years immediately following the interment when the Japanese Americans simply desired to blend in. But as the fear of being different was lessened and the injustices of the internment were more openly discussed, so as to remove some of the guilt felt by the community, it was once more acceptable to have an interest in being Japanese.

The Civil Rights Movement’s Impact

Campus activism during the 1960s was a driving force for many college-age

Japanese Americans, and due to the nature of this activism it forced them to question their families’ expectations of assimilation.89 The Civil Rights movement had a great influence on the activism within the Japanese-American community since it showed the power of a minority working together. The Nikkei community had not previously joined together to fight for a cause because they believed they needed to assimilate to survive.

However, with the increase in racial tensions and the legislation that resulted from the

Civil Rights movement, the Nikkei had a model to follow. While the Civil Rights movement provided the Japanese Americans with tactics and organizational structures, it also “provided an example that social and moral change could be obtained.”90 For many of the Nisei and Issei, there was no point in joining forces if they were going to be unable to exact social change. To them, the fight for redress, or even just a recognition of the

88 Japanese American Citizens League, "History of the Japanese American Citizens League." 2007.http://www.jacl.org/about/jacl-history.htm (accessed October 31,2010). 89 Murray,Alice Yang. Historical Memories of the Japanese American Internment and the Struggle for Redress. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2008, pg 200. 90 Maki, Mitchell and Harry Kitano, and Megan Berthold. Achieving the Impossible Dream: How Japanese Americans Obtained Redress. (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999), pg 59.

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internment as an injustice, was asking too much and would only serve to segregate them from the mainstream American culture to which they spent years try to belong. However, the argument of the activists within the community was that the assimilation they had achieved was limited at best and “the possibility of sharing with the majority in economic and political matters [wa]s remote.”91

The Black Power movement of the 1960s showed many Japanese Americans that by remaining silent they were siding with the White Americans who were discriminating against other minority groups. Much in the same way that they felt guilty for their internment for a lack of resistance, the Nikkei community came to realize that by accepting the term “model minority” as a compliment and as an ultimate goal they were not challenging the discriminatory view the White Americans held. But rather they were promoting it. This led the Nikkei community to question their stance and to recognize that while their scars were seemingly less visible, the Japanese Americans also had a cause for which to stand up. Amy Uyematsu, a Japanese-American poet born in 1947 after the end of the internment era believes that the movement among Japanese

Americans for yellow power can be directly linked to the struggle for black power being waged by the African Americans at the same time.92 She was not alone in this belief, for many individuals as well as organizations also saw the causal link. They argued that if

African Americans who were more violently discriminated against had the courage to

91 Jo, Moon H. "The Punative Political Complacency of Asian Americans." Political Psychology 5, no. 4 (1984): 595. 92 Uyematsu, Amy . "The Emergence of Yellow Power In America." October 1969.www.dartmouth.edu/~hist32/Hist33/Uyematsu.PDF (accessed November 9,2010).

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stand up for their rights and their constitutional protections there was no reason the

Japanese Americans should not do the same.

There was also a militant component to the Yellow Power movement, which was heavily influenced by the Black Panther movement. While the Japanese are traditionally perceived as being nonabrasive, the youth of their community were inspired by the progress they saw stemming from the organization and militancy of the Black Panthers and thus “rejecting the stereotype of the timid...and quiet oriental” they “affirmed themselves as radical harbingers of progress who where no longer enamored of whiteness.”93 Various groups of Asian Americans including the Red Guard, Asian

American Political Alliance and the Yellow Brotherhood formed to sponsor demonstrations and raise awareness for their political rights. The majority of the members of these groups were non-academics who were without options as to other ways to get their message across. According to Jeffery Ogbar, these groups “attracted former junkies, gang members, and convicts.”94 By looking to the Black Panthers for both assistance and guidance these groups were able to effect change through their militancy although they were never highly regarded throughout the Japanese-American community.

Effects of Generational Differences

There is also a generation change that must be recognized as key to the shift in the

Japanese-American community from a group of individuals content to forget, to the activist of the 1960s and 1970s who desired equal rights and redress. Ronald Takaki

93 Ogbar, Jeffery. "Yellow Power: The Formation of Asian American Nationalism in the Age of Black Power." Souls Summer 2001: 29-38, 31. 94 Ibid, 35.

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wrote that “with longer residence in the United States, fold aspects of the culture weaken and those attached to them feel that the original culture is lost.”95 The Issei and Nisei grew up in homes that espoused the traditional Japanese belief of deference to authority.

This, as has been discussed in the previous chapter, is largely responsible for the lack of resistance mounted by the Japanese Americans to Executive order 9066 and the internment. In direct contrast to that upbringing, which held authority to be ultimate, the

Sansei grew up in a time of upheavals, when other minority groups were questioning the stance of the government and the status quo. This led the Sansei to believe that “civil disobedience and mass resistance” were reasonable methods of change.96 Because the

Sansei believed they had the right to resist they questioned why their parents and grandparents had failed to do so when they were forcibly removed from their homes in the 1940s. This was furthered by the draft resisters and the protests that surrounded the

Vietnam War with which they grew up.

The generation gap that had developed between the victims of the internment and their Sansei offspring made this a difficult discussion to have, yet those Japanese

Americans who were interned were culturally forced to respond to the challenge to their dignity raised by the Sansei. Mas Fuki, a Japanese American who served in World War

II answered Sansei in this manner, “when you guys were 14 years old, as I was then, what would you do—throw rocks and bombs?”97 However, responses like this were still

95 Takaki,Ronald. From Different Shores: Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity in America. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994, 20. 96 Kessler, Lauren. Stubborn Twig: Three Generations in the Life of a Japanese American Family. New York: Random House, 1993, pg 269. 97 Michi Nishiura Weglyn, Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996, pg 266.

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unable to quiet the Sansei who believed that if the internment were to have occurred when they were adults they would have done something differently. This is easy enough to say when the event is just a hypothetical, but what really resulted from this discussion of resistance was not a distance between the two generations but another opportunity to increase communication. In order to defend their actions, the Issei and Nisei spoke to their children and to others in the community about the fear they faced and their initial belief that the government they loved was evacuating them for their own protection.

Roger Daniels, one of the preeminent scholars on the Japanese-American internment gave the keynote address at a conference in 1983 and said “they [the Sansei] were right to ask these questions, for they made us search for some obscured truths and come to a better understanding of ourselves and of those times,” something they had been reluctant to do up until that time.98

JACL as a Driving Force for Restitution

Different Japanese American organizations were active in the push for civil liberties. Of all of these organizations the Japanese American Citizens League was both the largest and arguably the most instrumental. JACL was founded in 1929 to “foster good citizenship and civic participation” among the recent immigrants.99 Takaki writes that “segregation forced minorities to create institutions, similar to those enjoyed by the majority, that could provide a measure of activity to reassure them of their status as

98 Daniels, Roger, and Sandra Taylor, and Harry Kitano, ed. Japanese Americans: From Relocation to Redress. Seattle: University of Washington Press. 1991, pg 4. 99 Japanese American Citizens League, "History of the Japanese American Citizens League." 2007.http://www.jacl.org/about/jacl-history.htm (accessed October 31,2010).

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American,” and the JACL is a perfect example of this in action.100 Even in the beginning, it fought for civil rights for the Japanese Americans and an end to the discrimination their community faced. However, when World War II broke out, JACL was greatly affected since its membership was interned. Upon the opening of the camps the JACL once again found its place by helping the individuals with resettlement as it teamed up with the War

Relocation Association to place Japanese Americans in jobs across the country. They were also integral to the defeat of the California Alien Land Laws, which had prohibited

Issei from owning land since 1913.101 The JACL saw new growth as an organization during the civil rights movement as the number of Japanese Americans interested in the issues their community faced politically increased. Through the course of the push for

Yellow Power and the Redress Movement that was borne of the strengthened sense of identity, the JACL successfully lobbied for the Civil Rights Law of 1964, the removal of discriminatory sections of the Immigration Act of 1952, and for Manzanar to be given a

Californian historical status in 1972.102

The largest issue that the JACL took up was the Redress Campaign that sought reparations for the internment. Although many Issei and Nisei objected to the pursuit of this goal, the organizational strength and size of the JACL that developed following the interment and during the Civil Rights Movement enabled the organization to continue its fight. The JACL as an organization made up for the Japanese Americans’ lack of a central leading figure. Unlike African Americans, who had Martin Luther King Jr., the

100 Takaki,Ronald. From Different Shores: Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity in America. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994, 96. 101 Japanese American Citizens League, "History of the Japanese American Citizens League." 2007.http://www.jacl.org/about/jacl-history.htm (accessed October 31,2010). 102Ibid.

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Japanese American movement formed as a unit through the communities in which they were involved.103 It was the call of Edison Uno, a civil rights activist, at a biennial convention of the JACL in 1970 for redress that led the JACL to adopt the demands for an apology in their list of proposed legislative changes.104 This became a major goal of the organization, yet they knew that they would be unable to get such legislation passed in the political climate that existed. Even though the organization adopted his proposal at face value, they did not further pursue the issue at the time.

Japanese-American Youth Involvement

Unlike the JACL, which had existed long before the internment, the Japanese

Community Youth Council was first formed in 1969. The group was orchestrated by youth who wanted to fight the leveling of Japantown, an area of San Francisco that was forcing Japanese Americans out “for revitalization.” In response to the discrimination their community faced and the turbulent political climate the group formed to reclaim pride for their heritage and serve their community members.105 When first organizing

Ron Kobata, the founder of the JYCA, contacted all 21 organizations within San

Francisco that had Japanese Youth programs and called a collaborative meeting where they could organize under the umbrella of one organization. The JYCA developed a counseling service for Japanese Americans who wanted to better understand their rights

103 Low, Elaine. "An Unnoticed Struggle:A Concise history of Asian American Civil Rights Issues."2008.http://www.jacl.org/public_policy/documents/An%20Unnoticed%20Struggle.pdf (accessed November 13, 2010), pg 11. 104 Ostgaard, Kolleen, Chris Smart, Tom McGuire, Madeline Lanz, and Dr. Tiimothy Hodson. "History of the Japanese-U.S. Relationship." May 2, 2000.http://bss.sfsu.edu/internment/history.html (accessed November 1,2010). 105 Masai, Lisa. "Claiming SF Japantown, Empowering YouthNikkei Family Magazine". 10. 1 (2010), http://www.jcyc.org/2010/08/excerpt-from-jcycs-40th-anniversary-magazine/. (accessed Nov 2, 2010).

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regarding the draft, as well as a day camp for children who did not have any other place to go during the summer. These proved to be highly needed by the community and the college students who led the program taught the younger children to be proud of their heritage. Richard Wada, a student organizer for the JYCA explained “many Sansei said they had never been to a demonstration or picketed before they did so with JCYC. It gave people experiences they would not have had before.”106 One of the reasons the JCYA was so successful was that it targeted children when they were most receptive to influence and instilled in them a connection to their ethnic community through service and friendship. Once kids were exposed to the internment experience and activism through their teen leaders, they were more likely to become involved in campus or community activism themselves, which started a feedback cycle ultimately leading to an increase in the number of Sansei calling for a change.

Getting the youth involved early is one reason that in a recent survey it was discovered that 50% of the Japanese Americans who responded were members of at least one voluntary association of Japanese Americans. These groups include bowling leagues, professional groups, or organizations like the JACL.107 Other groups that were formed within the Nikkei community include the Asian Americans Political Alliance in

May of 1968, the Third World Liberation Front in 1968, and the Yellow Brotherhood in

1969. All of these organizations were political in their nature and enabled leaders within the community the opportunity to obtain political power and leverage that power to make

106 Masai, Lisa. "Claiming SF Japantown, Empowering YouthNikkei Family Magazine". 10. 1 (2010), http://www.jcyc.org/2010/08/excerpt-from-jcycs-40th-anniversary-magazine/. (accessed Nov 2, 2010). 107 O'Brien, David J.. The Japanese American Experience. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991, pg 102

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a difference within the community as a whole. The large membership of these groups has positively affected the likelihood that the Japanese-American community continue to have tied to their ethnic community while also integrating into mainstream society.108

Even non-exclusively Japanese-American organizations helped to further the dissemination of information to the public. Toru Sakahara told her interviewer that after the internment she once again joined the YWCA and that through discussions of problems within the Seattle community she was able to share with the other women the struggles of the Japanese Americans and work with them to promote education within the community about the internment and the plight of the Japanese Americans.109 The same was true of a number of churches. The first non-Nikkei organization to nationally support the redress movement was the Veterans of Foreign Wars, which passed a resolution in August of 1976 to urge reparations.110

Memorializing the Internment through Pilgrimages

One of the largest turning points in the shift from a private memory of the internment that encouraged shame and silence to a public memory that necessitated the sharing of one’s experiences was the 1969 pilgrimage to Manzanar. When the internees left camp they were not sure they would ever again see the place that was their home during the war years. Keiho Soga who spent her time interned at Manzanar wrote this poem upon her release that reflects the significance the locale had to her; “When the war is over, and after we are gone, who will visit, This lonely grave in the wild, where my

108 O'Brien,David J.. The Japanese American Experience. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991, pg 114. 109 Toru Sakahara.“Becoming involved in community organizations after the war,” Interviewed by Dee Goto 110 Maki, Mitchell and Harry Kitano, and Megan Berthold. Achieving the Impossible Dream: How Japanese Americans Obtained Redress. (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999), pg 76.

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friend lies buried.”111 Between the closing of the camp in 1945 and the first organized pilgrimage in 1969, Manzanar was largely forgotten. In fact, one white resident wrote that one group of Japanese Americans who visited were walking around deep in discussion when he told them that the camp had in fact been on the other side of the road.112 Jim Matsuoka, a member of the Organization of Southland Asian American

Organizations and community activist, was among the original group of 150 who traveled to Manzanar in December of 1969 “to clean and restore Manzanar’s cemetery and to draw attention to the communities campaign to repeal Title II of the Internal Security

Act.”113 He told an interviewer that when he was told they would be going in December he objected to being a part of the group until he was told that “if they went any other time it would seem more like a picnic than experiencing it” in conditions similar to the internment itself.114 Matsuoka gave a speech at Manzanar as a part of the pilgrimage but reported that, even though NBC and ABC flew reporters in for the pilgrimage, “the minute it came time for [the] political message, they left.”115 This did not discourage the

Japanese Americans because even though the pilgrimage was organized as a tool to educate the public about the internment, it was first and foremost an opportunity for the victims of the internment to reflect upon their own experiences. Yuri Kochiyama attended the pilgrimage in 1971 and spoke to the excitement that surrounded the return to their former internment sight. She references the location of the internment camp,

111 Takaki,Ronald. A Different Mirror. Boston: Back Bay Books, 2008, 350. 112 Maki, Mitchell and Harry Kitano, and Megan Berthold. Achieving the Impossible Dream: How Japanese Americans Obtained Redress. (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999), pg 51. 113 Ibid,pg 61. 114 Jim Matsuoka, “Attending the 1969 Manzanar pilgrimage,” Interviewed by Martha Nakagawa. 115Ibid.

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however, by observing that the internees “didn’t realize when [they] were in camp that

[they] were out so far that people couldn’t reach [them].”116 Her experience with the pilgrimage was enriched by a set of grandparents who brought their 7 year-old grandson to the former camp. The grandparents encouraged the child to ask questions and used the trip to teach their grandson about their internment experiences. Kochiyama told her interviewer that she wrote to this child for several years because he had many questions and she wanted to help educated the next generation of Japanese Americans in whatever manner she could.

Not only did Japanese Americans attend the pilgrimages to Manzanar, which have continued to occur yearly to this day, but non Japanese Americans also attended. White

Americans visit because it is a part of their heritage as well. There are other minority groups who have come to identify with the discrimination the Japanese Americans faced, and they, too, travel to see the site. As the pilgrimages gained notoriety there was a push to protect that part of the Japanese American’s history. In January of 1972 the California

State Department of Parks and Recreation made Manzanar a state historical site. The camp was granted further protection in February of 1985 when it was declared a National

Historical Landmark and on March 3 1992 when Congress deemed Manzanar a National

Historical Site. The national park service now protects the area and has opened a visitor’s center as well as created a virtual museum that visitors can explore from their own homes. Today there are nearly 100,000 visitors annually to the site.117

116 Yuri Kochiyama, “Attending the first Manzanar pilgrimage” interviewed by Megan Asaka 117 National Park Service, "Manzanar National Historic Site." http://www.nps.gov/history/museum/exhibits/manz/pilgrimage.html (accessed Novmeber 27, 2010).

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Manzanar was just one of the ten internment camps used during the Second

World War, and other camps sites have also been protected to various degrees. Tule

Lake was the last of the camps to be closed in 1946 and has been the site of pilgrimages since 1974. Much like the pilgrimage to Manzanar, this trip organized by the Tule Lake

Committee was originally intended to build support for the redress movement and provide a forum for discussion of the internment.118 Initially the Committee planned for there to be a pilgrimage every other year. However, due to the fact that many of the former internees are advanced in years, they have changed their pilgrimage the past three years to occur annually.119 Tule Lake was registered as a state historical landmark on

May 27, 1979 and as a national historical landmark in 1985. Without the organization of these pilgrimages there likely would not be much to see today at the former internment sites since the abandonment of the camps after their closing threatened the preservation of memory. The old adage “out of sight, out of mind,” is easily applied to this context.

The loss of their internment camps combined with the Japanese Americans’ tendency to repress the memory of the event would have made it more difficult to obtain redress since these pilgrimages were for many people an opportunity for a revival in their search for justice. In her 1973 memoir, , Jeanne Houston reflected upon her time interned at Manzanar and her subsequent trip to see the camp in April of 1972. She wrote that at times she believed she made the whole camp experience up since many people knew nothing of the internment and those who did rarely spoke about their

118 Tule Lake Committee, "History of Tule Lake Concentration Camp and the Pilgrimages." 2005.http://www.tulelake.org/history.html (accessed November 26, 2010). 119 Juillerat, Lee. "Japaese-American Internees Remembered." July 4, 2010.http://www.heraldandnews.com/news/article_fa126248-873a-11df-b9c1-001cc4c03286.html (accessed November 9, 2010).

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experiences. However, after taking that trip to the former campsite and seeing that everything was gone she said, “now having seen it, I no longer wanted to lose it or to have those years erased. Having found it, I could say what you can only say when you’ve come to know a place: Farewell.”120

Nikkei in the Public Sphere

Media portrayal of the Japanese Americans also picked up during the late 1960s and the 1970s, which naturally increased the communication within the Nikkei community. On January 31, 1965 Walter Cronkite hosted a documentary on CBS called

“The Nisei: The Pride and The Shame.”121 This documentary was sympathetic in its tone towards the experience of the Japanese Americans during the Second World War and was for many Americans one of their first opportunities to witness the effects of the internment on the community of former internees.122 Two years later Allan Bosworth’s

American’s Concentration Camps was published. This book is important because it was reviewed in Time on February 17, 1967, which opened the book up to being purchased by Americans outside of the Nikkei community who might not have heard of the book if they had not run in social circles that included Japanese Americans.123 This book was given credibility because a retired Navy Captain wrote it, yet the review states, “it is a story that bears retelling, but Bosworth is the wrong man to do it.” Even though the

120 Houston,Jeanne and James D. Houston. Farewell to Manzanar. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1973, pg 170. 121 Time, "Television: Jan. 29, 1965--TIME." January 29, 1965.http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,839139- 4,00.html (accessed November 21, 2010). 122 Maki, Mitchell and Harry Kitano, and Megan Berthold. Achieving the Impossible Dream: How Japanese Americans Obtained Redress. (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999), pg 60. 123 Time, "Books: A Lapse of Democracy--TIME." February 17, 2010.http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,839499,00.html (accessed November 21, 2010).

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review mentions a lack of balance, the review opened the eyes of Times readership to this book, but also to the topic in a more general sense as well.

Jeanne Houston published her memoir, Farewell to Manzanar, in 1973. She was encouraged to write this book by a question from her nephew that revealed to her the great impact the experience she had tried to leave in the past truly had on her life. While the book was written as a way for the author to tell her story, it has served as an educational tool for Japanese Americans and non-Japanese Americans alike. This book has sold 1.5 million copies and while the film version that was made in 1976 is not publicly available, 10,000 copies of the film were purchased by the state of California in

2003 to be used in public schools. The film version of the story was aired by NBC on

March 11, 1976 and was later nominated for an Emmy, which greatly helped with the dissemination of information about the internment camps since the story was both factual and personal. Houston’s husband, who helped her write the memoir, had been married to

Houston for 15 years before she told him about her time in the internment camps. After hearing her story, he encouraged her to write the book because it was in his opinion “a story everyone in American should read.”124 Even today, the book is used by many middle/high schools across the country to serve as the first, and in a great deal of cases the only, lesson students receive on the internment.

One of the most highly regarded books to be published about the internment was

Michi Nishiura Weglyn’s Years of Infamy. Published in 1976, this was the first scholarly monograph written about the internment by a Japanese American and it encouraged

124 Hudson, Sigrid. "The Legacy of "Farewell to Manzanar"." July 26, 2010.http://www.discovernikkei.org/en/journal/2010/7/26/farewell-to-manzanar/ (accessed November 21,2010).

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numerous other Japanese Americans to begin their own research. Years of Infamy really challenged the claims of the government that the internment was a military necessity and provided much evidence to support the claim that the Japanese Americans deserved some fashion of redress. In Aiko Yoshinaga Herzig’s interview for the Densho Online Archive she spoke about going to hear Weglyn speak about her book at a local church and how that speech resonated with her. After she moved to Washington D.C. Herzig took the call of “never again” to heart and began searching the archives in D.C. on her own, only to discover that the government not only knew that there was no threat from the Japanese

Americans, but had kept the documents that proved they were loyal in the public archives, almost dependent on the Japanese American community to letting the internment stay in the past.125

The Japanese American community was able to come together to fight for redress because there was a shift from private memories shared only within the home to public memories shared by the community as a whole. Without the community support there would never have been a successful redress movement. The final step in the process of reparations was to take the conversations that were occurring in the Japanese American communities and introduce them into a national dialogue. This started to occur in 1970 when Edison Uno initiated a resolution at the biennial JACL convention for redress.126

After the revocation of Executive Order 9066 in 1976 by President Gerald Ford, the community started a push for reparations at the national level by having the first Japanese

125 Aiko Hertig-Yoshinaga. “Becoming a Nisei activist, working with Asian Americans for Action,” Interviewed by Larry Hashima and Glen Kitayama. 126 Maki, Mitchell and Harry Kitano, and Megan Berthold. Achieving the Impossible Dream: How Japanese Americans Obtained Redress. (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999), pg 64.

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Americans elected to Congress and introducing legislation that would provide the victims of the internment with an apology and some amount of money to resolve the injustice that was committed over thirty years before.

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Chapter Three “Gaman”: Testimonies, Healing, and Redress

Figur

Figure 4.1: President Reagan Signing H.R. 442, Courtesy of the Kinoshita Family Collection. Available on Densho.org, Densho ID: denshopd-p10- 00006.

“ It’s not for us to pass judgment upon those who may have made mistakes while engaged in World War II, yet we must recognize that the internment of Japanese Americans was just that, a mistake. What is important in this bill has less to do with property than with honor, for here we admit a wrong. Here, we reaffirm our commitment as a nation to equal justice under the law.”—President Reagan at the signing of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 on August 10, 1988.127

Socially, Japanese Americans were assimilating into mainstream culture during the 1970s and 80s and being rewarded for their efforts by new job opportunities and increased financial success. However, even while they were progressing within their communities to places of status, the history of the internment still clouded their futures.

Through researching the internment, Henry Miyatake, who was interned as a teenager, discovered that Executive Order 9066 was still part of the Federal Code. This order

127 Kessler, Lauren. Stubborn Twig: Three Generations in the Life of a Japanese American Family. New York: Random House, 1993, pg 270.

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would have been familiar to all Japanese Americans of maturity before the internment since it was posted throughout the west coast to announce to the Nikkei, or Japanese-

American community that they were to be evacuated. He took his findings to the Seattle chapter of the JACL and fought to have it revoked because he believed that “if we cannot get rid of this, then anything we do wont have much meaning.”128 Although it was unlikely that the Executive Order would be used again, given that many government officials believed it had been revoked already, it served as a thorn in the history of the

Nikkei and thus was a symbolic first step in their efforts for redress.

With Executive Order 9066 effectively revoked by President Gerald Ford on the

34th anniversary of its proclamation, the Japanese Americans had their first victory as a result of the redress movement. However, there was still much to fight for and this victory fanned the flames of an already growing movement. When he repealed E.O

9066, Ford made it clear that he believed that “not only was the evacuation wrong but

Japanese Americans were and are loyal Americans.”129 Even though the executive branch was willing to address the issue of the internment, Congress was slow to move any of the bills introduced during the 97th or 98th Congress relating to the push for a public apology or reparation payments. This was related to President Reagan’s election and the return to fiscally conservative government. Government officials were unsure of public opinion, and the need for such a bill was heavily scrutinized. This did not discourage the Nikkei population, or members of the Japanese-American community, but

128 Henry Miyatake, “The effort to obtain presidential revolcation of Executive Order 9066,” interviewed by Tom Ikeda on October 14,1999. 129 Maki, Mitchell and Harry Kitano, and Megan Berthold. Achieving the Impossible Dream: How Japanese Americans Obtained Redress. (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999), pg 70-71.

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rather spurred them to increase their lobbying efforts within their communities, and more importantly with the general public and Congress. For example, the first national day of remembrance was held in 1978 at the Puyallup fairgrounds in Washington, an area that had been used as a temporary camp for the Japanese Americans of the Seattle region.

Over 2,000 Japanese Americans showed their support by participating in the events, which included a car caravan and speeches given by the former internees. Yet many in the community were hesitant to remember, while unable to forget.

Events like this became more common and the Nikkei community mobilized around their shared experiences to change the status quo they had accepted for over forty- years. While all of these community initiatives helped inspire the Japanese Americans to demand redress, it was the creation of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and

Internment of Civilians in July of 1980 that served as the culmination of all the discussions that had been held within the homes of Japanese Americans and the community efforts to rid themselves of the shame of the internment. For it was upon the commission’s recommendation that the Civil Liberties Act, which would eventually provide victims of the internment the redress they sought, was brought before Congress and eventually signed by President Reagan.

This chapter will look at the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 and the redress movement on a national level that led to its eventual implementation. Much of this chapter reflects on the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of

Civilians, since it is undeniably the reason H.R. 442 was passed. The individuals who testified before the commission were everyday citizens who courageously told their

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stories to the government in the hopes of being able to obtain redress for the injustice they suffered. Ultimately, this chapter will conclude that although the Japanese-

American internees were awarded $20,000 and an apology from the government, the movement for redress continues as the Nikkei community works to educate the public to their experience.

Creation of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians

The redress movement turned on the creation of a Commission on Wartime

Relocation and Internment of Civilians in 1980 by Congress. The commission was created by HR5499 and S1647, which became Public Law 96-317 when it was signed into existence by President Carter. The commission served not only to make a recommendation regarding redress, but also as an educational tool to inform members of

Congress as well as the American public about the internment itself. Since many individuals were still uneducated about the internment and the negative ramifications that followed the Japanese-American community into the 1980s, they were unlikely to support a bill that made a cash payout to the victims unless they were made to understand the hardships faced by the victims and the gross violation of the Japanese Americans’

Constitutional rights.

Many Japanese Americans were offended by the creation of the commission because they believed it was clear that the internment was racially motivated and thus unconstitutional, meaning that they saw no need for a commission to make such an assessment. Several organizations within the community, such as the National Coalition for Redress/Reform, responded to the creation of the commission with gratitude for its

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historical significance and for the research that was obtained through the process, but strongly committed to the belief that the commission was not necessary. For example, the National Coalition argued that they “should not have to ask for reparations. The

Japanese American community ha[d] a right to demand it.”130 They based their argument on the first amendment to the Constitution, which protects the rights of citizens to petition the government for “redress of grievances.” However, it was upon the recommendation of several of the Nikkei Congressmen that the commission was created.

To explain their thought process, Congressmen Daniel Inouye and Norman Mineta tried to make it clear to the supporters of redress that while they knew redress to be deserved, a redress bill would be more likely to pass a fiscally conservative Congress if a formal commission made the recommendation. The JACL had hoped to push for direct passage of a restitution bill, however Senator Inouye told the JACL members who met with him that if they “purse redress their way, Congressman Matsui will not be reelected” since he had just been elected and was not yet able to make such a bold move in his position.131

After the Nikkei who believed the commission to waste valuable time understood that without the commission they were unlikely to get a bill passed, they got behind the effort and many offered to testify. The nine-member team that led the commission was appointed by President Carter, the Speaker of the House, and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate. The team spent two and a half years researching various aspects of the

130 Masaoka, Mike M.Statement of Mike M. Masaoka on Behalf of the Nisei Lobby Advocating Enactment of H.R. 5499 to the Subcommittee on Administrative Law and Governmental Relations. (Washington, D.C., June 2, 1980) pg 10. 131 Resettlement to Redress: Rebirth of the Japanese-American Community, DVD, Produced by Don Young, David Hosley, and Linday Nakano and edited by Jim Choi. Sacramento, California: KVIE Public Television, 2006.

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internment including the motivations for it and the ramifications it had for those who were interned. Joan Z Bernstein, a lawyer from Washington, D.C, who had previously worked with the Carter administration, chaired the commission. The other members of the commission included a Russian Orthodox priest, three former congressmen, a judge from Philadelphia, and a Supreme Court justice. The JACL and other such organizations were extremely pleased with the “blue-ribbon” make-up of the commission and were encouraged by the selections that the commission could make their dreams of redress a reality.132 The commission set up hearings in ten cities around the country including

Washington, D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles and Seattle. Due to the internment of the people of the Aleutian Islands during the Second World War, the CWRIC also held hearing in the Aleutian Islands and Anchorage.133 The commission was charged to listen to the testimonies of victims of the internment and various organizations that supported redress, and to take those testimonies and make a recommendation to Congress regarding the issue of restitution. Over the course of the Commission’s duration it amassed more that ten thousand documents and heard over 750 victims testify to their experiences as well as offer their opinion on the size and form redress should take.134

Testifying before the Commission

Because the report of the commission was going to be used by Congress to make a decision regarding redress, it was extremely important to the Japanese American

132 Kessler, Lauren. Stubborn Twig: Three Generations in the Life of a Japanese American Family. New York: Random House, 1993, pg 270. 133 The U.S. Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians,Redress hearing Notice. (Washington, D.C., 1981). 134 Kessler, Lauren. Stubborn Twig: Three Generations in the Life of a Japanese American Family. New York: Random House, 1993, pg 270.

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community that the testimonies heard and the documents sent in support of the redress movement were convincing. Realizing that the JACL was the “only organization with the national base and credibility to coordinate the lobbying campaign,” Congressman

Norman Mineta (CA-D) wrote to the President of the organization in 1976 arguing that it was imperative that one uniform approach was developed in order that the commission find for reparations.135 For this reason, the JACL created guidelines for testimonies in which it recommended that those who testified be specific with their examples, avoid comparisons, and practice their testimonies in order that they made the most of the tight time constraints of 3-10 minutes placed upon them.136 The JACL also took charge of identifying potential witnesses. The individual chapters set up committees to search within their communities for witnesses who would be willing to participate in the hearings and would be effective speakers for the cause. After identifying the potential speakers, the JACL would send the names to the commission who would make the final selection. Members of the community who were uncomfortable with publicly sharing their stories had the option to submit their testimony in written form to the commission directly. The JACL also created guidelines to help Japanese Americans polish their testimonies.137 The “Checklist for presentation before the Redress Commission” instructed the Japanese Americans to prepare their presentation in advance, to use different voice levels to add emphasis to their testimonies, and to make certain that they

135 Maki, Mitchell and Harry Kitano, and Megan Berthold. Achieving the Impossible Dream: How Japanese Americans Obtained Redress. (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999), pg 70. 136 Japanese American Citizens League’s National Committee for Redress, Testimony Guidelines. (San Francisco:1981). 137 Ibid.

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presented themselves honestly.138 The JACL offered mock hearings to allow those who were going to testify a venue to practice telling their stories. This served a two-fold purpose in that it ensured that the testimonies were approved by the JACL, and it provided those testifying a chance to tell their story before an audience before they had to speak before the government officials. The Executive Director of the JACL, Ron

Wakabayahi, remembered that at the first mock hearing “nobody could finish.”139

According to Wakabayahi, every single individual that started to recount their experience with the internment had to stop because they were crying too uncontrollably to finish their testimony.

Opening Old Wounds

The majority of individuals who testified before the commission were Niseis or second generation Japanese-Americans. Richard Katsuda, a longtime member of the

Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress, explained that it was extremely difficult to convince

Issei to share their stories from the internment since many were older by 1981 and most had resisted talking about their experiences even with their families. There was a need for Issei to speak since they had been adults at the time of the internment and in many cases were the ones to lose their businesses and all of the material goods for which they had worked a lifetime.140 Mako Nakagawa, a Nisei, knew that the JACL desired to have more Issei testify and was surprised that her father agreed to testify. He was turning 88 shortly after the commission hearing in Seattle and wanted to be able to tell the

138 Japanese American Citizen League, Checklist for Presentation Before the Redress Commission. (San Francisco: 1981). 139 Maki, Mitchell and Harry Kitano, and Megan Berthold. Achieving the Impossible Dream: How Japanese Americans Obtained Redress. (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999), pg 99. 140Ibid, pg 106.

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government about the impact that his incarceration had on his life while he was still capable of sharing. Nakagawa helped her father prepare his testimony and reflected that

“helping [her father] was too close to home. [She] got to the point where [she] could share her story with groups, but this was [her] father.”141 Seeing him so emotional and reading what he had written about his experience in the camps made it difficult for her to finish his testimony without crying on the stage. She was not the first to shed tears while testifying.

The hearings held by the commission were the scene of many emotional testimonies and the audience responded to the personal stories shared by cheering, crying, and booing, even though they were composed of usually reserved individuals. It would have been less emotional if historians and government officials were the only ones to testify, but those who led the charge for the redress movement wanted the victims to testify, because they hoped that they would take the push for redress into their own hands and feel a sense of accomplishment when awarded reparations.142 It was one way of personally restoring their own dignity. Gene Oishi described the scene of the testimonies as follows, “at the hearings, the usually reticent and undemonstrative Nisei choked back tears or let them flow as they told their stories.”143 These emotions reflect the sensitive nature of the internment experience and the deep scars that the victims carried. Many described the testimonies as an “opening of old wounds” since they required the Nisei and Issei to describe events and share memories that they had long tried to suppress. This

141 Mako Nakagawa, “Getting involved in redress movement, testifying for father at commission hearings,” interviewed by Lori Hoshino on May 27, 1998. 142 Axford,Roger W. Too Long Silent: Japanese Americans Speak Out. (Lincoln, Nebraska: Media Publishing and Marketing, INC., 1986), 29. 143 Oishi, Gene. "The Anxiety of Being A Japanese American." The New York Times, April 28, 1985, 54.

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initially scared many in the Nikkei community away from wanting to testify, but as the hearings progressed and the JACL and other organizations recruited individuals, there were those in the community who embraced the opportunity to show the government that they were mistaken when they forcibly relocated Japanese Americans during the Second

World War.

Not only was the hearing emotional for those who were testifying, but it was also an opportunity for audience members to face the memories they too had repressed for so many years before. Audience members were faced with the horrors of other internees’ experiences, but were forced to reevaluate their own silent histories at the same time.

While it was known within the community that the testimonies would be emotionally trying, few people realized that they would find emotional relief through them. For the first time, everything was out in the open. The Japanese Americans did not want to been seen as complaining about the government actions, even though they had the right to, but rather they hoped those in attendance and others following the hearings would see that they were setting the record straight. Once they had brought their memories into the public sphere, there was no reason to feel ashamed since it was made clear that they were victims after all. The commission noted that the various testimonies it had heard made it clear “that a forty-year silence did not mean that bitter memories had dissipated; they had only been buried in a shallow grave.”144

Sansei lead the fight for redress

144 Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. Personal Justice Denied: Summary and Recommendations of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. (San Francisco: Japanese American Citizens League, 1983), pg 297.

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As has been discussed in previous chapters, many of the redress efforts were led by the Sansei, who either were born in the camps or had no personal camp experience.

The Sansei could not understand why their parents did not fight for their rights when

Executive Order 9066 was implemented. This misunderstanding was furthered by the desire the Nisei and Issei had to protect the younger generation from the shame and pain that came with those memories. However, the hearings helped the older generations understand why the Sansei fought for the story of the interment to be told. It was because they wanted people to be “forever reminded that concentration camps and wholesale contempt for individual rights...are not the exclusive province of corrupt tyrannies,” but that they could and in fact did occur in what is arguably the most democratic nation in the world.145 In many cases the Nisei or Issei speakers would only be convinced to share their stories by appeals to the future of their children or grandchildren, and the support the Sansei showed their relatives was immense for this reason. Karen Umemoto was a

Sansei who attended the hearings in Seattle and she described the commission as “ a coming together of the community and the generational healing process.”146 Sansei recognized that their ancestors were opening old wounds so that their heirs could have a brighter future and for that they showed great gratitude for the members of the community that did testify before the commission.

Many of the victims who testified spoke of their reasons for telling their stories.

For some, it was time to tell the government about the shame they had lived with for the

145 Michi Nishiura Weglyn, Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996, pg 281. 146 Maki, Mitchell and Harry Kitano, and Megan Berthold. Achieving the Impossible Dream: How Japanese Americans Obtained Redress. (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999), pg 108.

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past forty years, while for others there was a hope that by speaking up they would be able to prevent such an injustice from occurring to another minority group in the future. In her testimony before the commission Shea Aoki explained that the Japanese Americans told their stories “because we don’t want anything like this to happen to anyone else. We are not bitter,” she said, but they felt that the redress movement was the only route available to “make sure it doesn’t happen to other people.”147 It was thought by Aoki, that many of those who did receive the redress check would use that money to donate to causes they supported in an effort to protect the rights of others. Others testified to mobilize the community to change. It was found that after attending hearings, more Nisei and Sansei would become involved in the movement and they felt a greater connection to their community since they had been given the opportunity to hear the pain and see the courage of those former internees who did agree to speak.148 Not only did the testimonies encourage support for the movement within the Japanese American community, but the news coverage opened the hearts of the non-Nikkei as well. On August 17, 1981, Time published an article on the commission, which not only detailed the horrors of the internment, but also challenged its readers to think about “the burden of shame” the

Japanese Americans were left to carry without some manner of redress.149

Opposition to the Commission

There were some in the community who felt that testifying was inappropriate.

The hearings were going to force victims of the internment to face emotions they had

147 Testimony of Jiro and Shea Aoki before the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, (Seattle, Washington: September 9, 1981). 148 Chiye Tomihiro, “Impact of the commission hearings, providing momentum for the movement,” interviewed by Becky Fukuda on September 11, 1997. 149 O"Reilly, Jane. "The Burden of Shame." Time, August 17, 1981.

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long fought to suppress such as humiliation, anger, and shame.150 Other Japanese

Americans refused to participate because they were embarrassed by their proficiency in the English language and were uncomfortable with the thought of publicly speaking before the government. Further, some members of the Japanese-American community believed that they should not be asking for redress. The majority of this group consisted of Issei or older Nisei. This was both an issue of pride and a desire to remain self-reliant, as well as a reflection of the desire to maintain the status quo. Some members of the community were content to be the “model minority” and believed that pushing for redress would create little more than a negative backlash from the mainstream American culture they had spent 40 years trying to assimilate into. In the opinion written by Justice Hugo

Black in regards to the Korematsu case, which was brought before the Supreme Court in

1944 to challenge Executive Order 9066, he held that “war is an aggregation of hardships. All citizens alike, both in and out of uniform, feel the impact of war in greater or lesser measure.”151 Some members of the Nikkei community allowed themselves to believe that Justice Black was right and that there was no real cause for redress. The theory was that while the government may have hurt their community, it was a military necessity and thus there was no recourse that could be granted. By the time the commission started holding hearings this was a minority opinion, but it was still held by some. Those who stood against the redress movement occasionally remarked that to ask for a cash payout could be likened to “mercenary demands,” and that by pursuing redress

150 Maki, Mitchell and Harry Kitano, and Megan Berthold. Achieving the Impossible Dream: How Japanese Americans Obtained Redress. (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999), pg 98. 151 Congressional Record, Conference Report on H.R. 442, Civil Liberties Act of 1988. 100th Cong Rec H 6261. 114, 134. (Washington, D.C., 1988).

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it appeared as though the Japanese Americans, who in recent years had been financially successful were complaining.152 Another Issei related his distain for the movement back to the generational divide by stating that it seemed as though “the Sansei, Yonsei (fourth generation Nikkei) and others who had never experienced life in camp are demanding reparations more for themselves.”153 This was feeling was born of the fact that the Sansei often pressured their older relatives into speaking, but for the most part they were unable to personally receive any financial benefits from the movement. Instead the Sansei fought for redress for the sake of their family members who were interned as well as to enable progress within the Japanese-American community.

Commission Findings

At the conclusion of the hearings in 1983, the commission published its report

Personal Justice Denied. This report found that there was no evidence to support that the internment was organized because of a particular threat by the Japanese Americans, but rather that it was largely the result of racism and fear. The report expressed the belief that their finding led to the conclusion that “all of this was done despite the fact that not a single documented act of espionage, sabotage, or fifth column activity was committed by an American citizen of Japanese descent.”154 The commission recommended to Congress that a national apology be addressed to all individuals of Japanese-American descent, both those who were interned and those who were not. It also recommended that

152 Maki, Mitchell and Harry Kitano, and Megan Berthold. Achieving the Impossible Dream: How Japanese Americans Obtained Redress. (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999), pg 68. 153Ibid, pg 68. 154 Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. Personal Justice Denied: Summary and Recommendations of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. (San Francisco: Japanese American Citizens League, 1983), pg 3.

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Congress look to correct the legal actions that worked with Executive Order 9066 to form a policy of discrimination. This included the vacating of the four Supreme Court cases as well as repealing other discriminatory acts that while not enforced, were still on the books. A recommendation was made for the creation of an educational fund that would help Japanese-American communities with local projects while also educating the public about the internment. The most controversial recommendation was that the government create a fund using tax dollars to award each of the living survivors of the internment camp experience $20,000.155

Almost all of the internees who testified during the commission believed that they were entitled to monetary reparations for the property they lost during the war and the emotional damage they experienced. Various interviewees who participated in the

Densho Project, a nonprofit project that began in 1996 to maintain records of the internment as well as post-interment period, expressed their desire for amounts ranging from $25,000 to $100,000. However, the $20,000 amount recommended by the commission was based on a tabulation of property losses, the opportunity costs of being in internment camps and damages for false imprisonment.156 In their report, the commission wrote, “most important there was the loss of liberty and the personal stigma of suspected disloyalty for thousands of people who knew themselves to be devoted to their country.”157 Lloyd Hara, who testified before the commission on the behalf of the

155 Congressional Record, The Civil Liberties Act of 1985. 99th Cong Rec E 61. 1, 131.Washington, D.C., 1985). 156 Congressional Record, Conference Report on H.R. 442, Civil Liberties Act of 1988. 100th Cong Rec H 6261. 114, 134. (Washington, D.C., 1988). 157 Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. Personal Justice Denied: Summary and Recommendations of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. (San Francisco: Japanese American Citizens League, 1983), pg 3.

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JACL, argued that their request for money “ was a small request for the price of injustice on the part of the United States Government.”158 There was a feeling that because the government had long held itself out to be the defender of civil rights and liberties its honor was lessened by its failure to make amends for the Japanese Americans. The commission was aware that they would be unable to truly repay the Japanese Americans for the injustice they were subjected to, but they hoped that some amount would signal that the government was admitting it made a mistake. Just as Matthew Masuoka remarked, it was “shocking that such a violation of civil and human rights could occur in the United States.”159 While this amount to the Nikkei community did not even scratch the surface of repairing the damage done to them, there was a feeling that an apology without money would be an empty gesture and that the recommendation by the

Commission for a payment legitimized their demand for restitution. This sentiment was clarified in the testimony of Rose Inouye who expressed her belief that “justice financial recompense speaks more effectively than can mere words which are easy.”160 The point of the redress movement was that it should be difficult for the government, just as the internment had been difficult for the Japanese Americans. For years, they had lived silently with shame and guilt, even though they had done nothing wrong. The feeling within the Nikkei community was that it was time for the government to own up to its mistakes and to rectify them.

158 Testimony of Lloyd Hara, Japanese American Citizen League, before the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, (Seattle, Washington: September 11, 1981). 159 Testimony of Matthew Masuoka before the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, (Seattle, Washington: September 11, 1981). 160 Testimony of Rose Inouye before the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, (Seattle, Washington: September 9, 1981).

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The Civil Liberties Act

Following the recommendation of the commission H.R. 442, “The Civil Liberties

Act of 1985” was introduced into the House by Majority Leader Jim Wright with 99 cosponsors. The bill was so titled as reminder of the efforts of the 442nd regimental combat team, which was composed entirely of Japanese Americans during WWII. Many of the men serving in that unit, volunteered to serve while their families were being detained in the internment camps. This bill was assigned to the House Subcommittee on

Administrative Law and Government Relations, but was challenged before debate even opened by the Balanced Budget and Emergency Control Act of 1985. This act set price ceilings on the congressional budget and required that should Congress spend and increase the deficit then overall cuts would have to be made. This reflected the economic situation of the time and necessitated that many Congressmen from districts not heavily populated with Japanese Americans think seriously about the ramifications of the passage of this bill.161

Further, those Congressmen who belonged to the Nikkei community, Senators

Matsui, Mineta, Inoueye and Matsunaga, had to counter the opposition of the bill by

Senator Ichiye Hayakawa(Ca) who was also of Japanese ancestry, but was in Canada during the internment. Even though Senator Hayakawa had on several occasions publicly distanced himself from the Nikkei community, he acted as though he spoke for them all when he said that “ as Japanese we find it beneath our dignity [to fight for redress]. As

161 Maki, Mitchell and Harry Kitano, and Megan Berthold. Achieving the Impossible Dream: How Japanese Americans Obtained Redress. (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999), pg 153.

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Americans we know a racket when we see one.”162 It was hard for the American populous and the other voting Congressmen to understand the contradictory tones expressed by those in support of the bill then Senator Hayakawa’s obvious disapproval of the individual payments that were being debated. However, the four other Nikkei

Congressmen eventually convinced Hayakawa to remain silent on the issue by appealing to the fact that he had no personal connection to the internment and thus he was unrepresentative of the vast majority of Japanese Americans.

Once in the Subcommittee, Representative Mineta was the first of 36 witnesses to speak to the importance of the bill’s passage. He reminded the members of the

Subcommittee that individuals who are illegally confined are compensated much more per day than the Japanese Americans would be under the Civil Liberties Act. This he argued was counter intuitive since not only were they illegally confined, but they were also stripped of their Constitutional rights and suffered great emotional damage as a result of the internment. The Department of Justice was one of the only witnesses to speak against the passage of the bill and they simply argued that it was not the place of the government to use this bill as “the vehicle for promulgation of an ‘official’ version of these historical events.”163 Unfortunately, the bill never came before the full committee or the floor during the 99th Congress, but this worked to the advantage of those who sponsored the bill, since a shift in the voting demographic changed the make up of

Congress when the Democrats won majorities in both the House and the Senate for the

162 Ibid, pg 77. 163 Ibid, pg 154.

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convening of the 100th Congress.164 When the 100th Congress opened Representative

Tom Foley reintroduced H.R. 442 on January 6, 1987 and this time the bill had 119 cosponsors.165 Unlike the previous attempts to pass the Civil Liberties Acts, the climate was finally ripe for passage as there had been increased lobbying attempts and Democrats were historically more likely to vote for the bill. When sent to the same Subcommittee only one person, Richard Willard, the Assistant Attorney General, spoke in opposition to the bill. The bill passed in subcommittee and then was passed by the whole Judicial

Committee on June 17, 1987.

In the Senate this bill was introduced on April 10, 1987 by Senator Alan Simpson who personally connected with the subject of the bill when he visited an internment camp earlier in his life. However, Senator Matsunaga was the real driving force behind this bill, and he spoke to all 99 other senators personally about the bill. When the bill was introduced it had 70 cosponsors, but by the time it was sent to the Subcommittee there were four additional senators sponsoring it, which made it veto proof. With such a large number of supporters it is not surprising that there was not a single Senator who spoke against the passage of the bill in the subcommittee.

Opposition to the Civil Liberties Bill

Opposition to this bill stemmed largely from the monetary supplement of

$20,000. Most of the Congressmen who opposed the bill, nevertheless saw the internment as a mistake, they simply did not see the need for Congress to authorize individual payments when the budget was already tight. In his article $1.2 Billon Worth

164 Ibid, pg 161. 165 Ibid,pg 167.

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of Hindsight, James Kilpatrick argued that Senate bill S4394 was “ a bad bill that comes to us laden with good intentions.”166 While he recognized that the bill was guaranteed to pass since it had 75 cosponsors at the time of publication, he held that just because hindsight led to the conclusion that the internment was wrong, at the time of the evacuation orders it was a legitimate concern. Those who opposed the monetary payments also raised the point that Congress paid the internees $38 million starting in

1948 through the Japanese American Claims Act. What those opposed to the bill failed to mention was that the act only offered monetary reparations to individuals who had receipts for their lost property and many of the internees were too busy being forced from their homes to maintain the kind of financial records the government required.

Senator Holloway, who spoke against the bill, did so because he felt that the price had already been paid both through the Japanese Americans Claims Act and the changes made to the Social Security Act in 1972.167 Those changes, however, only allowed former internees to count part of their minimal income made during their time in came toward their Social Security. During their internment unskilled labor earned $12 a month, while professionals were able to earn $19.168 When compared to the incomes they could have made if they had not spent two years in camp and the property they lost due to the short time they were given to prepare for their move, the changes of the Social

Security Act made at most a negligible difference, if one at all. Senator Shumway who also spoke to defeat the bill, did so by saying that he knew there were scars from the

166 Kilpatrick, James J. . "$1.2 Billion Worth of Hindsight." New York Times, May 5, 1988. 167 Congressional Record, Conference Report on H.R. 442, Civil Liberties Act of 1988. 100th Cong Rec H 6261. 114, 134. (Washington, D.C., 1988). 168 Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. Personal Justice Denied: Summary and Recommendations of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. (San Francisco: Japanese American Citizens League, 1983), pg 11.

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internment, but that “after searching [his] conscience and the facts as [he] might, [he] simply did not find the justification” for a payment.169 Interestingly enough, the Nisei lobby also opposed the bill because they believed it trivialized the experience of their parents and the older portion of their generation. To those who were interned, no amount would be able to undo the past or make then forget the wrong done to them, so to offer any money at all was too inadequate to be considered proper redress.

Other opponents argued that making redress payments set an unsustainable precedent. Many asked if the government was going to pay the Japanese Americans for their pain and suffering, if someday when a bill demanding reparations for slavery came before the floor that too would be funded with taxpayer money. This was limited by the fact that only living survivors of the internment were eligible for the settlement, but there was still a fear that by starting the trend of offering money as an apology, there would be other groups to try and lobby the government in a similar fashion. It did not help that the

National Coalition for Redress/Reparations promised to support efforts for redress led by

“Native Americans, Native Hawaiians, Black, Chicano, other Asians, as well as other people who are struggling for justice.”170

Passage of the Civil Liberties Act

The full House finally voted on the bill on September 17, 1987. This date was specifically chosen since it represented the 200th anniversary of the signing of the

169Ibid,pg 11.. 170 National Coalition for Redress/Reparations, To the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. 1981.

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Constitution.171 This was symbolically well understood as the passage of this bill was less about monetary reparations and more about a reassertion of the inalienable rights guaranteed in that pseudo- sacred document in the United States. However, it did pose a slight problem as many Representatives were otherwise engaged in political activities in their constituencies. Under much pressure from the Representatives of the Nikkei

Community many members rearranged their schedules to be present for the historic vote.

The bill was debated for five hours and during that time three amendments were proposed. The most significant of those amendments was one offered by Representative

Lungren who wanted to get rid of the individual payments. This amendment, to many of the Representatives, defeated the purpose of the Civil Liberties Act as a whole, and was overruled in a vote of 237 to 162.172 Once the debate closed, the bill was voted on and

Representative Mineta and Matsui watched the votes slowly climb to 200 yeas.

Representative Matsui recalled that after 15 minutes the 218th vote was cast and that he would “never forget that moment when [his] colleagues were watching the voice count and [they] reached the magic number of 218.”173

The vote in the Senate was less dramatic because the great number of cosponsors already ensured passage. However, on April 19, 1988 when the bill was brought to the floor for debate four of the sponsors withdrew their support and five amendments were proposed. These amendments were similar to those offered in the House and all failed, but they did make debate long enough that the bill was on the floor for two days before

171 Maki, Mitchell and Harry Kitano, and Megan Berthold. Achieving the Impossible Dream: How Japanese Americans Obtained Redress. (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999), pg 173. 172 Ibid, pg 178. 173 Ibid, pg 179.

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its passage on the 20th.174 Once the Senate Bill, which was renamed H.R. 442, was passed the two houses had to create a conference bill that would sort out the differences between the two different versions passed by the House and the Senate. When finally created the combined bill offered redress payments to both the Japanese Americans and the Aleuts, spread the payment plans out over a ten year period, and set a ceiling on $500 million in entitlements a year. It also restricted the payments to those who were alive at the time of the signing of the bill and declared that only children, spouses, and parents would be legitimate beneficiaries should the victim die before they were able to obtain the actual payment itself.175

The passage of the Civil Liberties Act was a victory, but it was not the end of the struggle. Once the bill was passed it still had to be signed by President Reagan whose economic policy made it questionable as to what his move would be. Many of the changes made between the bills passed in the individual houses and the combined bill were enacted at the recommendation of the White House. These changes ensured that the

President would offer his support for the bill and in a note he wrote to Speaker Wright,

Reagan stated “the enactment of H.R. 442 will close a sad chapter in American history in a way that reaffirms Americans commitment to the preservation of liberty and justice for all,” which signaled to the Speaker that there was no longer a threat of Presidential veto and it was safe for Congress to vote.176 Although it was against the advice of his advisors, President Reagan signed H.R. 442 into law with a public ceremony attended by

174 Ibid, pg 185. 175 Ibid, pg 186. 176 IBbidpg 195.

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200 of the most ardent supporters of the redress movement including Senator Inouye,

Representative Matsui and Representative Saiki (who had recently been elected to the

House of Representatives).

Reparation Payments Finally Arrive

The first checks were sent along with letters of apology signed by President Bush in October of 1990. The checks were delayed because even though the Civil Liberties

Act was passed it was not guaranteed funding until Senator Inouye proposed that it become an entitlement program, which guaranteed payments would be made to almost

60,000 former internees over the course of three years. This was key because it made it so that the reparation payments wouldn’t have to be added to the budget every year and instead were already set aside to be paid out.177 As was deemed to be appropriate the checks were first sent to the older Issei, seeing as many of them were already too old to use the funds and there was a fear that by waiting to send them checks, they would not be alive to receive them.178 However, as has been discussed previously, the redress movement was not about the money. It was of course an important symbolic gesture that gave weight to the government’s recognition that the internment was wrong, but more than anything else, the redress movement was about the protection of the inalienable rights all people are guaranteed under the Constitution of the United States. While some viewed the reparations as a gift the Japanese Americans were being given by the government, it was actually “a gift from the internees to each American who loves and

177 Ibid, pg 209. 178 Takezawa, Yasuko I. "Children of Inmates: The Effects of the Redress Movement Among Third Generation Japanese Americans." Qualitative Sociology 14, no. 1 (1991),2.

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respects our Constitution.”179 By standing up for their rights as Americans citizens and holding the government to the protections and promises it had made, the Japanese

Americans served all Americans and ensured that something so unjust as the internment would not go unquestioned should it be attempted again. They showed much courage, dedication, and faith in their fight, yet the movement is still alive and continuously trying to educate the American public about their community’s history. The struggle might have been nominally won, but in reality, it will continue for years to come until there is no longer a need for the Nikkei to find their strength in gaman, their “ability to endure the seemingly unbearable with patience.” Through their forty-year silence they proved that they could do it, but they should not have had to, and the success of the redress movement will hopefully mean they never have to again.

179 Congressional Record, Conference Report on H.R. 442, Civil Liberties Act of 1988. 100th Cong Rec H 6261. 114, 134. (Washington, D.C., 1988).

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Conclusion: Education, Pride, and Identity

Figure 5.1: 105 year-old Issei Man receiving his redress check from U.S. Assistant Deputy Attorney General James Turner in October of 1990. Available at Densho.org Courtesy of Akio Yanagihara, Densho ID: denshopd-p26-00017.

The silence that remained among the Nikkei in the years following the internment is not surprising. Few people enjoy dwelling on the past wrongs done to them, but by trying to protect their children, the victims were harming themselves. Even though they believed there was no point in discussing the internment, the passage of the Civil

Liberties Act proves that there in fact was. In the years immediately following the internment the shame was able to strip the community of the pride it once held and replace that pride with guilt. However, what makes America one of the greatest nations is that it accepts diversity, encourages individuality, and fosters a shared identity while

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retaining difference. The internment took these precepts from the Japanese Americans.

It was only through communicating the internment experience within the home, throughout the community, and to the greater public that the Japanese Americans could regain what many Americans take for granted.

One of the more interesting conclusions I have come to is that it is actually in part the degree of assimilation that the Japanese Americans achieved that made the push for redress possible. This initially seems counterintuitive since the Nisei and Issei desired to assimilate to ensure that they did not draw undesired attention to themselves and their communities, but while it worked in the short term and won them the title of “model minority” it also taught the Sansei to behave like American teenagers. As a result of their attempts at assimilation, the older generations distanced themselves from the traditional culture of Japan, stopped sending their children to Japanese language schools, and made their children believe that to be Japanese was bad, where as to be American was good.180

These deeply ingrained lessons were used by the Sansei to develop an identity that was largely American in its nature. This enabled the Japanese-American youth to believe that they had a right to question authority. Under Japanese culture, the dictates of a father were to be followed, but during this time period, American teens were developing their own sense of authority and thus felt that they had a right to question their parents, teachers, and leaders. Sansei then took this social cue and used it to begin asking their parents questions about their heritage and specifically the internment. So while the Issei and Nisei worked diligently to assimilate into the main stream culture of the time, their

180 Sasaki, May K. “Becoming involved in the movement toward Multicultural Education.” Interviewed by Lori Hoshino and Alice Ito on October 28, 1997.

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success in that endeavor, in part, eventually led to a movement that would require they take pride in their heritage and talk about the experiences that made them fundamentally different.

While assimilation helped lead to the redress movement, the redress movement encouraged a coming together of the various generations of Japanese Americans as well as the community as a whole. Because they were able to discuss the internment openly,

Sansei felt they could ask questions of their parents and grandparents and receive more honest questions without causing them pain as was previously feared.181 Accordingly, with more information, the Sansei began to better understand why their parents had not fought against the internment prior to the redress movement and accepted that it was not a sign of weakness, but rather a sign of sincere loyalty. This enabled them to have pride in the actions of their parents and grandparents instead of the shame silence had taught them to feel.182 In an interview, Sarah Sato said that she thought that the redress movement would enable the Sansei and future generations to “be proud of their heritage and proud of [her generation],” because they had endured injustice and hardship and eventually obtained justice.183 The community as a whole was also able to come together over the redress movement. As a part of the assimilation the Japanese Americans had previously tried to achieve, many individuals distanced themselves from the community.

However, since “the internment itself was a unique experience” for the Japanese

181 Yamanda, Mitsuye May. “Talking to Children about incarceration experience; the importance of education.” Interviewed by Alice Ito on October 9,2002. 182 Takezawa, Yasuko I. "Children of Inmates: The Effects of the Redress Movement Among Third Generation Japanese Americans." Qualitative Sociology 14, no. 1 (1991), 53. 183 Sato, Sarah. “Message to grandchildren: teach them to be proud of their heritage” Interviewed by Dee Goto on April 9, 1998.

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Americans the redress movement helped reunite them around an experience they could only share with one another.184 Cynthia Ube was a Sansei who grew up in a white suburb and she claimed she “supported [the redress movement] because it brought people closer.”185 The open communication about the internment experience and the feelings that the community had harbored about the experience was integral to this consolidation of community. When asked if she believed the redress movement was successful, Cherry

Kinoshita answer that “it did in the sense—it brought out the feelings. How it finally, people were able to, I think. Put closure to the whole thing.”186 Although this closure was long delayed for the Nikkei it was necessary in order that they have the opportunity to embrace both the American and Japanese parts of their heritage.

The success of the redress movement is additionally important because it marked one of the first occasions where a national government apologized for its actions. When asked how he felt when he received his check, former internee Akio Hoshino said that his faith was restored in America because “that showed how great a country this was. To say that they made a mistake and apologize. I don't think there's any other country in the world that does that.”187 After the passage of the Civil Liberties Act, “countless statements of regret, requests for forgiveness, payments of reparations, and acts of atonement” were made. Governmental officials in East German ended their denial of the

Holocaust by the end of 1990, and in 1995 Pope John Paul II apologized for the wrongs

184 Takezawa, Yasuko I. "Children of Inmates: The Effects of the Redress Movement Among Third Generation Japanese Americans." Qualitative Sociology 14, no. 1 (1991),15. 185 Ibid, pg 53. 186 Kinoshita, Cherry. “Thoughts for future generations: ‘Get involved’” Interviewed by Becky Fukuda and Tracy Lai on September 26,1997. 187 Hoshino, Akio. “Reflecting on the U.S. government's actions, ‘We did receive an apology... sign of a good government’” Interviewed by Stephen Fugita and Lori Hoshino on July 11,1997.

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done throughout the counter-reformation to the non-Catholics.188 Due to these public announcements, USA Today published an article in 1997 declaring “we were living in an era of apologies.”189 This is not to say that these occurrences and the many others like them were directly caused by the redress movement, but rather that the significance of a nation like the United States taking responsibility for an injustice and making amends meant something to more than just the 82, 219 who received reparation payments.190

The redress movement is not over. The political goals that were developed have been met, but educating the public to the issue has not yet occurred on a wide enough scale. Even though an education fund was set up in the Civil Liberties Act, there are numerous Americans today who know little to nothing about the internment. Susan

Hayase, who was heavily involved in the redress movement expressed her belief that

“until all little children also know that, about the concentration camps, and the resistance, and the struggle to defend the Constitution... until all little children know about that, too, then the work is not done.”191 As a nation, it is easier to teach and remember the positive points of the past. America has fought for democracy and freedom on numerous occasions, but it is also important to acknowledge the mistakes that were made. One student wrote that “depictions of the Second World War in American public schools still often present United States efforts in the war as sacrificial and heroic,” but the internment happened and as such it is imperative that we refuse to accept the lack of attention it

188 188 Murray, Alice Yang. Historical Memories of the Japanese American Internment and the Struggle for Redress. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2008, pg 435 189 Ibid, pg 435. 190 Maki, Mitchell and Harry Kitano, and Megan Berthold. Achieving the Impossible Dream: How Japanese Americans Obtained Redress. (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999), pg 225. 191 Hayase,Susan. “Redress as “a tool against injustice” interviewed by Glen Kitayama September 12, 1997.

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receives in the classroom.192 The internment is a stain on an excellent record of standing up for individuals. This is a fact, but it is one that should be taught. While the internment has been memorialized through pilgrimages, museum exhibits, and national landmarks, it must also be memorialized in the classroom.

The Japanese Americans fought to have the internment acknowledged as the wrong it was, and for the effort of their fight, the United States bears the responsibility of keeping the lessons this movement teaches in the minds of the public. It is only through the protection of democracy and respect for the cultural differences of other Americans that this country can continue to be the land of dreams it was for the Japanese when they first arrived. Today, all of the checks have been distributed and the apologies issued, yet the greater impact of this movement was a strengthening of a community and an end to a silence that threatened the democracy all Americans hold dear.

192 Kohn, Jason and Cara Lemon, “Nineteen in ’98: A Conversation on Studying the Internment”. Last Witnesses: Reflections on the Wartime Internment of Japanese Americans. Erica Harth,ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2001), pg 276.

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References

PRIMARY SOURCES

Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. Personal Justice Denied. Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1982; reprint, with a new foreword; Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997.

Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. “Testimony of Jiro and Shea Aoki, for the Japanese American Citizen League.” Seattle, Washington: September 11, 1981.

Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. “Testimony of Lloyd Hara, for the Japanese American Citizen League.” Seattle, Washington: September 11, 1981.

Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. “Testimony of Matthew Masuoka, for the Japanese American Citizen League.” Seattle, Washington: September 11, 1981.

Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. “Testimony of Rose Inouye, for the Japanese American Citizen League.” Seattle, Washington: September 11, 1981.

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