Discover Nikkei

https://www.discovernikkei.org/en/interviews/clips/951/

Sansei and the Redress Movement

But in our latter year -- later years especially, I, as I think in terms of redress, so forth, in my -- as far as I'm, understanding is concerned, I feel very strongly that Sanseis had a lot to do with the redress movement.

And I felt -- I think they felt as an outsider to see what was happening to their parents. Maybe their, their point of view was different and they could see the injustice that was done. And because of that and their interest in our history and the sudden... oh, what shall I say? Well, I guess the impetus for redress aroused a lot of interest in term -- on the part of the Sanseis and others, what happened and whatever before that. As questions were asked, why didn't you talk about it, so forth.

And so people started to write, and I think younger academicians were -- started to get oral history, write about it, do research, became big, big, bigger, bigger. And so that right now it seems like we're overwhelmed by the internment scene, just overwhelmed by information available and so forth. But it was a really big part of our lives.


Redress movement

Date: February 18, 2002

Location: Washington, US

Interviewer: Alice Ito, John Pai

Contributed by: Denshō: The Japanese American Legacy Project.

Interviewee Bio

George Yoshida was born in 1922 in Seattle, WA. Prior to World War II, his family moved to East Los Angeles, CA in 1936. Yoshida was incarcerated in Poston, AZ during the war. Yoshida grew up around the Big Band sound and Swing music and while in camp formed a dance band called the “Music Makers” for which he played the drums. Through music, the internees tried their best to keep life as a normal as possible and forget that they were surrounded by barbed wire. In 1943, Yoshida was drafted into the U.S. Army. He married in 1945 and moved to Berkeley, CA where he taught at Washington Elementary School for the next 35 years.

After retiring from teaching in 1987, Yoshida’s started the J-Town Jazz Ensemble, a swing band of Nisei and Sansei musicians. He still plays the drums, but this time, Yoshida uses music to remember the history of Japanese Americans during a period of great hardship. Yoshida is also the author of a book, Reminiscing in Swingtime 1925-1960: Japanese Americans in American Popular Music. (April 15, 2008)

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