Interviews

1. Lack of political power led to camps

2. Results of being more American than Japanese

3. Family separated in the camps

4. Feeling imprisoned at camp

5. World War II hysteria against Japanese in New York City

6. Institutionalization as a bad aspect of camp

7. Positive experiences with Asian Americans for Action

8. Redress payments to Issei who did not enter camps

9. Waiting for the right time to start Redress Movement

10. State Department records show concern for treatment of Japanese American internees

11. Lack of support from fellow Nikkei lawyers during the war

12. Political motivation to keep the camps open until end of 1944 election

Aiko Yoshinaga Herzig

(1924-2018) Researcher, Activist

Lack of political power led to camps

I do think that a lot of what led up to the exclusion and detention of Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor had to do with the fact that we didn’t have any power. The Japanese Americans had no power—no political power. And that had, of course, largely to do with the fact that our parents were unable to vote. Since they were not citizens and not allowed to be citizens, their interest in politics were pretty minimal, unlike many White American families where, over the dinner table, perhaps, there was discussion of voting for the mayor or voting for a senator, talk like that that might have been common in other White families. Since our parents had no incentive, we didn’t talk about politics. Maybe other Japanese American families did, but at least in my family, we didn’t. And we knew very little about the power of the vote. The fact that we had no representation in any places of power, political power, particularly, was one of the reasons it was so easy to round us up with no objection from any power base to what was happening to us.

discrimination governments interpersonal relations politics World War II

Date: August 26, 1998

Location: Virginia, US

Interviewer: Darcie Iki, Mitchell Maki

Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum

Interviewee Bio

Aiko Yoshinaga Herzig was born in Sacramento, California in 1924. Her family immigrated from Kumamoto, Japan in 1919. During the Depression, the Yoshinaga family moved to Los Angeles, California.

During World War II, Aiko was incarcerated first at Manzanar with her husband’s family. She transferred to Jerome, Arkansas with her newborn daughter to be with her family. In 1944, the Yoshinaga family left Jerome and resettled in New York. She divorced and remarried a Nisei soldier. She went with him to Japan where he worked during the Occupation period. One of her husband’s co-workers was her future husband, Jack Herzig.

After her return to the United States, Aiko became involved in Asian Americans for Action. Aiko and Jack played a pivotal role in the Redress Movement through their research at the National Archives in Washington D.C. The documents they found were instrumental in the coram nobis case that vacated the convictions against Fred Korematsu, Min Yasui, and Gordon Hirabayashi. Aiko was also hired as the primary researcher for the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, and then worked for the Department of Justice Office of Redress Administration to help identify individuals eligible for redress payments.

She passed away on July 18, 2018 at age 93. (July 2018)