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Redress payments to Issei who did not enter camps

Do you remember this man, an Issei man, who was apparently living in Utah so he was never in the camps but he applied for redress?

And just by sheer coincidence, Mary Furutani, who worked at the Gardena Seinan Senior Citizen Program or Ken Nakaoka Center—she was working with Issei—this man went to Mary and said, “You know, I applied for redress but they turned me down because I was not in the camps.” Well, I said, “Gee, you know it was very easy to find the name of anybody who was in the camps because there is a written record.”

And by sheer coincidence, just about that same week it was, Jack and I were in the Archives in Suitland, Maryland at that time, and I came across a three-by-five list of cards of Issei men who were picked up by the FBI who were not in the Western Defense Command zone, and I came across this guy’s name. He was arrested in Bingham [City], Utah, for being Japanese, and put in a jail in Salt Lake City, [Utah] and kept there, I think, about two months, then released because they had nothing on him. They couldn’t keep him, but he never went into camp. But here was this man who was arrested for no other reason except [that] he was nihonjin [Japanese] and kept incarcerated for two months.

So he was deprived of his liberty, which came under one of the provisions of the Civil Liberties Act, that if you were deprived of liberty by some action of the government, you are allowed redress. That was very simple, but it was by sheer luck that I happened to come across this one little card that had his name with a short history [of his arrest].


governments politics Redress movement

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)

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