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

State Department records show concern for treatment of Japanese American internees

When you look through State Department records, especially, you will discover that the State Department was very concerned about how Japanese Americans were treated here because Imperial Japan would find out about it and they could mistreat prisoners, who were American, who they were holding. And so it would be a tit-for-tat situation. And the State Department was very interested and concerned that Japanese nationals and Japanese Americans here [in the U.S.] be treated decently so that Americans held as prisoners and internees by Imperial Japan would be treated decently. So [the] State Department would never have allowed and, therefore, get word to [Henry L.] Stimson, Secretary of War, [would not have] allowed anything like that to happen.

There’s even a letter that Michi has published in her book—it’s a Stimson letter— talking about possible reprisals, threatening Japan that the they could do something to us [who were in the camps] if they [Japan] did not treat Americans right. There was a tremendous concern [by top level government officials that] so it would not have happened. In other words, the camps, we would not have been forcibly, by the point of bayonet, been forced into the camps. I am positive of that.

governments politics prisoners prisoners of war 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)