Interviews

1. Stripped of Pride

2. Growth in Numbers

3. Convincing the Beltway

4. It’s the People

Bert Nakano

(1928 - 2003) Political activist

Stripped of Pride

In fact, the Sansei were the whole LTPRO. They came from the 1960s, 1970s, early 1970, during the Vietnam War. They, you know, they had organizations, grassroots organizations, that were anti-war and they were for the African American Civil Rights movement. And all of these Sansei who were going to the university and fighting for ethnic, because of the African Americans, they were coming around with "black power "and "black is beautiful" and the Asians, because we were in camp -- Japanese Americans especially -- we weren't necessarily aggressive. We were like somebody said, like rape victims, you know, you didn't want to talk about it, they were ashamed because they were in camp.

You can imagine walking through a column of MPs, how you gonna feel? You're gonna feel like a prisoner or somebody that's not a part of the society. And then you go into camp and you have these guard towers, guns pointing down, and, you know, fences all around you. I mean, it makes you feel like you don't want to be Japanese American, because everybody in camp looks like you.

So, you know, the whole psychology of the thing, it kind of broke down the Japanese American pride. And basically what it did was break up the, disperse the community to a point where you don't have a community, a united community. This was a hard part of redress struggle, to make them come out, to become pride, proud of themselves as Japanese Americans.

civil rights generations Sansei

Date: September 13, 1997

Location: California, US

Interviewer: Larry Hashima

Contributed by: Denshō: The Japanese American Legacy Project.

Interviewee Bio

Bert Nakano was born in 1928 in Honolulu, HI. While most of the Japanese Americans in Hawaii did not suffer through internment during World War II, the Nakano’s were one of the families from the islands that were rounded up and sent to concentration camps on the mainland. Nakano was then 14 years old. First he went to Jerome, AR and later Tule Lake in California.

After marrying and stints in Chicago, IL and Japan, Nakano resettled in Southern California. For years, Nakano was bitter about the camp experience, and rebelled against the feelings of shame many Japanese Americans felt about their heritage after the war.

In 1976, prodded by his college-aged son to get involved in issues about which he had strong opinions, Nakano joined the Little Tokyo People’s Rights Organization, a grassroots group opposing the City of Los Angeles’ redevelopment plans that threatened the existence of low-to-moderate-income Nikkei residents and small family-owned businesses.

In 1978, Nakano helped found the Los Angeles Community Coalition for Redress and Reparations, which sought restitution for Japanese Americans who were incarcerated during World War II. In 1980, the Los Angeles group joined other community-based groups throughout the country to form the National Coalition for Redress and Reparations (NCRR). Nakano served as NCRR’s national spokesperson for nine years as the organization worked closely with Nikkei legislators, veterans’ groups and the Japanese American Citizens League and others to obtain justice. Bert Nakano died in 2003. (April 15, 2008)

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