On August 10, 1988, President Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. It officially apologized to Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans who were forcibly evicted and interned during the US-Japan war, and paid $20,000 to each of them. It was the day that it was officially recognized that the internment, which was carried out under the pretext of military necessity and the protection of Japanese Americans, was in fact a violation of the freedom and fairness that America upholds. The unfamiliar word "redress" was used. It does not mean monetary compensation (reparation/compensation), but rather means "correcting a wrong."
There were many twists and turns before this law was enacted. When it passed Congress and when the President signed it, I think there was an atmosphere of surprise. There were voices saying that the internment took place 50 years ago, during wartime, and that the statute of limitations had expired. There seemed to be even fewer supporters when it came to monetary compensation. There were also concerns that if compensation was given to Japanese people, the issue of compensation for other ethnic groups, such as black people, would also arise. There were many other issues that the country had to address. Could Congress pass a law for such a small group? Although it was originally unrelated to Japanese Americans, the "Japan bashing" caused by trade friction also seemed to cast a shadow.
In retrospect, the movement to "right the wrongs" began long before. The Japanese American Eviction Reparations Act of 1948 provided compensation for property lost during the war, although it was nowhere near the amount lost. The Walter McCarran Act of 1952 opened up immigration quotas for Japanese and also granted naturalization rights to the first generation. The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s dramatically changed attitudes toward the rights of minorities in American society.
During this time, the environment surrounding Japanese American society was also undergoing a major transformation. Around the time the internment camps were closed, society was very wary of Japanese Americans returning, but as the achievements of Japanese American troops during the war became widely known, Japan-U.S. relations rapidly improved, and above all, thanks to the tireless efforts of Japanese Americans, society gradually began to accept them. By the early 1960s, Japanese Americans had largely "reintegrated" into American society, and they came to be known as a "successful minority" or "model minority" due to their high educational levels, employment rates, high incomes, and low crime rates.
The civil rights movement also brought about a major change in the consciousness of the Japanese community. After the war, the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL, founded in 1929) led by Mike Masaoka continued to work for the rights of Japanese Americans, while also actively participating in the civil rights movement in cooperation with other minority groups. In 1946, they began a campaign to repeal California's Alien Land Law (which prohibited Japanese people from purchasing or renting farmland). In 1948, they passed the Japanese American Eviction Compensation Act, and the following year in 1949, they began a campaign to recognize the right of naturalization for Japanese immigrants.
Asian American studies, which was gradually adopted at universities on the West Coast in the late 1960s, opened a new phase in the change of Japanese American society. This movement, which examined the history and culture of Asian Americans and aimed to establish the identity of the minority group, raised the consciousness of third-generation Japanese Americans who had no knowledge of the internment and gave them an opportunity to reconsider the experiences of their grandparents (Issei) and parents (Nisei) generations. Within the Japanese American community, there was a growing awareness that something had to be said about the injustice suffered during the war.
There was another major factor that is said to have led the redress movement to success: the emergence of an influential Japanese American politician. In 1959, the year Hawaii became the 50th state of the United States, Daniel Inouye, a native of Hawaii, became the first Japanese American member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He was a former soldier of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, known for his glorious military service, and had lost his right arm in battle. In 1962, he became the first Japanese American to be elected to the U.S. Senate. He worked to realize redress while advising the JACL headquarters along with three other Japanese American politicians: Spark Matsunaga (1916-1990; born in Hawaii; U.S. Representative (1962-1977); U.S. Senator (1977-1990)), Norman Mineta (1931-); U.S. Representative (1975-1995); Secretary of Commerce (Clinton administration) (2000-2001); Secretary of Transportation (Bush administration) (2001-2006), and Robert Matsui (III (1941-2005); U.S. Representative (1979-2005)).
In 1978, JACL launched a movement for an apology and compensation. Three demands were made: a formal apology from Congress, compensation for those who were interned, and the establishment of a fund to provide accurate historical education about the internment. On July 31, 1980, President Carter signed the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC). Its purpose was to (1) investigate the facts and effects of Executive Order 9066, (2) verify military directives, and (3) propose appropriate remedies. Public hearings were held in 10 cities across the United States from July to December 1981. Over the course of 20 days, 750 people testified. In February 1983, the committee submitted a 467-page report titled "Personal Justice Denied," criticizing the internment as an unjust policy based on racial discrimination rather than military necessity, and recommended that Congress pay $20,000 compensation to each of the approximately 60,000 people who were incarcerated and still survive.
As mentioned at the beginning, in 1988, President Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act. It provided an official apology and monetary compensation from Congress, and also established an education fund totaling $1.25 billion to provide education about the internment in schools across the country. Compensation began to be paid to individuals starting with the presentation of checks to nine Japanese Americans at a ceremony on October 9, 1990, which was accompanied by a signed letter of apology from President Bush. In 1992, another $400 million was added, and by 1999, more than 80,000 Japanese Americans had received $20,000 each.
"Rightening a wrong" - redressing - took many forms.
One of these was compensation for people who worked for state and city government agencies at the time the war began, and were fired because they were Japanese-American. In 1942, 314 Japanese-Americans who worked for the California government were fired. In response, compensation began in August 1982. In 1986, similar compensation was provided in Washington state. The recipients were 40 people who worked for the Washington state government, four people for the city of Seattle, and 27 people for the Seattle Department of Education. Similar movements can be seen, for example, with university and high school students at the time. On May 19, 2008, the University of Washington held a special graduation ceremony. It was the 66th graduation ceremony for 450 people who had to leave the university before graduation due to forced eviction.
Another movement, which was not mentioned at all in this exhibition, was the retrial of a series of three cases in the US Supreme Court that questioned the constitutionality of forced evictions and internment - the Korematsu, Hirabayashi, and Yasui cases - which took place between 1983 and 1988. The way for retrial was opened in a very rare form, a mistrial (Coram Nobis case), after evidence was found that Justice Department officials knew that the forced eviction policy had no military necessity in 1941 and 1942, when the policy was being implemented, but had suppressed this important fact.
Finally, I would like to introduce one Japanese American woman who made a major contribution to the redress of Japanese Americans. Aiko Y. Hertzig was a senior in high school and was about to graduate when she and her family were forced to move out. After the war, through her experience in the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s and 1970s, she became a researcher at CWRIC in order to confront the issue of wartime internment that she had experienced herself. She was given the authority to directly enter the archives to examine and make copies of not only documents held by the National Archives, but also documents that were not stored in the archives but were still kept by relevant government agencies. She ended up submitting 9,000 pages of documents.
On a personal note, I have been assisted by him many times in my search for materials for the past 10 years or so. When he asked me "What do you need this time?" and I told him "I'm looking for materials with this content," he would instantly tell me the name of the material, the material number, and a summary with amazing speed and accuracy. I was also impressed by his comprehensive ability to collect, analyze, and systematize a huge amount of material, as well as his administrative ability to classify and code the materials. It was historian Peter Irons who found the decisive evidence that led to victory in the Coram Nobis trial mentioned above, but when he was stuck because he was not allowed to make copies of the documents, it was he who helped him as an authority with the CWRIC researchers.
In this way, postwar compensation for the forced eviction and internment of Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans in the United States was settled. It was not an easy road, but many Americans learned about the experiences of these people. From 1987 to 2008, the Smithsonian Museum of American History had an exhibit on Japanese American troops entitled "A More Perfect Union" (it appears to have been completed with a renovation in 2008). The Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, which was established as a non-profit organization in 1985, has gradually expanded in size and has a rich collection of materials. In 2000, a monument to Japanese American soldiers (The National Japanese American Memorial To Patriotism During World War II) was erected on the Mall in Washington, DC. All the movements toward "redress" were covered by the media, included in textbooks, and played a role in educating the public. It seems that the historical significance of "redress" was not limited to monetary compensation, but to making the situation widely known to society.
*This article is a reprint from the special exhibition "Japanese Immigrants in the United States and the War Era" (2010), edited and published by the National Museum of Japanese History . This exhibition will be held until Sunday, April 3, 2011.
© 2010 National Museum of Japanese History
