Interviews

1. Importance of education in achieving redress for incarceration

Uyehara,Grayce Ritsu Kaneda

(1919-2014) Activist for civil rights and redress for World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans.

Importance of education in achieving redress for incarceration

I feel that the major contribution has to do with the educational process, which is a major underpinning of the whole redress movement, because we were a people unknown to the rest of the country. And because what happened to the Japanese Americans was not in a textbook, nobody knew it happened. It's like it's a fable, 'You're making it up.' Or people's need to deny that their country is their mother -- 'mother'. 'Mother does nothing wrong.' It would be like the Holocaust, people say 'That never happened. Jews are making it up.' So, the same thing with our people.

Redress movement World War II

Date: August 28, 1998

Location:

Interviewer: Darcie Iki, Mitchell Maki

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

Interviewee Bio

Grayce Ritsu (Kaneda) Uyehara was born on the Fourth of July, 1919, in Stockton, California. During World War II, she and her family were incarcerated first at the Stockton Assembly Center, and then sent to a concentration camp in Rohwer, Arkansas. In the 1980s she worked tirelessly as an activist with the Japanese American Citizens League to organize efforts to secure redress from the United States government for Japanese Americans incarcerated during the war.

She passed away on June 22, 2014 at age 94. 　(Jully 2014)