Day of Remembrance statement from the JACL calls for reperations for African Americans

History matters

By the Japanese American Citizens League.

This Sunday, February 19, 2023, marks the 81st anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, resulting in the mass incarceration of over 120,000 Japanese Americans.

Similarly, thousands of Japanese Latin Americans and Japanese Canadians were incarcerated en masse in their own countries or, in some cases, were kidnapped to the United States against their will to serve as “prisoners of war.” As we look back and mourn one of the darkest moments of our community’s and nation’s history, we also celebrate the many triumphs as well.

This past year for example, we saw the passage of legislation to study the creation of a National Museum of Asian-Pacific American History and Culture, where the stories of all AANHPI communities will be celebrated and remembered. Towards the end of 2022, we saw the passage of two major bills, namely, the Norman Y. Mineta Japanese American Confinement Education (JACE) Act, and the World War II Japanese American History Network Act. Both bills will support organizations that work to educate the public about the experiences of Japanese Americans during World War II.

This year also marks the 35th anniversary of one of the greatest triumphs of our community in the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 as a response to our history of incarceration. It was the culmination of nearly two decades of multigenerational work by former incarcerees, their children and grandchildren, members of Congress, community leaders, supporters, and thousands of allies across multiple communities.

While no amount of money could heal the traumas of everything our community lost, it was our government’s acknowledgment of its wrongdoing that allowed our community to begin the healing process. The Civil Liberties Act showed the power of community organizing in how it forced our government to acknowledge and apologize for the suffering it caused to its people. In the 35 years since the passing of this bill, our journey toward achieving true reparatory justice continues. 

HR 40, or the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act, has been introduced in some form in every Congressional session since 1989, the year after the passage of Japanese American redress. It was first introduced by Representative John Conyers, and more recently by Representative Sheila Jackson Lee.

Much of the framework of HR 40 is based on the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC) which helped pave the way for the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. The African American community was one of the first to support the Japanese American community in its path toward redress, and now it is time that Japanese Americans do the same.

Late last year, the JACL, the National Nikkei Reparations Coalition, and over 70 other Asian American organizations joined together to send a letter to President Biden calling for the creation of a commission to begin the process for the African American community toward reparations and healing. 

As we continue into 2023 and beyond, we look back on our triumphs and hardships, as well as our solidarity in the hopes that we can make a change for a better future for all people in this nation. When our country seems more divided than ever, let us stand together and show that the unimaginable tragedies our ancestors suffered are not forgotten and are worthy of our government’s recognition and repair. 

Japanese Americans back study for reparations for descendants of slaves

SCREEN CAPTURE / C-SPAN2

Kathy Masaoka testified virtually for the hearing on reparations.

A bill that seeks to establish a commission to study the feasibility of reparations for descendants of former slaves received support from Japanese Americans.

The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties debated House Resolution 40 Wednesday that would direct  experts to study how the U.S. government supported slavery from 1619 to 1865 and created laws that discriminated against formerly enslaved people and their descendants.

The commission could recommend an official apology and possible remedies, including reparations and education  of the American public on slavery's impact on current race relations. 

The bill, known as "H.R. 40, the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act" was introduced this year. by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas.

Rep. John Conyers of Michigan in 1989, and he reintroduced the bill every session until he retired in 2017. It never received. enough votes for passage, sometimes in the House and sometimes in Senate.

H.R. 40 seeks to establish a commission to study "and consider a national apology and proposal for reparations for the institution of slavery, its subsequent de jure and de facto racial and economic discrimination against African Americans, and the impact of these forces on living African Americans, to make recommendations to the Congress on appropriate remedies, and for other purposes."

Among the eight expert witnesses were E. Tendayi Achiume, a law professor at UCLA, and Kathy Masaoka, co-chair of the Nikkei for Civil Rights & Redress, said that reparations committees have international and domestic precedent including the commission that compensated Japanese Americans who were put in internment camps after World War II. 

“The Japanese American movement for redress and reparations was inspired by the Civil Rights Movement and supported by Black organizations and legislators," testified Masaoka, co-chair of Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress and member of the coordinating committee for Nikkei Progressives, 

"H.R. 40 would bring our movement full circle, providing a long overdue foundation for redress owed to the Black descendants of hundreds of years of state-sponsored racism and oppression. Reconciliation and reparations are not about taking from one to give to the other," she continued. "Rather, it is a means of using our nation’s resources — a nation whose wealth was built on slavery — to heal the impact of hundreds of years of exploitation and to work with Black communities to build a path toward justice and healing.  This is a necessary step for the Congress and the federal government to take.  And it is long overdue.”

The Japanese American Citizens League issued the following statement in support of H.R. 40:

Over 30 years ago, redress was achieved for the wrongful forced removal and incarceration during WWII of nearly 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry on the west coast. This egregious abrogation of civil rights was carried out by our government ignorant to the citizenship and because of the racial and ethnic background of the victims. It took over 40 years for our government to take full responsibility and offer a full apology and economic reparations to incarcerees.

We are now over 155 years past the end of the Civil War and the end of slavery and over 50 years past the passage of the Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, and Fair Housing Act which ended many of the Jim Crow Laws which extended the power of White Supremacy beyond the end of the Civil War. The legacy of these laws continues today.

Just as the CWRIC enabled Japanese Americans to tell our stories of the impact of incarceration, the H.R. 40 commission would provide members of the Black community to share the impact of the institution and the legacy of slavery.

This week over 300 testimonies from the Japanese American community are being submitted to the Congressional Record in support of H.R. 40. JACL and several other Japanese American organizations have signed on to the “Why We Can’t Wait” letter in support of H.R. 40. Japanese Americans fully understand the power of redress and reparations in our community and cannot silently stand by as our government denies the same overdue apology and reparations to the Black community.

Just as our government took responsibility for the World War II incarceration of those of Japanese ancestry, it is time for our nation to take responsibility for the institution and ongoing legacy of slavery.

Biden has not come out directly in support of reparations although White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said the President supports a study as proposed by H.R. 40.

Last year during the campaign, Biden told the Washington Post that “we must acknowledge that there can be no realization of the American dream without grappling with the original sin of slavery, and the centuries-long campaign of violence, fear, and trauma wrought upon Black people in this country.”

Opponents of the bill called it divisive and argued that present-day Americans should not be held responsible for the consequences of slavery, which was ended by the passage of the 13th Amendment in 1865.

This year, though, the bill appears to have gained more support because of the demonstrations over the summer sparked by the death of George Floyd at the hands of police. His death, which was videotaped as the nation heard his last words that he couldn't breathe, followed a series of deaths of several African Americans by law enforcement.

African Americans are almost twice as likely to live below the poverty line as white Americans and on average are paid less than their white peers, no matter their profession or education, according to the U.S. Census. Black people are also less likely to own a home than other racial and ethnic groups, a key asset for building wealth.  

"Economic issues are the root cause for many critical issues impacting the African American community today,” Rep. Lee said when introducing the bill last month. “Truth and reconciliation about the ‘original sin of American slavery’ is necessary to light the way to the beloved community we all seek."

Japanese American researcher whose work led to reparations dies, age 93

LEGACY

AIKO HERZIG-YOSHINAGA, 1925-2018

ASAM NEWS

Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga, the Japanese American activist whose research resulted in the financial and symbolic reparations to Japanese incarceration camp survivors, died in Torrance, California at the age of 93.

Herzig-Yoshinaga is notable for uncovering evidence that proved that the U.S. government’s decision to force Japanese Americans behind barbed wire during World War II was driven by racist intent rather than the protection of national security.

“Aiko Herzig Yoshinaga was the quintessential example that one person can change the course of history,” Mitch Maki, president of the nonprofit Go For Broke National Education Center, states. “As a self-trained researcher and archivist, she had the keen ability to identify key documents and draw the connections between them” — reports the Huffington Post.

Growing up in California, she recalled the hostility she faced by authorities after former President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order in 1942 forcing Japanese Americans into camps. According to the New York Times, she vividly remembers the time when her high school principal assembled the 15 Japanese students in her graduating class to tell them that “You don’t deserve to get your high school diplomas because your people bombed Pearl Harbor”.

At the age of 17, Herzig-Yoshinaga, alongside 120,000 other Japanese Americans, were evicted from their homes and forced to relocate to the prisons. After residing in the Manzanar prison camp in California, she was eventually relocated to those in Arkansas: Jerome and subsequently, Rohwer.

Herzig-Yoshinaga recollects the squalid living conditions. Receiving the bare minimum, she spent her war days in cramped quarters, sleeping on metal beds where her mattress was a bag stuffed with hay.

According to the Huffington Post, Herzig-Yoshinaga described, in an NPR interview, having “No chest of drawers, no nothing, no curtains on the windows. It was the barest of the bare.”

As much as Herzig-Yoshinaga wanted to forget her war years, her political involvement with various anti-war organizations inspired her to delve back into her past. Moving to Washington D.C. with her third-husband John Herzig in 1978, she dedicated her days scouring the National Archives to research the executive order.

It wasn’t until the 1980s when she finally made a breakthrough. Sitting on an archivist’s table was a red bound volume that held the original draft, supposedly the last copy in existence, of a 1943 government report — according to the Washington Post.

The report debunked the Pentagon’s claim that imprisonment was a “military necessity”. The report, written by Lt. Gen. John L. DeWitt, states that incarceration wasn’t because the separation of the “good” Japanese Americans from the “bad” ones was time-costly, but because “an exact separation of the ‘sheep from the goats’ was unfeasible” — reports the Washington Post. In other words, the document indicates a perceived deficiency in the Japanese race.

Her findings were instrumental to Congress’s decision to pass the 1988 Civil Liberties Act. This federal law granted $20,000 in reparations to every survivor from the camps and an official apology from former President Ronald Reagan — according to the NY Times.

Herzig-Yoshinaga, with her research partner and lawyer Peter H. Irons, also discovered a certificate stating that all copies of the report were burned. This document, alongside a 467-page report — written by lawyer Angus C. Macbeth– that consisted of Herzig-Yoshinaga’s research, was later on utilized to repeal the conviction of Fred Korematsu, a Japanese American who was arrested in 1942 for refusing to live in a camp. Gordon Hirabayashi and Minoru Yasui, additional challengers to wartime policies, also had their convictions overturned.

Despite Herzig-Yoshinaga’s significant discoveries that made achieving social justice for the Japanese American community a reality, she remained humble in her accomplishments.

“She never sought public recognition,” Lorraine Bannai, a law professor who worked on the Korematsu case states. “She would say, “It’s all these young people who did all of this work, and I’m privileged to be a part of it” — reports the LA Times.

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