In this 20th anniversary year of the signing of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, much credit has already been accorded to those who were involved in the Redress Campaign during the 1980s. It was a singular achievement that required resolve and persistence by many individuals to finally convince the members of Congress and the Administration about the necessity for this legislation.
Recently, I re-read the testimonies of former internees who appeared at the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC) hearing in Chicago in 1981 to tell their experiences during a trying and difficult time in their lives. As much as we praise those who participated in the redress campaign, I admire and credit those who testified for helping create the official record of what happened in 1942. The testimonies provided a stark, compelling argument for the necessity for Redress. Their stories, linked one to the other, formed a unified account of indignity and injustice, courage and endurance.
These stories should be told and retold for the lessons they teach about America. As we commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Civil Liberties Act, let me share with you excerpts from some of the testimonies that illuminated that experience.
The prejudice and bigotry that led to the internment intruded on the lives of Japanese Americans in their daily routines. Shig Murao, remembered, “While playing basketball, opponents called me ‘slant eyes,’ ‘yellow belly,’ ‘jap’ or other obscenities. I fought sometimes, walked away sometimes, went to the locker room and shouted obscenities sometimes or at times sat down and cried…” This led to self conscious anxieties when Shig remembered the first day in a new class when he would have to recite his name, “Shigesato Murao…I despised it because invariably the teacher and some students couldn’t understand. Then I would have to repeat myself. What an ordeal.”
Shizu Sue Lofton described herself as a simple, non-political Nisei woman dreaming American dreams on
December 7, 1941. “My first thoughts in those terrible days following the attack on Pearl Harbor were for my daughter – not quite two years old – and of what I could do to keep her from being harmed.” Sue described how her daughter viewed the journey to Manzanar as an adventure that was soon hardened by reality. “Even the long bus ride over strange and dusty roads to the camp was fun, but she was very tired by the time we arrived, it was dark and the mountains looked eerie and threatening even to me; so when she turned to me in that desolate barracks, with canvas cots and empty mattress ticking and piles of straw in the corners, and said, ‘Let’s go home now, Mommy,’ I could have killed every soldier standing there!”
Shig Wakamatsu testified about the uncertainty faced by the Issei farm families in the Puyallup Valley and whether they should proceed with plantings for the coming year. “I cannot overlook to state before the Commission the conduct of our immigrant parents, the Issei, during that terrible spring of 1942. That they responded to an inner sense of duty to their adopted country, a country that tried so hard to exclude them, is a feat that deserves a place in your record…Not much is known how the crops fared in the harvest nor what prices were obtained, but the Issei farmers went into camp with their heads held high, knowing that they had done everything that was possible to help our nation face its first summer of World War II.”
Toaru Ishiyama, a psychologist, likened the internment to abandonment, where the country was saying “you are unworthy and cannot be trusted.” The effects, he said, were devastating. “When a child feels abandoned, he cries. Only later does anger come. But we did not cry in 1942. I think this is why when Japanese Americans go on pilgrimages to the camps, the tears that were not shed then now come, and come, and come. We cry because of what we lost. And the loss goes beyond property issues, beyond physical hardships. I had finally learned that behind my anger, there was a tear.”
Maryann Mahaffey testified as the president pro-tem of the Detroit City Council. She was also a member of the Detroit JACL board of directors. As a 20-year-old college senior, she volunteered as a recreation worker at Poston. “I think I did some good. I think I helped. But I will be forever haunted by what could not be done, by the irreparable damage inflicted on an innocent, helpless and defenseless population…In the more than thirty-five years since that agonizing summer, I have thought often and poignantly about my role, about my country, and about justice. As a mother, as a social worker, as an elected public official, I feel so inadequate, so humble, so full of shame about what our government has done.”
Finally, Studs Terkel, who won a Pulitzer Prize for The Good War, testified on the role of the media and the manner in which they inflamed public attitudes. “But what was most shameful of that period was the media. The hysteria and I’m referring to all sorts of newspapers, even those called “liberal.” We expected hysteria and obscenity from someone as strident as Walter Winchell or as bilious as Westbrooke Pegler, and of course, Broadway’s darling, Damon Runyan. The most influential and the most devastating of columns against the Issei and Nisei were written by Walter Lippman. It was Lippman’s columns,… [that] were most influential, I think, in impressing other political figures who were easily impressed when it came to the denial of constitutional rights…I am delighted, of course, to know that many of the young, the Sansei, affected as they were by the civil rights movement of the 60s said to their parents, many of whom were understandably insecure and quiet because of the agony they suffered, “Speak up, why have you been silent?” But I ask, “Why has all of America been silent?” And I think these hearings have been a long time coming.”
