#NeverAgainIsNow: Why the 30th anniversary of Japanese American Redress matters today

Guest Post by Tsuya Hohri Yee, Co-Chair New York Day of Remembrance Committee; and Joseph Shoji Lachman, Co-founder of Never Again.


Photo Credit: Densho/The Kinoshita Collection & The Rafu Shimpo
August 10th marks the 30th anniversary of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which granted a presidential apology and monetary reparations to living Japanese American families who had persevered through World War II incarceration for simply looking like the enemy. Over 120,000 people were removed from their homes and imprisoned in concentration camps in remote areas of the country. The majority were U.S. citizens and 1/3 were children. While no amount of money could ever undo the damage to Japanese American families and our democracy as a whole, the Act was a landmark piece of legislation, and represented decades of grassroots organizing across the country. Many Japanese Americans, young and old were inspired to join the Redress Movement by the work of Civil Rights Movement activists of the 1960s, and mobilized our communities to come together to fight for an apology and reparations. Allies in the Black and Latinx communities came to the aid of Japanese Americans, recognizing the commonalities of our struggles, and through this powerful coalition work Japanese Americans finally saw some semblance of justice for our families.

What the Redress movement achieved went beyond the Civil Liberties Act. Our community is not monolithic and there was significant debate about how to "right this wrong," including the view that demanding compensation would bring negative attention to our community. Others felt that creating a Commission to study the incarceration, including prisoner testimonies was demeaning and unnecessary. But those disagreements didn't stop us from moving forward and when it mattered most, we rallied our support around the Civil Liberties Act. Painful divides between individuals and groups who had chosen different paths during the war that had once seemed fixed in stone, now see the possibility of eroding. As part of the healing process the Redress movement started, annual Day of Remembrance programs were organized across the country giving communities an opportunity to reflect, learn, and join together in solidarity around our common history. Japanese Americans also began journeying back to camp sites on pilgrimages to reclaim the stories of their parents and grandparents and to begin piecing together what was lost. Today we look back with admiration at what we fought for and accomplished as a community.

Researcher and activist Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga dies at 93

Former incarceree uncovered instrumental evidence for the Japanese American redress movement.



Activist and researcher Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga, best known as a hero of the Japanese American redress campaign that culminated in the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, died last week. She was 93.

The Civil Liberties Act of 1988, signed by President Ronald Reagan, granted reparations, and perhaps more importantly, an official apology to Japanese Americans who had been removed from the West Coast and incarcerated without trial by the United States government during World War II.

Herzig-Yoshinaga was a high school senior when she was incarcerated with her family at the Manzanar Relocation Center. After the war, while living in New York in the 1960s, she became involved with Asian Americans for Action, and engaged in a variety of political protests and demonstrations, including efforts to end the war in Vietnam and demonstrations against nuclear research.

After to moving to Washington DC in 1978, Herzig-Yoshinaga began looking through the information on the wartime exclusion and incarceration, which was publicly accessible in the National Archives. Over several years, she retrieved and cataloged thousands and significant documents -- including a key piece of "buried" evidence that would become instrumental in the movement for redress.