Legacy of JACL Takes Center Stage at Changing Perspectives Conference
A version of this article originally appeared in Pacific Citizen.
On the weekend of June 21-22, approximately 150 Japanese American scholars, artists, and community organizers from around the country converged at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center for a conference titled Changing Perspectives on Japanese American Incarceration. Its stated purpose was to have an intentional dialogue about topics that are not frequently discussed within the Japanese American community. The brainchild of 95-year-old Poston survivor Chizu Omori, this conference was organized by Japanese American Memorial Pilgrimages whose team ran logistics. The two-day event featured over a dozen panel discussions, workshops, individual presentations, film screenings, and Glenn Mitsui’s Wakasa Spirit Stone art installation.
The conference began with sessions that provided a general historical grounding for the discussions that would follow. This included sessions titled “Multiple Sites and Complexity of Wartime Incarceration” and “Pre-war Origins of Incarceration.” The former examined what remains at each of the physical sites of confinement, while the latter explored the Yellow Peril and Asian Exclusion periods as precursors to the wartime incarceration.
After a Chinese banquet lunch at the nearby Peony Seafood Restaurant, the group reconvened for a multifaceted program about the Tule Lake renunciants. Tule Lake Pilgrimage Committee Chair Barbara Takei gave a compelling background on the topic, then introduced Emiko Omori’s new film Defiant to the Last: The Story of the Tule Lake Jail. After brief remarks from the filmmaker, two descendants of renunciants Will Kaku and Jeff Ogata, gave personal testimonies about their fathers’ ordeals during and after the war. Of particular note was a story that Ogata shared of a childhood memory in Little Tokyo when his father was spit on by another man he knew from camp. Ogata never found out who the man was or why it happened, but guessed it was because his father had been a renunciant.
The first day of the conference ended with a panel discussion titled “The Legacy of JACL” featuring scholars of the incarceration Alice Yang and Jonathan van Harmelen, Chizu Omori, JANM curator and JACL Chicago past president Lisa Doi, and JACL National Executive Director David Inoue. Framed as one of the main topics in the conference, the session introduction touched on the Lim Report, which was made available to attendees in printed form. Commissioned by the JACL in 1989 to investigate the extent that the organization colluded with the federal government during WWII, the report was compiled by Deborah Lim, an attorney and instructor in Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University.
Highly critical of the JACL’s wartime activities such as supporting the government’s decision to forcibly remove and mass incarcerate Japanese Americans, the Lim Report includes proof that Mike Masaoka and other wartime JACL leaders collaborated with the army and other intelligence agencies, informed on Japanese American dissidents, and attempted to suppress internal dissent within the community. The report also reveals the great extent to which JACL leadership continued to condemn No-Nos and resisters in the postwar era, further damaging their standing in the community. Given its incriminating conclusions, the Lim Report has long been a source of tension within the Japanese American community. Critics of the JACL allege that the organization’s leadership continues to suppress it from public view.
The session began with a presentation on the history of JACL’s legislative advocacy by Harmelen. Omori then followed with her research demonstrating the JACL’s failure to resist the forced removal and subsequent animosity towards JACL officials in camp. As a specific example, she recounted the beating of Fred Tayama as an inciting incident to the Manzanar uprising, which occurred shortly after his return from a JACL meeting in Salt Lake City where a resolution was passed encouraging the government to allow Japanese Americans to be conscripted for military service from within the WRA prisons. Another example was the murder plot at Puyallup targeting Jimmy Sakamoto, a founding member of JACL who advocated total cooperation with the government.
Omori offered the following comments, “fortunately the murder plan did not go through, though an effigy of Sakamoto was created. It was spat on, urinated on, and then burned. I understand that such an effigy of Mike Masaoka was also created. Having heard something like that really jolted me and made me realize that throughout the incarceration there was bad blood between the JACL and some Issei and Kibei. I consider this a tragedy of epic proportion where immigrant groups go through a transition when the old world of the immigrant confronts the new world of America and there is a generational conflict. In our case it played out in the camps, leading to tragic results. The JACL leadership assumed positions of power, pushing an assimilationist, patriotic stance. They had a right to their position, but it enabled the government to use them, to be played by government authorities, leaving the camps to roil in a constant state of potential violence.”
Lisa Doi gave a compelling presentation of research related to the progressive youth JACL staff in the Pacific Southwest during the late 1960s, naming figures such as Warren Furutani, Ron Wakabayashi, Victor Shibata, and Ron Hirano. Doi described the hiring of this cohort as a sea change moment, suggesting that by the early 1970s, these Sansei progressives on the JACL staff succeeded in affecting a major culture shift within the organization. This effort was not without its detractors, as Doi would then share many examples of letters to the editor of Pacific Citizen in which JACL members opposed some of their more progressive statements.
David Inoue gave the final presentation of the panel, which began with a slight tone of rebuttal as he offered some thoughts on JACL’s wartime strategy as an outgrowth of the lack of a Japanese American political voice. “A lot of this goes back to the idea of power, who has political capital and the ability to influence things. During the war I think Japanese Americans found themselves without that ability to influence – we didn’t have that power.”
Inoue expanded his remarks to share the JACL’s postwar success of building coalitions with NAACP, enabling the organization to become a founding member of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. Among JACL’s resulting contributions to other civil rights victories, this included passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Inoue did not shy away from criticism of the JACL’s past decisions, as he admitted that the 1965 legislation indirectly led to the acceleration of the model minority myth. Inoue linked this example to the larger issue being discussed, “this goes back to what happened during the war with how there are oftentimes ancillary effects of what we do, that some populations might be affected negatively, obviously in the case of the resisters.” Inoue then ended his remarks by talking about contemporary advocacy issues that the JACL is engaged in, and called for Japanese Americans to work toward building greater unity within our own communities.
During the discussion that followed, Barbara Takei challenged JACL to address its own history in perpetuating the loyal-disloyal narrative, citing the 2019 Tule Lake apology resolution as a failure, due to the amendments made at the national convention that year. The 2019 resolution was met with staunch resistance from a handful of influential members who opposed the resolution’s original text. Takei shared, “the initial resolution that was circulated among many Japanese American organizations had language that was acceptable, respectful, and would have begun the healing of that divide. And apparently the conservatives at the convention that year hijacked the process, added language that not only justified the organization’s hostile behavior, but added language that demonized more people, and created more hurt.” Takei then challenged the organization to do better, “on behalf of all the people who were in Tule Lake who were so demonized by the organization for so many decades, why can’t you fix this?”
Inoue responded by explaining the challenges of working through the national council to build consensus on policy decisions. Inoue then shared his opinion that, “I think at the time, that probably is the best that JACL can do.” Another audience member then challenged the JACL to honor the original terms of the resolution, which included a public apology ceremony to survivors and descendants of Tule Lake.
Tsuru for Solidarity Executive Director Mike Ishii offered comments to diffuse the situation, “this is an amazing conference that is bringing scholars, organizers, and activists together to open up the conversation, but it’s not the same as a repair process. A repair process has to be thought about very intentionally – it’s not a drive-by, it won’t be a one-time conversation – it needs input from the community whose agency was stolen from it during the war and had no collective process around its future and what was happening to it.” Following Ishii’s contribution, the conference adjourned for the day.
The next morning began with two break-out sessions that offered a variety of options for attendees to choose from. This included panel discussions on kidnapped Japanese Latin Americans at Crystal City and JA incarceration on indigenous land, individual presentations about mass deportation today and postwar resettlement outside of the West Coast, and workshops on family genealogy and digital storytelling. After a lunch break, the full audience reconvened for a presentation by artist and filmmaker Glenn Mitsui, who exhibited his art installation Wakasa Spirit Stone followed by a panel discussion with other members of the Wakasa Memorial Committee.
Next came the session led by Tsuru for Solidarity co-founders Satsuki Ina and Mike Ishii. Formatted as an intimate conversation between two self-declared best friends who in Ishii’s own words “should not be friends based on our histories.” Ishii’s grandfather was the outspoken JACL leader Jimmy Sakamoto, who was nearly murdered in camp. Ina was born in Tule Lake, the daughter of renunciants Itaru and Shizuko Ina. The session challenged attendees to consider how institutional white supremacy has succeeded in dividing our community from one another, and explored ideas of repair.
Ina offered remarks reflecting on the significance of the conference. “This gathering is an experience of repair. We are talking to each other in ways that it has taken decades for us to. Leaders have emerged, stories have been uncovered, and we know so much more about our history now than we have before.”
The session then explored possible strategies for repair, including efforts to understand the root of our own individual hurt as the start of a self-healing journey. One attendee shared that because they so deeply loved their late grandfather who was a member of the Heart Mountain Fair Play Committee, they felt indebted to be angry on his behalf. Upon further reflection, they were uncertain if he would want them to carry such anger forward in current times.
Ishii linked these comments to the resister issue, “none of us have control over the circumstances that we were born into. We have to grieve that, what we can’t change. Around the fractures of this community we keep looking in the rearview mirror and wanting something different. It’s not going to change, it’s done. What we can do now is grieve to heal this deep sense of despair and loss for lost opportunities or disappointments or real suffering that took place.”
This conference has laid the groundwork for further conversations to repair the deep wounds inflicted by JACL’s wartime strategy, and its long-reaching impact on No-Nos, renunciants, resisters, and their descendants. More than 80 years later, JACL still requires some soul-searching over the harm resulting from its wartime actions. At minimum the JACL must address its failure to, “recognize Tule Lake Resisters at an appropriate public ceremony during the 2020-2021 biennium,” as stated in the 2019 resolution. Perhaps instead of the lofty goal of becoming “better Americans in a greater America,” as is written in the JACL Creed, we should settle for becoming better JACLers in a greater JACL as we work to ensure this organization lives up to the ideals it espouses.
Recordings of the conference are available free online on JAMPilgrimage’s website and YouTube channel. www.jampilgrimages.org/changing-perspectives-session-recordings