Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga (center), shown here with Manzanar Committee Co-Chairs Kerry Cababa (left) and Bruce Embrey (right), received the Sue Kunitomi Embrey Legacy Award on July 17, 2011 in Gardena, California.
Photo: Gann Matsuda

The award is named after the late chair of the Manzanar Committee who was one of the founders of the annual Manzanar Pilgrimage and was the driving force behind the creation of the Manzanar National Historic Site.

But Herzig-Yoshinaga, now 87 years old, was unable to attend the event, which is held at the Manzanar National Historic Site, approximately 230 miles northeast of Los Angeles.

Despite a mishap that occured not long after the Pilgrimage that resulted in a broken collarbone, Herzig-Yoshinaga looked as strong as ever when the Los Angeles-based Manzanar Committee, sponsors of the annual Pilgrimage since 1969, along with the Manzanar At Dusk program, honored her during an informal gathering on July 17 at the Merit Park Recreation Room in Gardena, California.

Herzig-Yoshinaga’s family and friends joined the Manzanar Committee in lauding her efforts on behalf of her community, and in presenting her with the award.

“[Manzanar Committee member and legal counsel] Rose Ochi, and my uncle, Jack [Kunitomi], came up with the idea of the Sue Kunitomi Embrey Legacy Award,” said Manzanar Committee Co-Chair Bruce Embrey. “Rose said that my mother would be remembered for her tenacity, her passion, and her purpose. This is what we see this award as. We give it to people who are extremely passionate, who are tenacious, and who have purpose. Aiko can clearly fit that bill, and beyond.”

“This award honors those in our community who have given us a sense of purpose, and helped us with our passion, and have kept us going,” added Embrey. “We hope to be as tenacious as they have been, and that we will continue to fight for, and continue to push the broader society to understand what actually happened to the Nikkei community on the West Coast. That’s why we give this award.”

To view a larger image of the Sue Kunitomi Embrey Legacy Award, click on the image above.
Photo: Gann Matsuda

“I want to thank everybody, the Manzanar Committee in particular, for all the work that went into putting this very informal, but very friendly gathering [together], and I appreciate everybody, even though [the expected traffic nightmare caused by the closing of the San Diego Freeway in the West Los Angeles area] didn’t happen,” said Herzig-Yoshinaga. “I appreciate you making the effort to come, my family members and all my close friends. It’s so nice to have you here, to participate and to share in this honor.”

“I just feel bigger than life,” added Herzig-Yoshinaga. “My head should be busting with all the nice things that have been said about me. But I want everybody to know that what I did, I did because of what other people—[they] had already laid out the path for me—Michi Weglyn, William Hohri, Dr. [Arthur] Hansen, Dr. [Donald] Hata. All of these people had already done a lot of work, and I just built upon it. So I have to acknowledge and I need to acknowledge and thank them for all the work they did, like Nadine Hata, who fought for the words ‘concentration camp’ for Manzanar.”

Herzig-Yoshinaga is also at the heart of the current push for the use of accurate, non-euphemistic terminology to describe the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans. Her paper, Words Can Lie Or Clarify: Terminology Of The World War II Incarceration Of Japanese Americans, details the euphemisms that have long been used to describe the experience.

“Let’s say it like it was,” she told the crowd of approximately fifty. “When you’re not allowed to leave the camp, or enter the camp [without permission], and you have to have permission to leave your own home, what else is it but a prison, or concentration camp?”

“I consider it sort like an American-style apartheid,” she added. “We were not permitted to live in certain areas, and we were confined to a specific area, just like in South Africa until they were able to get rid of it.”

Herzig-Yoshinaga credited the Manzanar Committee as the first of the camp organizations to call for the use of the appropriate language, as far back as 1972.

“I want to congratulate the Manzanar Committee for being the first camp committee to push for preservation of the ten different camps as historic sites, and to use the appropriate words, [such as] ‘concentration camp,’ though many people object to that, and we’ve been hearing a lot more about it recently,” Herzig-Yoshinaga noted.

Herzig-Yoshinaga got her start as an activist in New York, having moved there after camp.

“After I moved to New York—it wasn’t easy bringing up three kids in New York City, believe me,” she recalled. “But I hooked up with a group called Asian Americans for Action (AAA). [They were] primarily Nisei (second generation Americans of Japanese ancestry, the children of the first generation, the Issei, immigrants from Japan), who were my age, which was unusual to have such a progressive group of people my age, who were very much social activists.”

“They used to meet and discuss political issues, as well as issues facing ethnic minorities, particularly Third World people,” she added. “They turned my head around. They got me to think, ‘yeah, I never thought about all the reasons why the government did this to us.’”

“I just hadn’t given it enough thought. I was just like all the other Niseis who thought, ‘forget it, that’s behind us.’”

Little did her fellow AAA members know, but they had awakened a giant.

“They awoke in me a curiosity,” said Herzig-Yoshinaga. “I learned a great deal from them,” said Herzig-Yoshinaga. “Then, I met Michi Weglyn, who wrote Years Of Infamy: The Untold Story Of America’s Concentration Camps. “She was the first Nisei to write about her own experiences as a victim.”

“Historically, she did a wonderful job to look up details about how it happened, and a lot of who was responsible for making those decisions,” added Herzig-Yoshinaga. “That was instrumental in inspiring me to look into it.”

Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga (foreground, third from right), shown here with her family.
Photo: Gann Matsuda

“The more I learned in the National Archives, the angrier I got,” she recalled. “As I saw these primary documents, and what they thought of us as ‘little brown men,’ or people whose brains are formed in such a way as to predispose us to do evil things—that was [President Franklin D.] Roosevelt’s idea of what Japanese people were like. This is one little tidbit I learned in my research, that he believed in this so much, that he actually hired a famous anthropologist to confirm what he said.”

“Of course, the anthropologist played politics. ‘Oh, you’re right Mr. Roosevelt.’ It’s all written up in professional journals.”

Even before she, and late husband Jack Herzig, uncovered the “smoking gun” evidence that the United States Government had suppressed, altered and destroyed evidence that detailed the racist, unconstitutional arguments used to justify the incarceration, Herzig-Yoshinaga’s role as a researcher for the Commission had already helped lay crucial groundwork for the redress struggle to move forward.

“I’m glad that the Commission issued its report that helped Manzanar to get the preservation site started, and to set forth the approval for using the term, “concentration camp” to designate those camps that we lived in as such,” she noted. “I had a lot of friends in the National Archives who helped me dig out information that I was able to present to the Commission, which laid the basis for the report it presented to Congress. That helped the Congress to pass the redress [legislation].”

Herzig-Yoshinaga, who was incarcerated first at Manzanar, in Block 12, Building 13, apartment 2, and was transferred to the camps at Jerome and, later, Rohwer, both in Arkansas, also credited others for their work during the redress struggle.

“I’m so happy that everybody has been really supportive,” she said. “During the redress movement, the Manzanar Committee did a lot of work, and there were a lot of different groups, like NCRR [known then as], the National Coalition for Redress and Reparations [now known as Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress], and NCJAR [National Coalition for Japanese American Redress].”

“Everybody did their bit to help push for redress, and I think the Commissions’s findings that the government did indeed perpetuate and initiate the wrongful act against an innocent minority group was the reason we got redress, and an apology by the President,” she added.

Herzig-Yoshinaga also expressed hope for the future.

“Let’s hope that the educational work being done by, thank goodness, all these young people who are picking up the cudgel and leading the fight now, the American public is going to learn more and more about this, and, perhaps, face the truth that even though redress happened, a lot of people don’t know that our government did such a grievous wrong against a minority group,” she stressed.

As mentioned earlier, Herzig-Yoshinaga’s family, both her immediate relatives and most of her extended family, were in attendance, sharing in the honor and the celebration.

“I’m very proud of the role my son-in-law, [California Assemblyman and Manzanar Pilgrimage co-founder] Warren Furutani, played to get some of this work started way back, over [forty] years ago, and I’m glad to be part of this wonderful family that I have here,” she said.

Unattributed views expressed in this story are those of the author, and are not necessarily those of the Manzanar Committee.

Related Stories:

• Manzanar Committee Honors Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga At 42nd Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage
• Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga To Receive 2011 Sue Kunitomi Embrey Legacy Award at 42nd Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage

This story was reprinted in the July 27, 2011 edition of the Rafu Shimpo (print edition), and on their web site (see Manzanar Commitee Lauds Herzig-Yoshinaga with Embrey Legacy Award) on July 28, 2011.

Raw audio of the event (47:35; due to less than ideal recording conditions, audio quality varies. You may need to increase the volume during portions of this recording; requires Adobe Flash Player):

You can also watch a video clip of portions of the presentation below:

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The following is the text of the keynote address delivered at the 42nd Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage on April 30, 2011, by Mako Nakagawa.

Mako Nakagawa delivered the keynote address at the
42nd Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage on April 30, 2011,
at the Manzanar National Historic Site.
Photo: Gann Matsuda

I am very pleased to be able to join you on this wonderful occasion. We stand here today on sacred ground. If we listen, we can hear the cries of pain and agony, feel the confusion and worries, soak in the laughter and hope, and be touched by the strife to maintain collective dignity and courage. This land holds many, many stories which we must not let fade without being recorded.

The Manzanar Committee chose four Champions of Civil Rights as the theme for this year’s Pilgrimage. These people were not born super heroes. They were simply ordinary people who managed to accomplish extraordinary feats in the protection of our civil rights who were true to themselves and true to their own unique convictions.

They had courage under pressure. Everyone here today benefited from their efforts. Some may not recognize the names of Fred Korematsu, William Hohri, Frank Emi and Aiko Herzig Yoshinaga, but we are all in for a treat when we read about them in our program. Let the stories of these great role models inspire you. These three men are now deceased but their names will live on.

Aiko Herzig Yoshinaga is the only female, and the only survivor in this group. She is very much alive—and full of life. She has been that way her entire life. She claims her body is slowing down, but she certainly is not slowing down in spirit, in mind, in mouth, and in kimochi.

After going through tons of official documents, her big discovery is well-known, and will be shared coming up next on this program. But it is her more recent writing that brought me into direct contact with her. She authored, Words can Lie or Clarify. I sure wish I came up with that title.

I was involved in working with the Seattle JACL Chapter on the Power of Words (POW) resolution. Aiko and I immediately hit it off. We quickly recognized in each other the sense of urgency to replace euphemisms the US Government deliberately created in the 1940’s.

Euphemistic terms such as “evacuation” and “relocation” suggest we were victims of a natural disaster and were rescued. As “beneficiaries” of this “mercy” mission, we owe a debt to our rescuers. This is government fantasy of the 1942 incarceration. We recommend these euphemistic terms be replaced with more realistic and accurate words such as “forced removal,” “ousted,” “expulsion,” etc.

Euphemisms lead to strange distortions of facts, false notions of what truly occurred, and inaccurate assumptions regarding our incarceration during World War II. Some people on the outside actually expressed envy because they thought we were being pampered. Some actually believed, and resented, that we had steak and lobsters for dinner while the rest of America was limited to food rations.

In our POW resolution we recognized terms such as:

• We identified Non-Aliens, Assembly Centers, Relocation Centers, and Pioneer Communities as euphemisms.
• We urgently need to replace terms such as evacuation, relocation, internment, and Japanese Internment Camp.
• We promoted replacement terms of “forced removal, incarceration and American concentration camps.”

So, with Aiko’s support, and the support of many others, plus a lot of hard work, the Power of Words committee was able to bring the resolution through JACL (Japanese American Citizens League). We finally made it to the top level of the National JACL Council at the Chicago Convention last summer. I am proud to announce on July 3, 2010, our resolution won the overwhelming support of the JACL Council with a vote of eighty chapters voting “yes” and only two chapters voting “no.” Even the most optimistic of us were thrilled at the approval margin. We considered it a mandate. WOW!

Among of the words listed as “preferable terms” to replace the euphemisms, is the term “American concentration camps.” As anticipated, there are some people who take issue with this term. We encourage debate and discussion of all the words identified as “targeted terms” and “preferable terms.”

The debate/discussions can serve as great learning opportunities. Education is our core goal. Open dialog, discussion, even dissension are a healthy part of the American way. Remember, the people we honor today did not shy away from speaking their piece. They did not shy away from controversy. They acted on their beliefs and insisted their voices be heard.

And now I challenge you—everyone here, but more specifically, to you young folks here today. We must do more than applaud our heroes of the past. We must do more than have a compassionate tear for those who endured the gross racial profiling and the miseries caused by the wrongful imprisonment into these American concentration camps.

What you KNOW and what you FEEL are not enough. It is what you DO that will speak to who you are. We need to not only admire those who we honor; we need to support their cause of civil rights. We need ACTION!

What can you do?

• Write to JACL and commend the council for the bold stand passing the Power of Words resolution by such a landslide.
• Discuss with family and friends the issue of euphemisms and their role in promoting misinformation, and non sense propaganda.
• Write articles, papers, letters presenting where you stand on the issue.
• Don’t shy away from the term “American concentration camp.”
• Read more and give the literature on the terminology issue a fair hearing.
• Encourage all the organizations for which you have contact to switch from terms considered euphemisms and misnomers and adopt terms that much more accurately describe the truth of this history.
• Encourage JACL to stay true to their bold posture on the terminology issue.
• Create your own new ideas to better educate ourselves and those who we still might influence.
• Join Aiko Herzig Yoshinaga, Sue Embrey, Frank Emi, Raymond Okamura, Edison Uno, Roger Daniels, Karen Ishizuka, etc., etc., etc.

We are all ordinary people who rarely strive to become extraordinary. We strive to get extraordinary progress on the issues we believe in—to make this world a better place.

Now is the time for us to take pride in who we are. Let us describe OUR experience with terms of OUR choosing, from OUR perspective, guided by OUR memories, OUR scholarship and OUR sense of integrity. We have no need to apologize, or shy away from terms expressing OUR victimization for being different from the histories of other groups.

A rose is a rose. A concentration camp is a…what [a concentration camp]? Again—A rose is a rose. A concentration camp is a…[concentration camp]!

In light of the stories coming out of the Muslim, Arab, and Sikh communities, the need to share OUR stories is ever more vital and urgent. Let us tell our stories utilizing truthful terms. Let the legacy of our experience be that it never happens again to any other group of people. Ni do to nai yoo ni. Never again. The Constitution failed us in our time of need. NEVER AGAIN!

I will close my speech now and hope you will promise to do two things.

1. Read more of what the historians/scholars/authors say about the terminology issue.

2. Take action supporting YOUR convictions.

Maybe one day I will see your name along side of the heroes we honor today. More important, we can gaze together at how we, each of us, contributed to the preservation of our civil liberties. LET US ALL BE CHAMPIONS of civil rights!

Gambare! Gambare! Gambare!

Related Stories:

• Words Can Lie Or Clarify Criticizes Euphemistic Language Used To Describe WWII Camps Used To Imprison Japanese Americans
• Manzanar Committee Member Joyce Okazaki: “Yes, It Was A Concentration Camp”
• More From Okazaki On Use of “Concentration Camp;” Refutes Rafu Shimpo Columnist George Yoshinaga
• Grateful Crane’s Soji Kashiwagi Weighs In On Use Of “Concentration Camp”
• Sue Kunitomi Embrey: Concentration Camps, Not Relocation Centers
• Euphemistic Terms Used To Describe WWII Incarceration Of Japanese Americans Targeted At JANM Event
• Cast in Bronze: Terminology Symposium in San Francisco, October 22, 2011
• 42nd Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage/2011 Manzanar At Dusk: Keeping The Manzanar Story Alive

Unless otherwise specified, all stories, images, video and audio content on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License. You may copy, distribute and/or transmit any story, image, video or audio content published on this site under the terms of this license, but only if proper attribution is indicated. The full name of the author and a link back to the original article on this blog are required.

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The following are remarks by Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga, the recipient of the Manzanar Committee’s 2011 Sue Kunitomi Embrey Legacy Award, which was presented at the 42nd Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage on April 30, 2011. Herzig-Yoshinaga could not attend, so she provided the following remarks for publication here.

For more information on Herzig-Yoshinaga and this award, click on: Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga To Receive 2011 Sue Kunitomi Embrey Legacy Award at 42nd Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage.

Photo: Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga

Encouraged by pioneer fighters such as Sue Embrey, Jack’s deep interest in this odious chapter in American History stemmed largely from the knowledge that I, as an American-born citizen among thousands of others of Japanese descent, had been mistreated by the government and deprived of the very principles for which he had served in the Armed Forces to uphold. His resolve to join me in historical research efforts and also participate in social justice movements was grounded in his belief of the obvious racist nature of the World War II exclusion and imprisonment of Japanese Americans.

Another motive that drove Jack into reviewing contemporary official records of this period in history was his search for justification of the denial of equal treatment under the law—just one among the many promises imbedded in our Constitution which were abrogated as it related to Japanese Americans. He feared that they were just words on paper because, despite the fact that he himself was of German-Irish descent, he was not subjected to humiliating loyalty questionnaires nor drafted into service from concentration camps and assigned to a segregated fighting unit, experiences that Japanese American soldiers endured.

As all of you are aware, one result of a Federal commission’s investigation of this sorry chapter in the nation’s history was the acknowledgement by Congress through the enactment of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 that the government did indeed commit a grave mistake against Japanese Americans. The Act provided for the payment of token compensation to survivors of the concentration camps to redress their grievances, accompanied by a presidential apology. This was accomplished due to the vigorous redress movement of the Japanese American community for official recognition of the wrongs committed by the wartime government. Sue played an important role in this decades-long demand for justice. The establishment of the Sue Kunitomi Embrey Legacy Award is a fine tribute to her and, speaking for Jack and myself, we are honored and proud to be the recipients of this award.

Related Stories:

• Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga To Receive 2011 Sue Kunitomi Embrey Legacy Award at 42nd Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage
• Manzanar Commitee Lauds Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga With Sue Kunitomi Embrey Legacy Award On July 17, 2011

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Manzanar Committee Comment Policies

The following is a letter from Karen Korematsu, Co-Founder of the Fred T. Korematsu Institute For Civil Rights and Education. It was intended to be read during the 42nd Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage, held on April 30, 2011, where her father was honored. However, the letter was not received in time. As such, we are publishing it here.

April 30, 2011

Manzanar Pilgrimage

Dear Teachers, Students and Community Members,

On Sunday, January 30, 2011, we celebrated California’s first Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution. This is the first statewide day to be named after an Asian American in United States History.

Last year, Assemblymember Warren Furutani of the 55th District, and also founder of the Manzanar Pilgrimage, introduced legislative bill AB 1775 that established this special day. He carried it through the Assembly and Senate with unanimous votes and Governor Schwarzenegger signed the bill.

For those of you who do not know, my father, Fred T. Korematsu, had the famous U.S. Supreme Court case, Korematsu v. United States that challenged the 1942 military orders to incarcerate anyone of Japanese ancestry during World War II. My father was born in Oakland, California, and was an American in every sense of the word. He learned about the U.S. Constitution in high school, knew his rights and thought the forced removal orders were unconstitutional, as the Japanese Americans never were charged with a crime, had no public hearings and deprived of due process. For various reasons my father refused to report. Ultimately, he was arrested and convicted of defying the government’s orders.

In 1982, Professor Peter Irons, a legal historian and attorney, and Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga along with her husband, uncovered the hidden evidence that proved there was no military necessity for anyone of Japanese descent to be put in the 10+ concentration camps throughout the U.S. On that basis my father’s case was reopened and his conviction was overturned in the U.S. District Court of Northern California in 1983. It was a pivotal moment in civil rights history.

My father felt that in order for something like the incarceration not to happen again to another ethnic group because “they looked like the enemy,” education would be key. He crisscrossed the United States speaking to universities, law schools and organizations about his fight for justice for all.

In 1998, my father received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, this nation’s highest civilian honor from President Clinton. After 9/11, my father continued to speak out about the dangers of racial profiling and suspicious acts in the name of “National Security.”

My father passed away in 2005, but his legacy carries on in his name of three California public schools: Korematsu Discovery Academy, East Oakland; Korematsu Elementary, Davis; Korematsu Campus at San Leandro High School plus the Korematsu Center for Law and Equality at Seattle Law School and the Korematsu Institute in San Francisco.

I’m sorry that I can’t be with you, and I’m envious of your exciting journey to Manzanar, as I have not made this trip but plan to do so soon. My hope for all of you, after this pilgrimage, is that you will take what you have learned and teach and tell the stories about this dark period of our history. My father’s birthday is January 30, and Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution will be celebrated on that date in perpetuity. However the lessons can be taught any time of the year and not only are they about my father’s fight for justice but also about the 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans that were persecuted, as their stories need to be told. The past needs to be related to the relevancy of the issues we face today in this country and we need to be persistent in teaching the lessons of history so that the children of today and tomorrow can make the right decisions that will safeguard our country.

Remember, Fred Korematsu was one man that made a difference, Stood Up For What is Right and said “When You See Something Wrong, Don’t Be Afraid to Speak Up!”

Sincerely,
Karen Korematsu, Co-Founder
Fred T. Korematsu Institute For Civil Rights and Education
At The Asian Law Caucus

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CULTURAL: UCLA Nikkei Student Union Odori group to lead traditional Ondo dancing

UCLA Kyodo Taiko at the 41st Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage
on April 24, 2010.
Photo: Gann Matsuda

Each year, hundreds of students, teachers, community members, clergy and former internees attend the Pilgrimage and the Manzanar At Dusk program, which follows the afternoon program, starting at 5:00 PM at Lone Pine High School.

UCLA Kyodo Taiko, the first collegiate taiko group in North America, was founded in 1990 and made its debut at the Opening Ceremony of the University of California, Los Angeles’ commemoration of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Japanese American Internment, which was held in 1992.

Led by 2010-11 directors Masumi Asahi and Samantha Ho, UCLA Kyodo Taiko is comprised entirely of UCLA students. They have performed annually at local K-12 schools, Nisei Week, Tofu Festival and the Lotus Festival in Los Angeles, the Intercollegiate Taiko Invitational, during halftime at UCLA basketball games, as well as the First Annual USA Sumo Open, in addition to many other campus, community and private events.

UCLA Kyodo Taiko has also become a fertile training ground for students who wish to continue with taiko after their college careers end, as many Kyodo alumni have become members of professional taiko groups.

In addition to UCLA Kyodo Taiko, the UCLA Nikkei Student Union’s Odori dance group, led by Jaymie Takeshita and Jaime Yabuno, will lead the traditional Ondo dancing, which follows the interfaith ceremony.

The featured speaker at this year’s Pilgrimage will be Mako Nakagawa, the primary author of the Power of Words resolution, passed in July 2010 by the National Council of the Japanese American Citizens League.

Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga, one of the seminal figures in the Japanese American community’s fight for redress and reparations, will be honored at the Pilgrimage with the 2011 Sue Kunitomi Embrey Legacy Award.

The afternoon program will conclude with the traditional interfaith service featuring ministers from Buddhist, Christian, Konko and Muslim faiths, as well as Ondo dancing.

The popular Manzanar At Dusk (MAD) program, co-sponsored by the UCLA Nikkei Student Union, the UCSD Nikkei Student Union, the Cal Poly Pomona Nikkei Student Union, Lone Pine Unified School District, Lone Pine High School, and the Friends of Manzanar, begins at 5:00 PM at Lone Pine High School, 538 South Main Street (US Highway 395), in Lone Pine, nine miles south of the Manzanar National Historic Site, across the street from McDonald’s (see map below).

UCLA Kyodo Taiko performs Encore at the 41st Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage
on April 24, 2010.
Photo: Gann Matsuda

Pilgrimage participants are advised to bring their own lunch, drinks and snacks as there are no facilities to purchase food at the Manzanar National Historic Site (restaurants and fast food outlets are located in Lone Pine and Independence). Water will be provided at the Pilgrimage.

Both the daytime program and the Manzanar At Dusk event are free and open to the public.

For more information, check the Manzanar Committee’s official blog at http://blog.manzanarcommittee.org, call (323) 662-5102, or send e-mail to 42ndpilgrimage@manzanarcommittee.org. You can also follow the Manzanar Committee on Facebook and Twitter.

The Manzanar Committee is dedicated to educating and raising public awareness about the incarceration and violation of civil rights of persons of Japanese ancestry during World War II and to the continuing struggle of all peoples when Constitutional rights are in danger. A non-profit organization that has sponsored the annual Manzanar Pilgrimage since 1969, along with other educational programs, the Manzanar Committee has also played a key role in the establishment and continued development of the Manzanar National Historic Site.

-30-

Manzanar National Historic Site

Lone Pine High School

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Manzanar Committee Comment Policies

Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga
Photo: Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga

The award, named after the late chair of the Manzanar Committee who was one of the founders of the annual Manzanar Pilgrimage and was the driving force behind the creation of the Manzanar National Historic Site, will be presented at the 42nd Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage, scheduled for 12:00 PM PDT on Saturday, April 30, 2011, at the Manzanar National Historic Site, located on US Highway 395 in California’s Owens Valley, between the towns of Lone Pine and Independence, approximately 230 miles north of Los Angeles (see map below).

Herzig-Yoshinaga, 87, a native of Sacramento, California, moved to Los Angeles during the Great Depression, only to be uprooted at the age of 17, along with the rest of the Japanese American community on the West Coast, and was unjustly imprisoned in an American concentration camp during World War II.

Incarcerated first at Manzanar, Herzig-Yoshinaga was transferred to the camps at Jerome and, later Rohwer, Arkansas.

Herzig went on to become a community activist in New York, but is best known for her dedicated, tireless work in the National Archives, along with her late husband, Jack Herzig, uncovering “smoking gun” evidence that the government had suppressed, altered and destroyed that detailed the racist, unconstitutional arguments used to justify the internment.

This evidence was not only crucial to the 1984 coram nobis cases of Fred Korematsu, Gordon Hirabayashi and Minoru Yasui, as well as the $27 million class-action law suit filed by the National Coalition for Japanese American Redress, it was also provided the legal foundation the Japanese American community needed to push for redress at a grass-roots level.

Currently, Herzig-Yoshinaga is at the heart of the push for the use of accurate, non-euphemistic terminology to describe the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans. Her paper, Words Can Lie Or Clarify: Terminology Of The World War II Incarceration Of Japanese Americans, details the euphemisms that have long been used to describe the experience.

“I learned that ‘relocation center,’ ‘non-aliens,’ and ‘evacuation’ were only a few of many euphemisms that were deliberately used to obscure and conceal what was done to American citizens under the fraudulent rationale of ‘military necessity,’” she wrote. “I am certainly not alone, nor among the first, to be concerned about the power of words to lie or clarify, and the need to identify and replace inaccurate and misleading euphemisms that were used by government officials at all levels and perpetuated by many Nikkei as well.”

“Aiko is amazing,” said Manzanar Committee Co-Chair Bruce Embrey. “The fact that she unearthed the truth in the government archives about the real character and intent of our incarceration, along with the fact that she still continues to educate and agitate for a thorough understanding of the camp experience, it’s incredible.”

“When you talk about perseverance, when you talk about patience and determination, her commitment to democracy, to social justice, and to right the wrongs of the past, Aiko epitomizes all of that,” added Embrey. “She is a giant in our community.”

For more information about the Pilgrimage, including bus transportation, and the popular Manzanar At Dusk program scheduled for 5:00 PM that same evening at Lone Pine High School, check the Manzanar Committee’s official blog at http://blog.manzanarcommittee.org, call (323) 662-5102, or send e-mail to 42ndpilgrimage@manzanarcommittee.org. You can also follow the Manzanar Committee on Facebook and Twitter.

The Manzanar Committee is dedicated to educating and raising public awareness about the incarceration and violation of civil rights of persons of Japanese ancestry during World War II and to the continuing struggle of all peoples when Constitutional rights are in danger. A non-profit organization that has sponsored the annual Manzanar Pilgrimage since 1969, along with other educational programs, the Manzanar Committee has also played a key role in the establishment and continued development of the Manzanar National Historic Site.

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Related Stories:

• Manzanar Committee Honors Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga At 42nd Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage
• Manzanar Commitee Lauds Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga With Sue Kunitomi Embrey Legacy Award On July 17, 2011

Manzanar National Historic Site

Unless otherwise specified, all stories, images, video and audio content on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License. You may copy, distribute and/or transmit any story, image, video or audio content published on this site under the terms of this license, but only if proper attribution is indicated. The full name of the author and a link back to the original article on this blog are required.

Manzanar Committee Comment Policies

LOS ANGELES — Last April, at the Manzanar At Dusk program that follows the annual Manzanar Pilgrimage, when participants broke up into small groups to share their stories and insights about Manzanar, the Japanese American Internment experience, and how it remains relevant today, one thing struck me…

For the first time in the history of the program, we did not have enough former Japanese American concentration camp prisoners to go around.

Glen Kitayama (far left) joins NCRR members, including Frank Emi (second from right)
during a Los Angeles press conference hailing the signing of the
Civil Liberties Act of 1988 on August 10, 1988.
Photo: Gann Matsuda

This year, that was a tremendous challenge because there were considerably fewer of them in attendance. Nevertheless, as the Manzanar Committee usually does, we scrambled to tweak the program, combining some of the groups, making them larger than is ideal. But we did the best we could to get at least one former prisoner in each group so that they would be able to share their stories with an audience that would be glued to every word they spoke, every gesture they made.

As the co-coordinator of the event, my only concerns were that the program was running smoothly and that our guests were getting as much out of the program as possible.

That left no time for me to dwell on the sobering fact that so few of the Nisei (second generation Japanese Americans, American citizens by birth; children of the first generation Issei, born in Japan), especially those who were imprisoned in American concentration camps such as Manzanar, Tule Lake, Poston, Topaz and Heart Mountain, among other camps and confinement sites, are still with us.

Since that time, I must admit that I have not given that fact much thought. But, a couple of days ago, that fact was thrust into the forefront of my thoughts when I learned of the December 1 death of Frank Seishi Emi at the age of 94.

But before I share my own reflections, a good friend of mine, Glen Kitayama, who met Emi around the same time that I did—back when we were in our twenties—and worked more closely with him, shared his own thoughts.

“I was aware that my family and other Japanese Americans living on the West Coast were imprisoned in concentration camps during World War II,” said Glen. “Like many other Sansei (third generation Japanese Americans) my age, I had heard about the camps at the dinner table, but the conversations always focused on the social connections that my family had with other Issei and Nisei. The camps were always an easy point of reference in which others could find common ground.”

“When I was a young kid, I had the distinct impression that the camps were a fun place to be since everyone seemed to know each other so well,” added Glen.

Thinking that the camps were a fun place to be is a common misconception among young Japanese Americans because so few of the former prisoners freely speak of their experiences, and even when they do, they often talk only about the fun times or whatever positive experiences they had—speaking of the suffering, injustice and hardship often brings back too much pain.

“As I grew older and began to understand the realities of the camps, I grew angry and decided that I wanted to learn more about the issue and do something about it,” Glen noted. “I also wondered where our heroes were in the Japanese American community.”

“Where were our Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King’s, Malcolm X’s, Cesar Chavez’s? As far as I knew, we didn’t have any heroes who stood up for justice while the government herded us away and locked us up in the desert behind barbed wire,” Glen added.

Glen’s anger and desire for action led him to join the National Coalition for Redress/Reparations (NCRR; now known as Nikkei For Civil Rights and Redress), where he had the good fortune to meet and work with Emi.

“My view began to change when I joined the NCRR in the Eighties,” said Glen. “I met Frank Emi and learned about his experience at the Heart Mountain Concentration Camp as one of the leaders of the Fair Play Committee. While his story is fairly well known now in the Japanese American community, it was pretty unknown to many Sansei and Yonsei (fourth generation Japanese Americans) in the Eighties.”

“Frank Emi and the other Heart Mountain draft resisters were pariahs in the community because they refused to be drafted into the army until their constitutional rights were restored as American citizens,” added Glen. “How amazing was that? Frank and the Fair Play Committee took a principled stand against the draft even though the established leadership in the community opposed them and labeled them as ‘troublemakers.’”

As Glen learned Emi’s story, he quickly began to view him as a hero.

“Frank and the other leaders in the Fair Play Committee refused to be drafted even though they knew it meant they would be separated from their families and sent to a federal prison,” Glen said. “They did this knowing that they would be labeled by many as traitors to their country and their own community. Heck, looking back on it, even Malcolm X had a dedicated group of supporters who believed in the same cause. Outside of family and friends, where was the support for Frank Emi and the Fair Play Committee?”

“To me, that’s what makes Frank Emi a true American hero.” Glen stressed. “He didn’t lose his moral compass in a time of great crisis. He had the courage to stand up for his beliefs when everyone else was willing to go along with the crowd and not cause any trouble.”

“When I talk with young college students about Frank Emi and the Fair Play Committee, I often hear them say that they would have done the exact same thing that Frank did during the war. And when I hear that, I often laugh to myself because I know that it’s not true. Frank Emi is the person that all of us want to be when the chips are down. Unfortunately, most of us fall short when confronted with a crisis of the magnitude that Frank Emi faced.”

Although our paths would cross at UCLA when Glen became a graduate student in Asian American Studies and History and became a fellow member of the UCLA Nikkei Student Union (NSU), my journey to activism took a different road. But, as in Glen’s case, Emi quickly became one of my heroes.

Frank Emi (left), Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga (center) and Dale Minami (right) spoke at a UCLA forum on the Japanese American Internment experience during the UCLA Nikkei Student Union's Week of Remembrance in February, 1986.
Photo: Gann Matsuda

That forum, held during our “Week of Remembrance” events dedicated to the camp experience and the fight for redress and reparations, featured Dale Minami and Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga, along with Emi.

Talk about three of the heaviest of heavy hitters in the Japanese American community.

Minami was one of Fred Korematsu’s attorneys for his 1984 coram nobis case, and Herzig-Yoshinaga’s research in the National Archives uncovered evidence that was withheld from the United States Supreme Court in the 1944 cases of Korematsu, Gordon Hirabayashi and Minoru Yasui, who challenged the constitutionality of their imprisonment. Her research also provided much of the legal basis for the class-action lawsuit against the United States Government filed by the National Coalition for Japanese American Redress that sought $27 billion in damages on behalf of the more than 110,000 Japanese Americans who were imprisoned.

As for Emi, all I knew at the time was that he was a draft resister. In fact, I knew relatively little about the internment experience back then. It was a paragraph or two in my high school history book that was glossed over in a couple of minutes, if that. I had to do a lot of research prior to the Week of Remembrance to bone up for the events I was coordinating, and read a great deal about the camps, along with the exploits and heroism of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team/100th Battalion, the most decorated unit of its size in United States military history.

Like Glen, I became angry. How could our own government treat its own citizens like dirt? The racism! The suffering under horrible conditions in the camps…and those were just a few of the thoughts that raced through my mind.

But, as Glen noted, there was very little about the draft resisters. It was not until I listened to Emi speak at UCLA that I began to understand the significance of his actions, the tremendous courage it took to take that stand, especially under the circumstances, not to mention his strength of conviction.

When the event was over and after talking more with Emi, Herzig-Yoshinaga and Minami, I did not know it at the time, but I had three new heroes in my life.

Of course, if I were to write about the impact each has had on my life, this story would reach the length of a novel, especially since I have worked with and built relationships with Frank, Aiko and Dale since that 1986 event. But as the years passed and as I got to know Frank through helping out with events and programs sponsored by NCRR, I knew that he was, as Glen noted, a true American hero.

Indeed, whenever I had the great fortune of being able to talk with him (which was not often, unfortunately), Frank would tell me a story or anecdote about his life, whether it was related to him being a draft resister, teaching judo or just about life in general. Although it is fairly well known among those who knew him, I will always remember him telling me about when he, along with other members of the Fair Play Committee from Heart Mountain, were sent to the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas.

Their fellow prisoners harassed them and threatened them physically, even pushed them around, and that may be understating what happened. But once the draft resisters put on a judo demonstration, all that stopped—they were given their space after that.

Frank became even more of a hero in my eyes for his work with NCRR in support of other communities facing racism and injustice, most recently, Muslim Americans facing racial profiling, or worse. Frank always stood up and spoke out in solidarity, drawing parallels to his own experiences.

When I look back at my years of being a community activist, I realize that Frank’s courage, strength of conviction, his consistent support of people fighting discrimination and injustice, on top of his experiences as a draft resister, are among the primary reasons that I became an activist, not only working on issues affecting the Japanese American community, but also the wider Asian Pacific American community and those of others facing injustice and inequality.

“Rest in Peace, Frank,” said Glen. “Your contributions to our community will never be forgotten.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Gann Matsuda, a member of the Manzanar Committee, is the editor of the Manzanar Committee’s official blog.

Unattributed views expressed in this story are those of the author and are not necessarily those of the Manzanar Committee.

Related stories:

• Manzanar Committee Statement On The Passing Of Frank Seishi Emi
• Frank Emi, Leader of Heart Mountain Draft Resisters, Dies at 94 – Rafu Shimpo
• Frank Emi of Heart Mountain Draft Resisters Passes On – Amerasia Journal Blog
• Frank Seishi Emi, An NCRR Hero – NCRR Web Site

This story was reprinted by Discover Nikkei on December 8, 2010. It was also reprinted in the Rafu Shimpo in the December 11, 2010 edition (print edition only).

NCRR’s eulogy for Emi, delivered by co-chair Kay Ochi:

Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga, was seventeen years old when she was imprisoned at Manzanar and later, at Jerome and Rohwer, Arkansas.

After camp, she became a community and political activist, but is best-known for poring over tons of documents in the National Archives, discovering evidence that the United States Government perjured itself before the United States Supreme Court in the 1944 cases Korematsu v. United States, Hirabayashi v. United States, and Yasui v. United States which challenged the constitutionality of the imprisonment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Aiko Herzig Yoshinaga
Photo: Discover Nikkei

Recently, she wrote a paper on the use of euphemistic language to describe these camps. Indeed, the US Government officially called them “relocation centers” during World War II. To this day, the debate rages on regarding what they should be called.

Now that the Manzanar National Historic Site has been established and is progressing in its work to educate the public about the experiences of those imprisoned there, efforts are also underway to protect, preserve and provide interpretive and educational resources for other Japanese American confinement sites such as the Minidoka National Historic Site, Tule Lake, Topaz, Amache, Heart Mountain, and more.

The National Park Service, which administers the Manzanar National Historic Site, Minidoka, Tule Lake and other sites, uses “relocation center” to refer to these camps. As such, a movement has begun to change that, and Herzig-Yoshinaga’s paper, “…is a personal story of how [her] consciousness about the uses and abuses of euphemistic terminology has evolved through the hard work and courage of many individuals from myriad backgrounds, both without and within the community of Nikkei (persons of Japanese ancestry). I am certainly not alone, nor among the first, to be concerned about the power of words to lie or clarify, and the need to identify and replace inaccurate and misleading euphemisms that were used by government officials at all levels and perpetuated by many Nikkei as well.”

To read (download) her insightful and well-researched paper, click on: Words Can Lie Or Clarify: Terminology Of The World War II Incarceration Of Japanese Americans by Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga (requires Adobe Reader software to view/print).

The views expressed in this paper are those of the author and are not necessaily those of the Manzanar Committee.

Related Stories:

• Manzanar Committee Member Joyce Okazaki: “Yes, It Was A Concentration Camp”
• More From Okazaki On Use of “Concentration Camp;” Refutes Rafu Shimpo Columnist George Yoshinaga
• Grateful Crane’s Soji Kashiwagi Weighs In On Use Of “Concentration Camp”
• Sue Kunitomi Embrey: Concentration Camps, Not Relocation Centers
• Mako Nakagawa Delivers Keynote Address At 42nd Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage
• Euphemistic Terms Used To Describe WWII Incarceration Of Japanese Americans Targeted At JANM Event
• Cast in Bronze: Terminology Symposium in San Francisco, October 22, 2011

Unless otherwise specified, all stories, images, video and audio content on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License. You may copy, distribute and/or transmit any story, image, video or audio content published on this site under the terms of this license, but only if proper attribution is indicated. The full name of the author and a link back to the original article on this blog are required.

Manzanar Committee Comment Policies