Redress bill advances in the House, and a Smithsonian exhibit previewed

Vol. 104, No. 20, May 22, 1987. 8 pages. View this issue

The front page of this May 22, 1987 issue followed two threads: the Smithsonian’s upcoming exhibition on Japanese Americans and the Constitution, and the progress of the redress bill, H.R. 442, in Congress. J.K. Yamamoto reported on curator Tom Crouch’s talk to JACLers at the Tri-District conference, and a page 5 story continued his remarks on the exhibit’s plans, which include Executive Order 9066 and a reconstructed Little Tokyo street. Redress coverage included the House subcommittee’s approval of H.R. 442 and Grayce Uyehara’s account of the hearing with Assistant Attorney General Richard Willard.

Other things to find: deportation charges dropped against eight immigrants, and a planned House hearing on anti-Asian violence. Columns by Bill Hosokawa and Bill Marutani appeared on page 4, with letters on page 5 from Howard Okano, James Oda and Thomas Okazaki. Veterans news included a planned wreath-laying at Arlington and a 1988 reunion of Nikkei veterans in Reno.

What’s in this issue

National

• JA Exhibition Previewed at Tri-District, by J.K. Yamamoto, page 1. Smithsonian curator Tom Crouch explained to an audience of JACLers at a Pacific Southwest, Central California and NCWNP joint conference why the upcoming exhibit on Japanese Americans is well suited to mark the Constitution’s bicentennial. He called it the most controversial and important show the Smithsonian has undertaken in years.
• Charges in 8 Deportation Cases Dropped, page 1. An immigration judge dismissed deportation charges against eight immigrants accused of PLO ties after the government failed to produce a key witness, though new charges were quickly refiled. Defense attorneys and Asian American groups argue the prosecution is selective and tied to an INS contingency plan JACL warns could target Arab Americans as Japanese Americans were targeted in WW2.
• Reagan Announces Heritage Week and Asian Nomination, page 1. President Reagan signed a proclamation declaring the week of May 3 as Asian Pacific American Heritage Week and announced his intent to nominate Joy Cherian to the EEOC. Reagan praised Asian Pacific Americans’ contributions during a ceremony attended by several Asian American members of Congress.
• House Hearing on Anti-Asian Violence Planned for This Year, page 1. Rep. Robert Matsui announced that a House Judiciary subcommittee will hold hearings later in 1987 on race-related violence against Asian Americans. Matsui and subcommittee chairman Don Edwards cited a 62 percent increase in reported anti-Asian violence from 1984 to 1985 as a growing nationwide problem.
• UC Berkeley Professor Edits New Book on Race Relations, page 8. UC Berkeley professor Ronald Takaki edited ‘From Different Shores,’ a collection of essays by scholars across the political spectrum examining race and ethnicity in America, including a piece on Chinatown women. Takaki said the multiethnic approach reflects California’s increasingly diverse population, which is projected to become majority-minority by the 1990s.

Incarceration & Redress

• House Subcommittee Gives Its Approval to Redress Bill, page 1. The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Administrative Law and Governmental Relations approved redress bill H.R. 442 on May 13, sending it to the full Judiciary Committee for the first time since 1983. Several amendments were adopted, including reducing total appropriations and removing the Aleut provisions, while Reps. Mineta and Matsui praised the milestone.
• Senate, House Redress Bills Get Additional Co-Sponsors, page 1. Sen. Larry Pressler became the 73rd co-sponsor of Senate redress bill S. 1009, while House bill H.R. 442 gained support from Reps. Tommy Robinson and Curt Weldon. Philadelphia JACL redress chair Sumi Kobayashi and constituents met with Weldon to win his backing.
• Uehara Recounts Subcommittee Hearing on Redress Bill H.R. 442, page 4. JACL-LEC director Grayce Uyehara recounts the April 29 House Judiciary Subcommittee hearing where Assistant Attorney General Richard Willard argued against redress legislation, saying the administration opposed H.R. 442 despite acknowledging wartime injustice. Subcommittee members including Barney Frank, Howard Berman, and Dan Glickman pressed Willard on the administration’s contradictory positions on compensation and historical judgment.
• Uyehara Continued: Subcommittee Debate Over Compensation and History, page 5. The continuation of the subcommittee hearing recounts further exchanges between Rep. Berman and Assistant Attorney General Willard over contradictory DOJ positions on the legitimacy of Japanese American claims and the role of historians versus Congress in judging the internment. Rep. Cardin also questioned Willard about the bill’s educational trust fund provisions, which Willard said were overly broad.
• Redress Bill Amendments Detailed, page 8. Further details on H.R. 442 amendments show language changes regarding the causes of internment and revisions to the Civil Liberties Public Education Fund’s authorized uses. JACL-LEC director Grayce Uyehara commented that the subcommittee approval resulted from sustained grassroots lobbying and individual commitment to the cause.

In-Depth

• Authors Comb Flea Markets for Camp Artists, page 2. Cornell graduates Deborah Gesensway and Mindy Roseman spent years tracking down Japanese American internment camp artists after discovering 50 boxes of documents, including watercolors by Poston internee Gene Sogioka, in a Cornell attic. Their research resulted in the book Beyond Words, published by Cornell University Press, featuring the work of two dozen internee artists.
• Smithsonian Exhibit Will Take Visitors on a Journey Through Internment History, page 5. Continuing coverage of curator Tom Crouch’s remarks describes how the Smithsonian’s ‘A More Perfect Union’ exhibit will use George Washington’s draft Constitution, FDR’s Executive Order 9066, a reconstructed Little Tokyo street, and immersive camp barrack displays with oral histories to personalize the internment experience. The exhibit will also address draft resisters, the 442nd combat experience, and the last 40 years of redress efforts and legal cases.

Military & Veterans

• Nisei Veterans Planning Fall Wreath-Laying at Arlington, page 2. Nisei veterans are organizing an Oct. 2 wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery, timed to follow the opening of the Smithsonian’s Japanese American exhibition. Organizers also plan to decorate 36 gravesites of Nisei buried at Arlington and are seeking contributions from California veteran posts.
• DLI Displays Photo Exhibit on MIS Nisei, page 3. The ‘Yankee Samurai’ exhibit depicting Japanese American WW2 internment, MIS operations, and the postwar occupation of Japan was installed at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey. The exhibit, on indefinite loan from the National Japanese American Historical Society, traces MIS’s growth from its 1941 origins at Crissy Field into today’s DLI.
• Nikkei Vets of 3 Wars to Gather, page 7. Veterans of the 100th/442nd RCT, Military Intelligence Service, and Nikkei veterans of the Korean and Vietnam wars are invited to a National AJA Veterans Reunion at the Bally Hotel in Reno from June 8-12, 1988. The event will include a golf tournament, dinner dance, memorial service, screening of ‘Go For Broke,’ and area bus tours.

Community

• Denver-Area Asian American Journalists Form Own Chapter, page 2. A new Denver chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association was formed April 4 at the Denver Press Club with AAJA national president Bill Sing explaining how to organize a chapter. Interim officers were named, with official elections to follow at the next meeting.
• Asian Pacific Heritage Month Marked by Mayor, Governor, page 3. Chicago Mayor Harold Washington and Illinois Gov. James Thompson proclaimed May as Asian American Heritage Month, citing Asian Americans’ contributions to the city’s culture, economy and civic life. A series of heritage events were held throughout the month, including a unity banquet, taiko drumming performance, and a governor’s reception.
• Deadline for JA Directory Is Extended, page 5. The Women’s Concerns Committee of the NCWNP JACL district extended its deadline to May 31 for listings in a forthcoming resource directory for Japanese American women in Northern California. Editor Mei Nakano said the directory, covering services from legal aid to Japanese markets, will be published around September 1987.
• Marysville Reunion Planned, page 7. Japanese American residents of the Marysville-Yuba City area are planning a second reunion for Sept. 23-25, 1988, inviting former and present residents of Yuba, Sutter, Butte and Colusa counties. More than 500 people attended the first reunion in September 1985.
• JACCC Will Give Awards to 8 ‘Pioneers’, page 7. The Japanese American Cultural and Community Center will celebrate its seventh anniversary with a ‘Pacific Pioneers’ dinner honoring Toyota president Shoichiro Toyoda and Mayor Tom Bradley, along with six Japanese classical dance instructors for lifetime achievement. Japan’s ambassador to the U.S. and other dignitaries are expected to attend the May 28 event at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.
• Nisei Recognized as ‘Mover and Shaker’ in Seattle Politics, page 8. Ruth Yoneyama Woo, a Montana-born Nisei interned at Tule Lake and Minidoka during WW2, was profiled in a Seattle Times special report as one of the city’s most influential behind-the-scenes political figures. Despite holding no office, Woo has helped pass major levies and legislation through her extensive political network built over decades.
• 1956-57 JA Graduates Sought, page 8. A reunion committee for George Washington High School in San Francisco is seeking contact information for Nikkei graduates from fall 1956 through fall 1957 to invite them to an Oct. 17 dinner-dance celebrating the 30-year reunion. A list of sought alumni names was published along with contact information for the reunion coordinator.

Arts & Entertainment

• Physicist Authors Two Books, page 3. Dr. Michio Kaku, a Sansei nuclear physicist at CUNY, released two books: Beyond Einstein, a popular account of superstring theory, and To Win a Nuclear War, detailing declassified Pentagon nuclear war plans. Kaku earned his doctorate at UC Berkeley and has taught at Princeton.
• Total Theater Experience, by Philip Tajitsu Nash, page 5. Nash previews the national tour of Philip Kan Gotanda’s play ‘The Dream of Kitamura,’ a total-theater murder mystery blending realism and fantasy, opening in New York with its original 1985 cast before touring Hawaii, San Francisco and Los Angeles. The piece, backed by Jean Erdman’s Open Eye theater company, has earned acclaim since its 1982 debut.
• JA Honored for Work in ESL, page 7. Sadae Iwataki, LAUSD’s adult ESL programs supervisor, received the first Outstanding Service Award from the California Association of Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages at its March conference. She has also served as CATESOL historian, newsletter editor and president, and received other lifetime achievement honors.

Commentary

• East Wind: A Chapter President Who Reads Kanji, by Bill Marutani, page 4. Marutani profiles Harry Watson, the unusual president of the New Mexico JACL chapter, a former Marine fluent in Japanese who is now studying Mandarin. The column recounts Watson’s love of Japanese music and his impressions of the independent-minded Mountain Plains district JACL members.
• Wall of Prejudice, by Bill Hosokawa, page 4. Hosokawa recounts an incident described by Mile-Hi JACL chapter president Bob Sakaguchi, who was confronted by an elderly man who told him ‘you Japs deserved everything that was coming to you’ after Sakaguchi spoke in support of redress at a town meeting. Hosokawa questions whether such deeply prejudiced minds can ever be changed through education.
• Open Letter to Nat’l Board, by Frank Sato, Floyd Shimomura, James Tsujimura, Clifford Uyeda, page 5. Four past JACL national presidents wrote an open letter urging the National Board to commend national director Ron Wakabayashi for his outstanding work and dedication since 1981. The letter was prompted by an upcoming board review of his performance.
• A Repeat of History?, by James Oda, page 5. Oda warns that rising anti-Semitic and nationalist rhetoric in Japan, including attacks on the Asahi Shimbun, echoes prewar fascism and is partly a result of America’s Cold War cultivation of former Japanese militarists as anticommunist allies. He argues this policy is now backfiring as these figures’ loyalty lies with old Japan rather than America.
• Missing the Point, by Howard Okano, page 5. Okano responds to Bill Hosokawa’s earlier column opposing individual redress payments, arguing that because internees were denied individual rights, compensation should be made to individuals to reaffirm constitutional protections. He also criticizes the idea of using redress funds for cultural exchange programs, suggesting scholarships or constitutional litigation instead.
• Chin Verdict, by Thomas Okazaki, page 5. Okazaki expresses anger over the vindication of Vincent Chin’s killer, calling it evidence of a double standard of justice in America, and urges Asian Americans to remain vigilant against racial violence. He recommends a memorial to Vincent Chin be created to remind the country of the dangers of unchecked racial violence.

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