Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Aiko Yoshinaga Herzig Interview
Narrator: Aiko Yoshinaga Herzig
Interviewers: Larry Hashima (primary), Glen Kitayama (secondary)
Location: University of California, Los Angeles
Date: September 11, 1997
Densho ID: denshovh-haiko-01-0005

<Begin Segment 5>

AH: By the time the commission started to form, the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, that was voted, established in 1980. President Carter signed a law establishing that commission in July of 1980. And then they started looking for the commissioners. Nine commissioners were appointed. Then they started looking for staff. And when the staff was, Executive Director was chosen and administrative people, then they had to start looking for researchers. So I said, "Well I know quite bit about this now, so I guess why not, I'd like to make some contribution." And I applied for a position. And I, they were, desperately needed somebody. And with the fact that I had been doing research by that time for a couple of years, I guess, and I knew the system, they decided that they would take me on. And so I served with the Commission for two years, until it closed its door in June, end of June of 1983.

And during that period, I was able to contribute about six to eight thousand documents that I had by that time collected. And the archive -- and the Commission sort of didn't know where to start doing this research. So I said well, "(They) gotta start reading some stuff," and so Jack helped me bring our collection to the Commission to use as a basis. From there we could build, and it served its purpose very well. I had some of the young people on the staff help, to go to the archives to do follow-up research. It was my duty to prepare reports, or actually to hand over primary, important key documents to Angus Macbeth, who was the Special Counsel for the Commission, and to his editors for them to read, assimilate, analyze and include in the report (Personal Justice Denied). I threw thousands of documents at Mr. Macbeth and the editors for them to choose from. And they were all important. And they were all in favor of the government doing something remedial, taking some remedial action for Japanese Americans. There was nothing in those reports that would, was negative about Japanese Americans. There were always allegations of perhaps some kind of possible sabotage activity but there were never... because people didn't know Japanese Americans or Japanese at the time, so they were working with negative stereotypes. But there was nothing in those documents in the archives that would indict Japanese or Japanese Americans as disloyal people. Therefore, it was a pleasant task to be able to, to find what I felt were key documents on which the Commission could base its study and base its recommendations.

And I think those, Mr. Macbeth and the editorial staff did a fantastic job. It had to have been fantastic, it moved the Congress to vote for reparations. I don't like to use "reparation" -- redress -- to vote for redress for Japanese Americans, because the report was based on papers that came right out of the government. Congress could not refute those facts and everything proved that the government had unconstitutionally taken away the rights of Japanese Americans, deprived them of liberty, all those wonderful things the Constitution gives to us, the government deprived us of. And these documents that we, that the government, that the Commission used to make this report, they're primarily the same, only... yes, same as the ones that were used by the coram nobis lawyers, they were used by the class-action lawsuit, NCJAR, William Hohri vs. United States. Primarily the same documents. There were a few more key documents we found, I think, after the Commission closed, Jack and I were still doing some research for the cases and we found a couple more things of importance to the court cases. However, the Commission report was definitely instrumental in influencing congressmen and senators to consider their heretofore opposition to making financial compensation a must for Japanese Americans.

The fact that we had Nikkei congressmen and senators was a tremendous help, because all of those fellows and I guess -- well, Mrs. Mink came later -- but Mineta and Matsui, Inouye, Spark Matsunaga, they were so highly respected by their colleagues that whenever they had some kind of a bill they were pretty much able to get a lot of support, because they were so well-respected. And this was a hard, hard bill because it cost money. However, I credit them a great deal for the success. I think the lobbying and the mailing probably helped.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.