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BY: Can you talk about that a minute? We'll digress a little bit here.

SS: Sure. Power of Words was the idea that was really spearheaded by Mako Nakagawa, that we needed to change the terminology. She got sick and tired of hearing the camps referred to as "relocation centers" and "assembly centers" and "evacuation," because those all are indicative of... you "evacuate" in an emergency and it's in order to help the people who are in danger, you evacuate them to a safe place. You relocate people, you assemble people... if there's a fire or an earthquake, there's an assembly center where you move people to a temporary holding spot where they can be safe from the danger and then you can move them to a relocation center where, you know, "relocation," you think of, well, like Boeing left Seattle and moved to Chicago, so they had a relocation program where they helped people buy a house and find schools when they got to their new place. But this was nothing like that. This was very punitive, very... it was a prison experience where people lost their jobs, lost their school education, they lost their homes, lost their professions, and got removed on very short notice and stuck in basically prison camps, some of them for the duration of the war. Some of them were able to get out before the war ended like my mom and dad, but they were not allowed to come back to home, Watsonville or Shelton, they had to go somewhere east of the camps. And so it was a total disruption to everyone's lives and destroyed a lot of livelihoods in the process. So to use that kind of terminology was just really offensive. So Mako said that we need to be truthful about what happened, so these were not relocation centers, they were concentration camps or incarceration centers; they were not assembly centers, they were temporary detention facilities, and we should use that kind of terminology. It wasn't an evacuation, it was a forced removal. So that was a little bit controversial. I mean, some people like Roger Daniels had started using the term "concentration camps," even in, I think Roger Daniels started using that in the late '60s or early '70s. But it was not that common, and it was very controversial. But she said we're not going to... during redress we said, "Never again," but we can't really make sure that it never happens again if we're not truthful with ourselves first and with the larger community, the general public, in describing what happened. So she pushed the Power of Words within the JACL, and it actually got a lot of resistance. It took, like, two cycles of introducing a resolution and then getting it pulled or postponed until the following year or then even after it passed, people wanted to add amendments later that would water it down, so she was fighting against that.

So there was -- in 2011, I believe -- there was a JACL national convention hosted in Bellevue by the Seattle and Lake Washington chapter of JACL. And Mako wanted to do a workshop on the Power of Words, and she knew I was involved with the Tule Lake Committee, and we'd always been pretty interested in the Power of Words or terminology, particularly around Tule Lake segregation center and the so-called "no-nos." So she said, "Well, Stan, you need to come and help me put on this workshop," so I said, "Okay." And so we did a workshop and then we formed a committee to put it together. And started meeting regularly, and then after the convention, the committee was still meeting. Because then Mako said, "Well, now that we have this thing passed, then we have to figure out how we're going to get it out to the public."

BY: So the resolution passed in Bellevue, and so now it's an official policy or whatever on the JACL?

SS: Yeah, if you go to the JACL website under the Education tab, you'll find Power of Words and you can get the handbook. Describes, "these are inaccurate, and therefore not to be used terms, and these are the preferred terms."

BY: And then that became your reentry, so to speak, in JACL, then?

SS: Yeah. Because then Mako said we need someone who can shepherd the Power of Words within the board, because she said, "Well, I'm going to be retiring from the board soon, and we need someone who knows a lot and is strong on Power of Words. So you need to step up." So I said, "Oh, okay." And then she said, "Well, I'm also on the National Educational Committee through the Pacific Northwest District. So you need to start going to the district meetings and get the governor to appoint you as the NEC rep from the Pacific Northwest District." So I said, "Oh, okay." So that got me more, kind of, enmeshed within JACL locally and regionally.

BY: And currently you're the president or the co-president, is that correct?

SS: I'm the co-president. I was president for two years, the Covid years, and I'm co-president this year with Kyle Kinoshita.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.