Densho Digital Archive - Henry Miyatake Interview V (denshovh-mhenry-05-0015)

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HM: Well, during the same time period, if I may detract a little bit, the Title II of the Internal Security Act thing was under evolvement, and this was about 1968 to '71 period. And this bill that was being introduced by Nixon indicated that they needed to reinvigorate the six camps for internment of individuals that would be a threat to the internal security of the United States. And the Internal Security Act, going backwards in time, had two parts to it. First part was the registration of all the communists in the United States that were communist party members. Secondly was the internal security function to maintain security in the United States. At that time there were some activities in terms of Black Panthers that were starting to gel at that point. So the bill incorporated, in the Title II portion of that bill, incorporated the installation and reinvigoration of six camps. And it happened to be one of the camps was Tule Lake. And they're gonna appropriate two point six million dollars to get these camps going again, so that in case there is an internal security problem, they can gather up all these people that are dangerous to the United States' internal security and throw 'em into these camps. Anyway, Raymond Okamura and those guys got a hold of this thing and they said hey, this is Tule Lake, they're gonna reinstall Tule Lake. And they started a huge drive for repealing the Title II provision of the Enemy Security Act. And unfortunately the JACL organization wouldn't support that repeal process until they were finally given the writing on the wall by Raymond and those guys, saying, "Hey, if you guys don't do this we're gonna make this a public issue and say that you guys aren't really a civil rights organization, and we're gonna try to get your charter disabled." So anyway JACL begrudgingly became a supporter for the repeal of Title II. That had one message saying, hey, if we can get together as all the crazy guys in the JACL to support this kind of issue, and they can repeal a portion of the public law that's being considered in Congress, man, then this is kind of interesting.

TI: So you felt empowered? Or the people felt empowered.

HM: Yeah.

TI: That the change could be made.

HM: And then the fact that this woman that was coordinating again for a different program --

TI: The anti-SST.

HM: Yeah, and she was able to mobilize these people. Be it right or wrong, whether they're technically correct or not, that's something else. But she was able to mobilize these people and write all these crazy letters. And by weight of the mail be able to completely destroy this program. To me, these two things were very interesting, and they all happened in the 1971 period.

TI: Right.