Densho Digital Archive - Toru Sakahara - Kiyo Sakahara Interview II (denshovh-storu

<Begin Segment 35>

DG: One of the things that you know, maybe we'll go onto this, but JACL is pretty much, you know, credited for redress. But, I've heard that some of the Isseis were a little bit turned off by the JACL, because they said that JACL told them to go into camp willingly and then, you know, took the credit for protesting when the, I don't know Japanese Community Services, or Japanese chamber... seems like they had a lot to do with how, helping people, I don't know, I didn't. Do you know anything about that?

KS: You mean after they came back from camp?

DG: Well there was a little bit of controversy of who gets the credit for getting, you know, the rights restored too.

KS: You mean redress?

DG: That and other things.

KS: Well, I think that redress was spearheaded by a group of young fellows right here in Seattle. They went to national conventions.

DG: Right.

KS: And insisted that it had to be number one on the national JACL program. And at that time national was not quite the force for such a, for such a concerted move. And that could be part of the reason that some of the older people had those feelings. That...

DG: Well we're going to get to it later, you know, that you were serving on the Japanese Community Service Board.

KS: Yeah.

DG: I want to know, you know, the feelings that they had when JACL brought these up. Maybe we can get to that. Let's...

TS: Well let me comment on this apparent feeling of betrayal by the Japanese community by JACL by urging cooperation with the civil and military authorities for evacuation and exclusion. Well, those, some of those of us who went to the emergency committee meeting in early 1942 were for demanding military emergency control rather than exclusion. We're for fighting it on that basis, but ultimately it ended up, well, if we're going to be evacuated, we might as well try to do it in a orderly fashion and protect our people and that's the reason as far as I could see that the decision was made on the national level. And I think that was kind of misunderstood as a betrayal of the rights of the general community by the leadership of JACL. Naturally people, when decisions are made, various interpretations could be put upon actions as taken, and no matter how much you explain, there always remains that question, remaining. And I don't know what could be done about it, but perhaps some understanding could be achieved.