Densho Digital Archive
Manzanar National Historic Site Collection
Title: George Yoshinaga Interview
Narrator: George Yoshinaga
Interviewer: Alisa Lynch
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada
Date: August 10, 2010
Densho ID: denshovh-ygeorge_5-01-0025

<Begin Segment 25>

AL: Are you aware of the recent JACL resolution on terminology?

GY: Yeah, I used to be a member many years ago but I quit because I just don't agree with the philosophy.

AL: In what way?

GY: Well, today... I don't know if you read, do you ever read the Pacific Citizen?

AL: Hit and miss.

GY: Okay, the Pacific Citizen is billed as the voice of the Japanese American. But if you look at their... nothing to, it's not a racial thing but if you look at the staff and look at the bylines for stories, ninety-five percent are written by non-Japanese Americans. And unless... we don't try to separate ourselves, but unless you are what you are, there are certain of phases of life that you really don't understand. And that's what killing the PC. And I feel that when they talk about ending the print version of it and going online and the membership is really just dropped completely. They don't seem to go to the core of the problem. See, it used to be that JACL used to bill itself as the voice of the Japanese American community. Today it's more Asian American and so people my age, the older ones that still live in the past as you might put it, this is something that we don't agree with.

AL: What have you thought about sort of the trajectory or the, what, the way the JACL has gone from being against the draft resisters during the war and speaking out against them to, what, seven or eight years ago apologizing and then now with the terminology, instead of accommodating speaking out and saying we need to have this terminology, I mean, how would you characterize what has driven that change?

GY: Well they just completely changed. I don't know, maybe it's the leadership, but today it's completely different from say fifteen years ago. And they get involved, what the latest situation they're involved in and I tell myself, it's none of our business. What's this issue in the last issue of PC they were touching?

AL: Is it the Arizona immigration bill?

GY: Well, that's one thing too but no, there was something even more hilarious as when you look at... I can't think of it right now but it not only just turns me off, it disgusts me.

AL: What did you think when they apologized to the draft resisters?

GY: Yeah, I was at the Monterey when they... and all the veterans that were there, I would say eighty percent cancelled their membership to JACL. It's all right to say they have the right to do this and that, but for an organization representing the Japanese American masses to apologize. And Helen Kawagoe was the president then I said, they can't answer the question I put to them, which is I mentioned earlier but if we were all draft resisters, where would we be? They can't give me an answer. If they would give me a positive answer, hey, it means that we all stood up for our protesting what was happening to us, but no one ever says anything they just says, yeah, they were brave heroes and all this crap, you know.

AL: It's interesting because in our exhibit there were people who were upset that we had a draft resister panel and a military service panel both in the exhibit.

GY: Well, I think it's good to give both sides, but for... to go one sided I think is the objectionable point.

AL: Right.

<End Segment 25> - Copyright &copy; 2010 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.