Densho Digital Archive - Homer Yasui Interview I (denshovh-yhomer-01-0016)

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MR: I'm curious about the JACL. When you came back to Portland, is that, when did you get active in that organization?

HY: I didn't get active in JACL because I was too busy trying to make a living. In the beginning, the struggle was kind of tough. But Miki joined I think in probably in the late '60s, and I don't know if she was an officer then or not. But I joined somewhere around 1970s after my practice had kind of leveled off, and I had a little bit more time to devote to civil affairs and activities, civil rights, that sort of thing, about 1970 for me. And then ever since then, we've been pretty intimately involved in JACL except since we retired here.

MR: I wonder about JACL's position, some of the controversy about complying with the internment orders and how you felt about that as you were joining the organization yourself?

HY: Well, when I joined, I picked up what JACL was saying, and they said, well, it was for the greatest good for the greatest number and so on. And then over the years after hearing the controversy, particularly about the draft, so-called draft resistance, that controversy and then about how the JACL were nothing but sycophants and so on, going along with those things. So I have tremendous ambivalence dichotomy, dichotomous feeling about that because I'm telling you that in 1941 and '44, '41, '2, '3, '4, '5, there was a huge, huge feeling of super patriotism. Unless you experience it, it's hard to imagine. It's not at all like today. It's not at all like the Vietnam War. It's like this was a hugely, hugely popular war, and anything the government said, anything the President said, anything all the big shots said, you took it as gospel truth until JACL toed that line. But not only did the JACL toe the line, but let me tell an anecdote which is true. There were ninety Hood River Issei residents signed a loyalty oath to the federal government, United States government. This is Hood River, and these people of Hood River, the Issei, most of them, well, the women couldn't speak English, but they signed this protestation of loyalty to the United States. And these are people who were not allowed to become citizens of the United States because of the President, and yet they signed an affirmation that they will be loyal to, they will not break, they will obey the law to the United States. So if the Issei are going to do that, who had been crapped upon and reviled can do that, why wouldn't the Nisei do that? And they did. And so the people now who say, well, you should have had more bravery and got up and resisted and fought it, that's very easy for them to say today, but it was not like that in those days. And for people who say, well, they wouldn't do that today. I say, "How do you know?" Until you face that thing, you don't know. What you're doing is blowing a lot of smoke. You don't know that. But there are a lot of people who say that, "I would do this, that and the other thing," they don't know. So I say JACL did the best they could under the circumstances. And sure, they made mistakes and so on, but I don't know if anybody else could have done better.