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MAY
IS ASIAN HERITAGE MONTH!
Go out and eat Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, Filipino,
Singaporean, Indian or any other type of Asian cuisine you can find --
food is a great bridge to other cultures! And smile at every Asian you
see and learn something about their culture....
19 May, 2002
IS
THE JACL'S APOLOGY TOO LATE?
After 50 years, I hope the Japanese American Citizens' League's May 11 apology to World War II resisters hasn't come too late.
| I quickly learned that not all Japanese Americans supported the JACL, and in fact many scorned it. |
But for all its accomplishments, the reputation of the JACL has been tarnished by its role during the internment.
One of the most divisive issues has been the split over Japanese Americans who chose to fight for the US Army while their families were interned, and those who protested and refused to join because their families' civil rights had been stripped away.
Those who fought in the war were part of the celebrated 100th Battalion/442nd Regimental Combat Team, the most decorated group for its size in US military history. Those who refused to fight were labeled "traitors," arrested, tried and imprisoned. The 282 draft resisters were later pardoned by President Truman, but they've been ostracized by many JAs ever since.
JACL's president during the war said the draft resisters should be tried for sedition, and this kind of inflammatory rhetoric has colored much of the debate until now.
The split within the community has been a stumbling block that has kept the JACL shackled to history. That's certainly how I felt when I naively took the post of president of the board of the JACL's Mile-Hi Chapter. At the time, I was unschooled in the internal history of the inner conflicts within the JACL. I thought everybody respected the JACL and I could make a difference in society by being involved in such an august group.
But I found that instead of changing society, the organization spent much of its time rehashing the internment years and arguing over issues like war resisters.
I quickly learned that not all Japanese Americans supported the JACL, and in fact many scorned it. My lack of education about all of the facts of internment had betrayed me. I knew more about internment than most Americans, but not as much as the people who lived through internment, or those whose families were touched by the experience, and still felt the pain of the JACL's actions.
I sat through one painful and frustrating meeting where a tearful shouting match broke out between two board members. One thought the resisters were being patriotic in their own way by protesting and refusing to fight; the other was a proud veteran of the 442nd who vehemently opposed recognizing them. Both men felt so strongly about their positions that I felt nothing could ever bring them together over the issue. Not long after that meeting, I gave up my presidency of the chapter and have not been very active in the JACL since then.
A decade ago, younger JACL members began trying to bridge the gap between the two sides of the issue. But draft resisters became an ongoing debate mostly along generational lines. At every biennial convention, younger members have wanted an official apology and older members (including military veterans) have voted it down. A formal apology was finally approved - over protests - at the national JACL convention in 2000, and the result was the May 11 Nisei Resisters of Conscience of World War II Recognition and Reconciliation Ceremony in San Francisco.
As part of its proclamation, the JACL stated, "The National Council of the Japanese American Citizens League recognizes the Japanese American Resisters of Conscience as a group of principled Americans; offers an apology for not acknowledging the resisters' stand of protesting the denial of constitutional rights and for the pain and bitterness this caused; initiate a public education effort; and will recognize them at an appropriate public ceremony during the 2000-2002 biennium."
The proclamation hasn't settled the controversy, unfortunately. Within the JACL membership and the larger national JA community, the debate continues over the apology. In JA media such as the LA-based Nichi Bei Times and the JACL's membership newspaper, the Pacific Citizen, letters from have denounced the move and veterans have threatened to quit the organization en masse.
Unfortunately, even if the issue of war resisters quiets down, there are other wartime ghosts haunting the JACL, which keep the organization from taking the leadership role it deserves in the JA and APA community.
Many JAs still blame the JACL for acquiescing to Executive Order 9066, the law that allowed the internment, and for its support of the US government's loyalty questionnaire, which asked adult internees to answer "yes" or "no" to questions including one saying they would foreswear loyalty to the Emperor of Japan (even though most were US citizens by birth), and one saying they were willing to be drafted. Like the resisters who were ostracized later during the war, the "No-No Boys" have been treated like pariahs for almost 60 years.
Perhaps there will be more apologies in the years to come. Frank Emi, one of the leaders of the resisters movement, asked the JACL to accept responsibility for its other mistakes at the resisters' ceremony: "The United States government apologized for their wartime excesses. Can JACL do less?"
I hope the JACL can find the strength to look to the future instead of fighting over the past. There's so much to do, and no reason not to be united in our efforts.
You can find more information about the
JACL and about the resisters' movement at:
http://jacl.org
http://resisters.com