About the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL)

After viewing the DVD of Conscience and the Constitution, learn more about the actions of the wartime Japanese American Citizens League, and its 2002 apology to the Heart Mountain resisters.

Mike Masaoka audio interview
Mike Masaoka's rebuttal to critics
The Lim Report
"The JACL Apologizes"

Mike Masaoka audio interview

Listen to the DVD to hear Masaoka's comments on JACL informing, his memos to the government, test cases, the resisters, and his legacy.

Transcript of additional excerpts from audio interview (to come)

Read the April 6, 1942 memo to the WRA [82 MB pdf)
The handwritten notes exist on the original document in the National Archives, suggesting that they are written in the hand of the recipient of this memo, or by one of his staff.

Read the January 14, 1943 memo to the WRA [38 MB pdf)

Mike Masaoka's rebuttal to critics

Mike Masaoka's closing peoration at the 1982 JACL National Convention in Los Angeles was first transcibed by editor Dwight Chuman and published on Feb. 17, 1983 in the Rafu Shimpo newspaper.

Read the text of Mike Masaoka's rebuttal to critics

Background on JACL's handling of the Tule Lake renunciants
Minutes of 1946 JACL National Board meeting [pdf]
Role of civil rights attorney Wayne Collins
History of Tule Lake Segregation Center and renunciants

"... Most regained their citizenship primarily due to the heroic but little-known efforts of Wayne Mortimer Collins, a civil rights attorney who convinced the federal courts that the renunciants citizenship should be restored because the renunciations took place under extreme duress and amidst impossibly difficult circumstances. Collins wound up fighting the Department of Justice over 20 years to help former renunciants reclaim their citizenship. Congress and President Nixon repealed the renunciation law in 1971.

"...The renunciants, along with draft resisters, were condemned at the 1946 National JACL convention, which led to decades of them being marginalized for wartime choices. Consequently, they speak little about their life in the Segregation Center, a topic filled with powerful feelings of stigma and shame."

The Lim Report

This Web site has been one of the two places on the Internet where you can download an uncensored copy of the research report that details the JACL's role of cooperation and collaboration with government exclusion orders in 1942.

It was prepared for the JACL's Presidential Select Committee on JACL Resolution #7, submitted in 1990 by San Francisco attorney and researcher Deborah K. Lim. I wrote in 1990 about how JACL commissioned the report, then tried to bury it when they saw the direction it was taking ("Report Says Wartime JACL Leaders Collaborated").

It is this report that Frank Emi references on the DVD ("The JACL Apologizes") in his remarks to the 2002 JACL apology ceremony, where he challenges the organization to address the broader question of wartime collaboration even as the group was apologizing to Emi and others for its suppression of wartime resistance.

"The JACL Apologizes"

Conscience and the Constitution closes with the tag, "In July 2000, the national Japanese American Citizens League voted to apologize for its suppression of wartime resistance. Several JACL old-timers walked out in protest."

Two years later, on Saturday, May 11, 2002, about 300 people filled the gym at the San Francisco Japanese American Community and Cultural Center for the "Nisei Resisters of Conscience of World War II Recognition and Reconciliation Ceremony."

What happened there is told in the DVD featurettte, "The JACL Apologizes."

Learn more about the event, read the full speeches presented by Floyd Mori, Frank Emi, and Yosh Kuromiya, and see the archived news coverage.

Updated: January 8, 2012