JACL In Quest of Justice: The History of the Japanese American Citizen's League

Bill Hosokawa, 1982.

This book examines the history of the JACL, an organization that has had its share of controversy. The first seven chapters deal with pre-WWII times. This goes into great details on the founding of the organization and the people involved. There's a substantial section of photos after the end of the eighth chapter and it includes the history of the internment process.

The book then moves onto the Pearl Harbor attack and the JACL's immediate letter to FDR assuring him of their "fullest cooperation", and that "we are ready and prepared to expend every effort to repel this invasion together with our fellow Americans." This was a major move in the attempt by the JACL to establish the Japanese-Americans as being totally patriotic, almost super-patriotic in their beliefs.

Chapter 10 moves on to Executive Order 9066 and the JACL's efforts to try and keep people's reactions calm, then talks about the Hearst newspapers efforts to get the anti-Japanese hatreds stirred up again. The mass media won.

The government movement to intern the Issei and Nisei is discussed is followed by an examination of the JACL decision to cooperate with the government. This is followed by a discussion of the evacuation of those of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast area and how numerous local chapters of the JACL ended up closing down "for the duration."

The loyalty questionnaire that caused so many problems and the drafting of the Nisei is then discussed. The resettlement of the internees is discussed along with one major problem the government faced. It had said that the people of Japanese ancestry had to be removed from the West Coast since they were potentially unsafe as far as the country was concerned, yet it was trying to get the Eastern and Midwestern parts of the country to accept them as part of a resettlement program. If they couldn't be trusted on the West Coast, then why should they be trusted anywhere else?

The next thing the book covers are the cases that ended up before the Supreme Court. Next is some material on how the JACL became involved in the draft resistance movement, but the issue was already so polarized that there wasn't much they could do but talk to the resisters and others. They were also involved after the war in trying to clear the way for the Nisei trapped in Japan during the war to return to the U.S.

The rest of the book deals with the post-war years and JACL, ending up going into the redress movement (which was not yet completed since this book is copyright 1982 and it was 1988 before the former internees were granted $20,000 each in the Civil Liberties Act of 1988.)

Considering how much appears in other books about the internment issue and JACL, it's good to have an entire book about the organization that is pretty objective in its presentation. Worth examining.

---

Main Index
Japan main page
Japanese-American Internment Camps index page
Japan and World War II index page