Lindsay Larson and Dr. Mary Stovall Richards, History
On November 9, 2000, the National Japanese American Memorial to Patriotism during World War II was dedicated in Washington, D.C. The dedication followed years of struggle and controversy, culminating in the creation of a nationwide grassroots campaign advocating “a fair and accurate” memorial. Much of the debate centered around the inclusion of a quote by Mike Masaoka, who would be identified on the monument as a “Civil Rights Advocate” despite his support for unquestioning compliance with the government’s evacuation orders. This reopened debate over the appropriate stance toward Executive Order 9066, the government’s order to evacuate and relocate individuals of Japanese ancestry in the Western states during World War II, as well as questions about what constitutes civil rights activism.
I set out to study four central aspects of the creation of the memorial: first, the maneuvering required to gain congressional approval to build the monument; second, the debate over the design and how the monument compares to other internment memorials; third, the controversy over the inclusion of the Mike Masaoka quote; and fourth, the divisions within the Japanese- American community resulting from the memorial’s creation. However, it soon became clear that the continuing impact of the memorial’s creation centers primarily around the Mike Masaoka controversy. Consequently, the civil rights legacy of Mike Masaoka and the divisions in the Japanese-American community quickly became the focus of my research.
I was lucky to use the ORCA scholarship funds to make two important research trips to interview some prominent members of the Japanese-American community. While examining Mike Masaoka’s papers was relatively easy because they are providentially housed in the University of Utah’s Special Collections and his papers were extremely beneficial for my research, my interviews with George Takei and Cherry Tsutsumida were definitely the highlights of my work. The opportunity to interrogate key players, both of whom had personal contact with Mike Masaoka, and ask very pointed questions was essential to improving my understanding of the very important issues at stake in the controversy within the community.
Although my research was quite successful on the whole, I did encounter a number of challenges. The most difficult challenge was finding individuals to interview, particularly critics of Masaoka. While I was fortunate to arrange interviews with some prominent members of the Japanese-American community, I had great difficulty interviewing individuals who were critical of Masaoka’s policies. In large part this is due to the fact that many critics were previously burned by their comments and actions opposing the powerful Masaoka. However, if I continue with this important work, I hope to pursue some additional leads and find a much larger sampling of interviews. Despite my difficulty interviewing Masaoka’s critics and the ample support for Masaoka that I encountered, my eventual conclusion is that Masaoka did not act as a civil rights advocate during World War II and consequently did not merit inclusion on the monument. While I found the political conclusion that he should not have been placed on the monument fairly easy to arrive at, placing him in the historical context of civil rights activism and understanding the generational divisions in the Japanese-American community are far more difficult to achieve. It is in these areas that I hope to eventually expand my research.
Another challenge I faced, in addition to finding individuals to interview, was locating documentary evidence to examine. While I was extremely fortunate to have Masaoka’s papers available in nearby Salt Lake, I did not have as much success gaining access to the documentary collections I was hoping to explore during my trip to Washington, D.C. It was fairly easy to study the archives of the Fine Arts Commission and I certainly found some valuable information there. However, the National Park Service archives, which I hoped would be a rich source of letters both supporting and opposing Masaoka’s inclusion on the monument, were not so easy to access. I had great difficulty contacting the appropriate person and only received clearance to explore the documents after I returned from my trip to Washington. Perhaps this was not coincidental since those protesting Masaoka’s inclusion on the monument had similar difficulty getting responses from the National Park Service, even during the height of the controversy. The scarcity of published material relating to this topic was both a challenge and a success. It is always helpful to refer to secondary sources from respected historians to guide primary research, a luxury that I did not have except in terms of very general work on the internment. Yet, this is also one of the great successes in my research since I have found a fresh topic with little related scholarship, a great rarity in twentieth-century American history. This lack of scholarship has led me to consider continuing this research beyond the point of my Honors Thesis, which I recently completed. There is great urgency in additional study before the older generation who can give firsthand accounts and knew Masaoka personally have passed away, and taken with them many unrecorded memories.
While many systematic efforts to chronicle the Jewish Holocaust of World War II have been undertaken and completed, the attempts to record the experiences of Japanese Americans during the United States’ great violation of civil rights during the World War II internment have been less extensive and more haphazard. I hope much more research will be done before it is too late to capture firsthand accounts, and that I will be part of that effort by continuing to explore the strands of civil rights activism in the Japanese American community.