Yuri Kochiyama, 1980. Workers at Silver Palace, a now-closed restaurant in New York City’s Chinatown, organized a protest with the Chinese Staff and Workers Association in 1980. They opposed management’s practice of deducting the workers’ tip money for social security benefits.
A poster announces an Asian American Political Alliance rally at University of California, Berkeley on July 28, 1968. The event included speeches by Bobby Seale, Chairman of the Black Panther Party, and George Wu of Hwa Ching, a militant Chinese rights group from San Francisco’s Chinatown.
Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act on August 10, 1988. The Act officially apologized for the incarceration of Japanese American citizens and permanent residents during World War II. Onlookers include Pete Wilson, Spark Matsunaga, Norman Mineta, Robert Masui, and Bill Lowrey.
Lillian Baker (left) angrily rips testimony pages from the hands of James Kawaminami, president of the 100th/442nd Veterans Association of Southern California, at a Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians hearing in Los Angeles. The nine-member, federally-appointed body held hearings in major U.S. cities and heard testimonies from more than 750 witnesses. Some Americans, like Lillian, continued to defend the WWII incarceration of Japanese Americans. They opposed redress and reparations, which would acknowledge that the government acted wrongly.
From left to right, Gordon Hirabayashi, Minoru Yasui, and Fred Korematsu, 1983. Pres. Clinton awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor, to Korematsu in 1998. Pres. Obama awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously to Gordon Hirabayashi in 2012 and Minoru Yasui in 2015.
In 1941, Gene Sogioka was a 26-year-old background artist at Walt Disney Studios. By 1942, he was incarcerated at Poston on the Colorado River Indian Reservation in Arizona. It was there that he painted this work, entitled Dust Storm, along with 133 other watercolors depicting his experiences.
One hundred and thirteen of Fusaye Yokoyama‚'s friends and acquaintances signed their names on this shirt while she was at Tule Lake Relocation Center in 1943. She then embroidered over their signatures. An American citizen, Yokoyama was born in Perkins, CA. Photograph by David Izu. Japanese American Archival Collection #JA 141, Special Collections and University Archives, California State University, Sacramento (CSUS).
Few toys found space among the limited necessities people were allowed to bring with them to the camps. This toy lending facility at Manzanar War Relocation Center was coordinated by the Religious Society of Friends (also known as the Quakers), which spoke out against the incarceration and sent volunteers to make camp life less hostile. Photograph by Toyo Miyatake, Toy Loan Center, c. 1944. Courtesy Toyo Miyatake Studio.
