Acknowledging Wrongs: Redress and Reparations

However, it wasn’t until the 1970s that redress began to look possible. Bolstered by a new community consciousness inspired by the African American Civil Rights Movement, the Asian American Rights Movement, the anti-war movement, and the push for ethnic studies on college campuses, the Japanese American community rallied around this initiative.

In 1980, Congress passed a bill to uncover the circumstances surrounding incarceration, creating the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC). The Commission conducted nationwide hearings and published a report that concluded the incarceration was caused by “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.”

Picture: Lillian Baker 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, August 5, 1981. 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. Courtesy of the Gerth Archives and Special Collections, CSU Dominguez Hills.