Forty years after President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, Japanese Americans commemorated the date with an afternoon march and rally in Little Tokyo.  Three hundred people participated in the march that began at the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center and ended with a rally at the old Nishi Hongwangi Temple at First and Central Streets.

Six months earlier, on August 4, 5 and 6, 1981, NCRR and other organizations mobilized the Japanese American community to attend the Los Angeles hearings of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians.  Three generations of Nikkei sat transfixed as they listened to the testimonies of former internees, researchers, community leaders and those who would justify the government’s internment of World War II Japanese Americans. 

After Reverend Paul Nakamura gave the invocation, speakers representing the former incarcerated talked about their diverse experiences behind barbed wire and the effect the testimonies at the Los Angeles hearings of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians had on their community.  All united behind a call for reparations for those who were unjustly imprisoned during World War II.  Among the speakers were NCRR’s Miya Iwataki, Terminal Islander President and former Manzanar internee Mas Tanibata, Gardena City Councilman Mas Fukui, and Congressman Mervyn Dymally who would, later in 1982, introduce redress legislation on behalf of NCRR. 

The Los Angeles DOR was one of many NCRR-sponsored commemorations in California.  NCRR hosted remembrances in San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, Sacramento, and New York.  In Los Angeles the DOR announcement appeared in the Rafu Shimpo, the Gardena Valley News, and the Civic Center News.  Because of the increased public awareness of the imprisonment of Japanese Americans during World War II and the call for monetary compensation for the former internees, two television stations and the Los Angeles Times covered the DOR activities.  NCRR also reported that other groups supported redress for Japanese Americans and that it had set goals for the campaign.

march and rally..., Rafu  Shimpo, 2/18/82, Way clear for DOR

Tanibata article, Rafu Shimpo (PDF), 2/22/82