After President Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, community members breathed a collective sigh of relief. Redress and reparations for the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans would now become a reality. Based primarily in Japanese American communities, the struggle for redress & reparations took most of the 80’s decade , and had, at last, come to fruition. Or so the community hoped.
The payments to former internees and evacuees would not be made promptly because funds were not appropriated for this bill. Astonishment soon changed to anger. The community quickly launched a campaign for funding that resembled the fight for redress legislation with letter writing and telegrams to the President and to key legislators. In the summer of 1989, NCRR led a “Day of Protest” to urge legislators to fund the CLA’s promise of monetary reparations. Time was of the essence; so many older Nikkei were dying each month.
Late in November, 1989, President Bush signed an appropriations bill that “says that up to $500 million would be provided as an ‘entitlement’ in 1991.” (Los Angeles Times, November 22, 1989) Senator Daniel Inouye was credited for his hard work to ensure the funding and the entitlement status.
The Department of Justice’s Office of Redress Administration (ORA) was charged with the Act’s directive of finding and paying all eligible individuals who were interned during World War II. Since its start in the Fall, 1988, the ORA and its Executive Director Robert K. Bratt met with community leaders. NCRR’s Miya Iwataki helped set up one of the first community meetings with Bratt in the Fall, 1989 at Centenary Methodist Church in Los Angeles.
NCRR was clear in its new mission: NCRR would work closely with the ORA to make sure that the procedures for receiving the apology and reparations check were communicated clearly and quickly to community organizations and to the public through the vernaculars. Meetings with the ORA would be held within the local communities. The government agency would be monitored in their work with the Nikkei former camp inmates and others affected by the government’s wartime actions. NCRR soon established a strong relationship with the ORA’s staff and had regular and frequent phone and fax communication with them for over ten years.
By July, 1989, NCRR member John Ota had written an extensive letter to Valerie Obrien of the ORA pointing out NCRR’s concerns with the Regulations that would be used to accomplish the mission of the CLA and urging administrative remedies. Not only did the Act not provide redress for the families of the eldest Nikkei who had died before the signing of the Act, it excluded any person who did not have citizenship or permanent residency during the war era. The Japanese Latin Americans fell into this category since they were forcibly removed from their homes in Latin America and imprisoned in the United States.
On October 10, 1990, NCRR members were pleased to witness the ceremony in Washington D.C. to provide the first redress checks and Presidential apology to eight of the eldest survivors of the wartime incarceration. A second similar ceremony took place days later in Los Angeles.
By the end of 1992, when the youngest eligible survivors were receiving redress, NCRR was contacted by dozens of Nikkei who were receiving letters from the ORA denying their eligibility. By 1993, over 2,000 individuals had been denied redress. The nature of NCRR’s work with the ORA began to change as we became advocates for the denied applicants and sought remedies within the Justice Department to make them eligible for redress.
At this time, community meetings and regular communication with the ORA continued. Many Nikkei who were denied redress met with NCRR to get help in filing an appeal. NCRR joined with other organizations such as the JACL to lobby top officials at Justice to urge a broad interpretation of the law or amending the regulations to the act. In 1993, a delegation of NCRR and JACL members met with Assistant Attorney General James Turner in Washington D.C. The meeting was productive in creating eligibility for a category called “baby internees” and for agreement upon the use of “the benefit of the doubt” in eligibility for certain cases. The delegation also met with Nikkei congressmen and other strong supporters. (NCRR Banner. Fall 1993)
In September, 1994, another community delegation met with ORA officials and Assistant Attorney General Deval Patrick. Mr. Patrick assured the delegation that he would “take an expansive interpretation of the Civil Liberties Act and is committed to concerted fact finding in the remaining redress cases.” (NCRR Banner, Jan-Feb 1995) While the ORA looked to their legal counsel for opinions on the act, NCRR worked with the Japanese American Bar Association (JABA) to seek attorneys who would pursue lawsuits for those claimants whose appeal to the ORA was finally denied.
By 1995 reparations had been given to 79,343 cases; the ORA had ruled 2,280 people ineligible. Through the effort led by the Arizona JACL, the ORA reversed its decision for 56 previously denied claimants in the Glendale, Arizona area. In addition the Hawaii JACL led the fight for the JAs who had been denied redress . In 1995, 128 Hawaiian Japanese who had been incarcerated or otherwise deprived of liberty were granted reparations.
One of the larger categories of denied cases involved the “children of voluntary evacuees”, terminology used by the ORA. This group represents the children of Nikkei who left the west coast in March, 1942, and moved to an interior state. These claimants’ appeals of denial were turned down by the ORA. Where no administrative solution could be granted by the Department of Justice, the judicial route was encouraged.
One of the first successful redress related lawsuits was the case of Linda Consolo who was born in Utah after her parents left the west coast in March, 1942.The success of the Consolo and Douglas Ishida lawsuits benefited 900 claimants who were similarly situated and encouraged other claimants to consider filing a lawsuit. Here, NCRR was able to get the help of a number of community attorneys.
The greatest struggle between the ORA and NCRR arose with their decision to deny reparations to a segment of the children of Nikkei who left the west coast during March, 1942 and moved to interior states. These “children of voluntary evacuees” who were born after January 20, 1945 were ultimately denied redress. The ORA held to the opinion that because Nikkei were able to return to the west coast after January 2, 1945, to stay beyond that date was their decision.
NCRR urged that the dates of internment were stated in the CLA and that June 30, 1946 should be used to determine eligibility. Unfortunately, the ORA extended the eligibility period to January 20, 1945 only.
Another large category of denials proved to be the most difficult: the Japanese who were forcibly removed from Latin America and imprisoned by the United States to be used as hostage exchange prisoners . After the denial of appeals to the ORA, a lawsuit was filed in 1996. While the judge at the Court of Federal Claims was sympathetic, he was not ready to rule in favor of the Japanese Latin Americans.
The Department of Justice, however, in a surprising move, offered an out-of-court settlement to the JLAs of an apology and $5,000 in reparations. While met with mixed responses, the majority accepted the settlement and only a few rejected it. Arturo Shibayama, who had been prominent in the struggle for redress, rejected the settlement and filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government.
To this day, the Campaign for Justice: Justice Now for Japanese Latin Americans! continues its campaign to win equitable redress for JLAs with the support of Senator Daniel Inouye and Congressman Xavier Becerra at the lead.
In the Fall, 1998, the ORA officially ended its operations . It did, however, continue to assist the community with copies of documentation and other support services. In August at a special program in Little Tokyo, NCRR acknowledged its gratitude to the ORA, in particular to Bob Bratt and Joanne Chiedi, for their tremendous support, professionalism, and compassion in working with the Japanese American community in the ten-year process.
On November 1, 2002, the former ORA officials reported that 82,220 payments had been made under the CLA of 1988. A number of cases were processed under the Summer 1999 Supplemental Funding: 44 Japanese American cases and 645 JLA Mochizuki Settlement cases.