Alfred Nabeta, a Nisei from Los Angeles living in Huntington Beach at the time of testimony, spoke before the CWRIC about the devastating toll of early removal under Executive Order 9066.

• Forced Out Before Camps Were Ready: As part of the so-called “voluntary” evacuees, Alfred and his family were expelled from Los Angeles before relocation centers had even been built. He reminded the commission that this was not voluntary but coerced under threat of arrest.

• Exile in Utah: The family was pushed into a basement room in Salt Lake City with no jobs, no property, and no government support. They lived in hunger and destitution.

• Father’s Death: His father, though cleared by the FBI in Los Angeles, was interrogated again in Utah. He died soon after of malnutrition, tuberculosis, and what Alfred described as “a broken spirit.”

• Exploitation & Breakdown: Employers took advantage of Alfred’s desperation, paying him little or nothing for hard labor. He suffered both physical injury and a mental breakdown.

• Family Loss: Of nine family members in 1941, only four survived beyond 1946. No funds or provisions were ever offered to them as early evacuees.

• Legacy of Land: Alfred showed the commission family photos, including one of his father farming for the U.S. government during WWI. He noted their lost Los Angeles property would later be valued at nearly $2.5 million, now built over by the state.

• Closing Reflection: He ended by stressing that his health—both physical and mental—was permanently damaged by the government’s actions. He asked that the record reflect the truth: “voluntary relocation” was in fact enforced relocation under threat of prison.

Phil Shigekuni, who spent his childhood years at Amache camp in Colorado, testified before the CWRIC about the danger of silence, the burden of misinformation, and the urgent need for redress.

• Childhood in Camp: At eight and nine years old, Phil was incarcerated with his family at Amache. Decades later, as a high school counselor, he still carried those memories while helping younger generations understand what happened.

• Confronting Misinformation: He described hearing colleagues—educated people, even fellow veterans—say things like, “What happened to you is the same as what happened to me in the Navy.” Such statements shocked him, but he realized they persisted because the Japanese American community had long remained silent about its grievances.

• Youth Confusion: Even his students repeated myths handed down from parents—that camps were “for protection” or “military necessity.” Phil’s anger at these distortions fueled his commitment to redress work.

• Commission Concerns: Criticized a commissioner’s public comments about Congress’s unwillingness to fund redress before testimony was even complete. He urged that recommendations be based on evidence and justice—not fiscal climate.

• Faith in America: Stressed that despite humiliation, loss of property, and imprisonment, Japanese Americans had remained loyal to the United States. “The time has come to see that this faith is well founded. Japanese America is counting on you for justice. Please don’t let us down.”

• Debate on Money & Principle: Pressed by commissioners about the realism of Congress approving billions in compensation, Phil acknowledged the dilemma: elders were dying, and justice delayed could mean justice denied. Still, he held that principle must guide the Commission, not political expediency.

• On Heirs & Comparisons: When asked whether heirs should receive compensation, he cited Holocaust reparations as precedent, though admitted he would not press as strongly for heirs if it meant jeopardizing immediate justice for survivors. He distinguished Japanese American redress from slavery by emphasizing direct, documented government action in WWII.

Tom T. Watanabe, a UCLA and University of Chicago–trained physician, testified before the Commission with striking memories of Los Angeles before and during mass removal. His words blended clinical precision with personal outrage, capturing both the indignities of camp and the hypocrisy of America’s values.

• Images of Loss: Recalled women and children on Terminal Island selling possessions to junk dealers, and the sight of Nisei families’ belongings scattered on lawns, marked with insultingly low prices.

• Curfew & Fear: L.A. divided into quadrants after Pearl Harbor, Japanese Americans forbidden to cross lines. Doctors feared making night calls; Watanabe and Dr. Kobayashi, both citizens, were asked to risk it.

• Neighbors Turned Hostile: Friends of 30 years spat upon Issei elders and ignored them on buses — everyday cruelties rarely recorded.

• Medical Exile: Every Japanese American doctor, nurse, and technician expelled from L.A. County Hospital on a single day’s notice.

• Life in Manzanar: Put in charge of the X-ray department, tuberculosis ward, surgeries, and clinics — all for $19 a month. He worked seven days a week, training high school students to serve as aides because of the shortage of medical staff.

• Mixed Feelings on Redress: Acknowledged financial losses were massive, yet believed the greatest damage was educational disruption for young people. Compared reparations to modern salaries of athletes — millions earned in minutes — while Japanese Americans lost years behind barbed wire.

• Vision for the Future: Called for America to redirect the money and passion poured into space conquest toward conquering “inner space” — the hearts and minds of people, learning to walk in brotherhood.

Harry Kawahara, speaking as chair of the Japanese American Citizens League’s Pacific Southwest District Redress Committee, testified before the CWRIC about why Japanese Americans could not “just forget” the camps and why reparations were necessary.

• Why Redress, Why Now: Addressed critics asking why Japanese Americans were raising the issue nearly 40 years later. He argued the experience was too deeply embedded—part of their psyches, legacy, and identity.

• Metaphor of Violation: Compared incarceration to rape by one’s own country—freedom, dignity, and civil liberties stripped away, leaving victims with shame, guilt, and silence. He explained how Japanese cultural values of shame made it especially difficult to speak about the camps for decades.

• Breaking the Silence: Described recent community workshops as therapeutic and cathartic, finally allowing survivors to release suppressed anger, frustration, and rage. Many had even avoided talking about camp with their children until pressed.

• Psychological Impact: Emphasized how the camps shattered self-esteem, fostered self-hatred, and damaged ethnic identity. The scars lingered across generations.

• Not Waiting 39 Years: Listed decades of organized efforts: wartime court challenges, property-loss campaigns (1945–52), repeal of the Emergency Detention Act (1960s), and other fights for Social Security and retirement credit. Redress, he argued, was part of a long struggle.

• What Justice Means: Invoked school lessons about democracy—when harmed, defamed, or falsely imprisoned, one seeks redress. He stressed that until personal reparations are made, Japanese Americans’ reputations remain tainted and many Americans still view them as disloyal.

• On Compensation: When pressed on numbers, Kawahara pointed to $25,000 per internee or heir—a figure seriously discussed in the community, totaling around $3 billion. While acknowledging political realities, he deferred to Minoru Yasui’s words: “If not this Congress, then the next one. Five years, ten years, twenty years—we will return.”

Morris Kight, a Los Angeles human rights activist, co-founder of the Gay Liberation Front, and member of the L.A. County Human Relations Commission, testified before the CWRIC with a call to conscience and action.

• Personal Apology: Opened by apologizing directly to Japanese Americans for not doing enough during WWII, saying that silence itself was a crime. He sought forgiveness for his inaction and urged the nation to join in a collective apology.

• Moral Duty: Declared that “never again” must be more than words. Civil rights groups, churches, government agencies, and communities must actively advocate for redress and guard against racism in all its forms.

• Concrete Reparations: Went beyond symbolism—proposed compensating families at 1981 values for homes, businesses, farms, vehicles, furnishings, and profits lost. Suggested wages be calculated at current minimum or professional rates for the entire period of incarceration.

• Archive Proposal: Called for a $10 million federally funded Japanese American archive in Little Tokyo (near 244 S. San Pedro Street) to preserve testimonies, photographs, poems, camp designs, and artworks. He envisioned it as both a cultural sanctuary and a permanent reminder: never again.

• Living Memory: Moved by photos of pets chasing buses as families were taken away, he reminded the commission that even animals felt the rupture of incarceration.

• Challenge to Congress: Urged the commission not to temper recommendations out of fear of political resistance. Instead, he called for the most moral position possible, with Congress lobbied to provide swift and fair appropriations.

• On Justice: Insisted reparations must not be token gestures—anything less would be “cruel” and would only reopen wounds of injustice.

Robert W. O’Brien, former director of the National Japanese American Student Relocation Council and speaking on behalf of the American Friends Service Committee, testified before the CWRIC about the unfinished work of justice.

• Student Relocation Efforts: During WWII, O’Brien helped relocate Japanese American students from camps to colleges across the country. He recalled that the presidents of major universities—including Stanford, UC, and Washington—petitioned the government to support students’ education with federal funds. None was ever provided.

• On the Supreme Court: He argued that the wartime rulings upholding incarceration (Korematsu, Hirabayashi, Yasui) must be overturned. Until they are reversed, he warned, “any minority under inflamed public opinion runs the danger of losing its constitutional rights.”

• Critique of Language: O’Brien rejected euphemisms like “evacuation” and “evacuee,” calling them dishonest. He insisted on terms that revealed the true injustice of exclusion and incarceration.

• Historical Myths: He challenged the assumption that “all Caucasians supported internment,” pointing to Seattle’s Tolan Committee hearings where many white attorneys, professors, clergy, and citizens testified against exclusion.

• On “Never Again”: O’Brien pressed Japanese Americans to reflect on what the slogan truly means. He believed the younger Sansei generation, already forging alliances with Black, Latino, and Asian American movements, had built the community’s strongest ties yet to wider America.

• Looking Forward: He placed hope in youth and allies to ensure constitutional rights are protected, and urged that the Supreme Court be given a chance to rectify its “outrageous” wartime errors.

Henry S. Yamaga, a retired businessman from Norwalk, California, testified before the CWRIC about how false rumors, racial prejudice, and wartime hysteria destroyed the successful grocery business he and his family had built over a decade.

• Building a Business: Before the war, his family’s grocery served 67% of Norwalk’s population. They were respected members of the Chamber of Commerce and widely regarded as good citizens.

• Rumors & Accusations: Competitors and informants spread lies that Yamaga was hiding enough weapons for 500 soldiers. FBI agents and sheriffs repeatedly searched his home and store—without warrants—finding nothing.

• Radio Static Misread as Espionage: Local police accused him of sending coded messages to Japanese submarines off the coast, based only on static they picked up while driving past his home. Yamaga personally rode in patrol cars with police until the real source was discovered: a white neighbor’s electric shaver.

• Family in Fear: His father, a legal U.S. resident but not a citizen, packed a suitcase every night in case he was taken away. He even bathed and dressed in a clean shirt nightly, saying he wanted to be “proper” if they came to cut his neck.

• Exclusion & Loss: On March 29, 1942—the final day for voluntary departure—his family fled to Colorado. They were forced to sell their thriving business at a devastating loss. After four years away, they returned to Norwalk to start over from scratch.

• On Injustice: Yamaga testified that Executive Order 9066 wiped out ten years of hard work and prosperity: “The Exclusion Order wiped out ten years of my life, in which time I built up a good business and good life.”

Sally Tsuneishi, born and raised in Hawai‘i, shared her family’s devastating wartime story with the CWRIC, offering both personal memories and the lasting scars of injustice.

• Respected Father Taken: Her father, a community leader in Kahala, Hawai‘i—school president, newspaper reporter, matchmaker—was arrested by the FBI and local sheriff on the night of December 7, 1941. He vanished into the dark without protest. The family would not see him for two and a half years.

• Family Stigmatized: Left behind, Sally’s mother raised seven children alone. Neighbors stopped patronizing their store, fearful of association. The family survived only through the generosity of a few friends and food from their garden.

• Ordered to Evacuate: In late 1942, Sally’s family, along with 400 others connected to interned community leaders, was told to prepare for evacuation to the mainland—without explanation of where they were headed. They abandoned their farm, home, family heirlooms, and her father’s writings and stamp collection, never to be recovered.

• Shame & Betrayal: As the Army truck came to take them, Sally felt her family’s “good name was smeared” and that they were branded disloyal. Passing her high school and seeing the American flag, she wept, remembering her prize-winning essay: “Why I Am Proud to Be an American.”

• Jerome, Arkansas: On January 5, 1943, the family arrived at Jerome camp. For Hawai‘i-born children, the freezing winter was unbearable. Living on the edge of camp, Sally faced the constant shadow of barbed wire, guard towers, and armed soldiers. At just 16, she became head of household because her mother could not read or write English.

• Father’s Return: Allowed to visit him in a POW camp in Louisiana, she was devastated to see her once-vibrant father aged beyond recognition, leaning on a cane, broken in health and spirit. When he finally rejoined the family, he was tubercular and never recovered.

• Return Without a Home: After the war, the family went back to Hawai‘i—but their store and home had been confiscated. They lived under another house, sharing a landlord’s washtub as bath, sink, and laundry. Sally worked as a nurse’s aide, while her father became a janitor in a pineapple cannery.

• A Brother’s Sacrifice: Her younger brother, her father’s pride, graduated from the University of Hawai‘i, joined the U.S. Air Force, and died in a mid-air explosion while serving his country.

• Invisible Wounds: Sally testified that their family’s greatest loss was potential—the futures and opportunities stolen from each of them. She called on the U.S. to acknowledge these injustices and offer reparations, declaring that “there cannot be a healing of the invisible wounds we bear so painfully” without recognition.