The Battle Rages On

For human rights activist Grace Shimizu, it was the 1990 reunion of Peruvian Japanese internees in San Francisco that sparked what has become an eight-year “labor of love” to win justice for them.

Her passion has turned a good portion of her El Cerritos home, which she shares with her aging parents, into an office.

Since July, the 45-year-old Japanese American has traveled to three continents, held numerous press conferences and continued her frequent trips to Los Angeles, headquarters for the redress campaign for Japanese Latin Americans interned in this country during World War II.

The last three weeks have been especially hectic, as she rushes to help Japanese Latin American internees meet Monday’s deadline for redress applications.

In June, President Clinton issued an official apology, and the government pledged $5,000 to each of the estimated 2,200 Japanese Latin American internees as part of the effort to make amends for the relocations.

“We recognize the wrongs of the past and offer our profound regret to those who endured such grave injustice,” Clinton said. “We understand that our nation’s actions were rooted in racial prejudice and wartime hysteria, and we must learn from the past and dedicate ourselves as a nation to renewing and strengthening equality, justice and freedom.”

Shimizu’s 91-year-old Japanese Peruvian father was among the 2,264 women, men and children from 13 Latin American countries forcibly interned in the United States. What she has learned during her meetings with people in Hawaii, Japan and Peru is how dismal the federal government’s notification process has been, she said.

Lengthy legal notices in Spanish and English have gone to internees in Japan who cannot read either language, said Shimizu, founder of the Los Angeles-based Campaign for Justice. She returned Wednesday from an 18-day, seven-city trip to brief internees and help them make informed decisions about the applications. She visited Honolulu, Tokyo, Osaka, Fukuoka, Hiroshima, Naha and Lima, cities with sizable numbers of Japanese Latin American internees.

She said some have received several notices, while others have received none. Some got notices in Japanese that angered them because they found the content “offensive,” she said.

“Why isn’t there a better translation?” Shimizu asked. “How much trouble is it to send letters [to each person] in three languages [Japanese, Spanish and English]?”

A representative of the U.S. Justice Department said Friday that the government, in accordance with a court order, had mailed an eight-page legal notice packet to more than 600 former internees and their heirs in the language in which their initial claims were filed.

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“We’ve done everything required under the court order--and more,” the representative said.

Shimizu and other advocates fear that as many as 600 more eligible people may not apply by the Monday deadline because they don’t know about the offer.

About 80% of the former internees were Peruvians of Japanese ancestry. Many, like Shimizu’s father, Susumu, were prosperous entrepreneurs in Lima.

The elder Shimizu was first taken to Panama for hard labor, then held inside a Crystal City internment camp in Texas. His first wife died there. After the war, the once successful charcoal merchant started rebuilding his life in California as a gardener.

The episode was such a painful chapter of his life that he didn’t talk about it--not even to his only child.

After years of pleas, the U.S. government formally apologized for the internment of Japanese Americans in 1988 and offered payments to survivors under the Civil Liberties Act. Under this measure, the government has paid more than 81,000 Japanese Americans $20,000 each.

When Japanese Latin Americans applied for redress under the act, however, most were told they were ineligible because they were not legal U.S. residents when they were brought to the United States against their will.

It took a lawsuit, spearheaded by Shimizu’s group in 1996, to get the government to admit to the injustice inflicted on Japanese Latin Americans.

Shimizu’s persistent efforts have brought recognition to Japanese Latin Americans and brought them into the mainstream of the Japanese American community, community watchers say.

“Even though she lived in the Bay Area, she kept calling me,” said Kay Ochi, vice president of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Coalition for Redress/Reparations, recalling her first contact with Shimizu in the early 1990s.

“At a time when a lot of redress activists were starting to slow down, Grace would come in like a dynamo and always advocate for Japanese Latin Americans,” Ochi said.

She said Shimizu sought to have Japanese Latin Americans included in the Day of Remembrance observances, marking the anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 9066, which sent Japanese Americans to camps. And she often sought to make sure that her group had a table or a speaker at a Japanese American community function in Los Angeles.

“She did not want to compromise any of the Japanese Latin Americans,” Ochi said.

“We call Grace the moral barometer of the campaign,” said Julie Small, a core member of the Campaign for Justice.

“Where other people tend to say, ‘What can we do?’ ‘What’s practical, what’s feasible?’ Grace seeks what should happen,” Small said.

Still, as far as the U.S. government is concerned, there is a clear distinction between Japanese American internees and Japanese Latin American internees, said Mitsuaki Oyama, a former internee who now lives in Tokyo.

“Japanese American internees are given $20,000 but we are eligible for only $5,000,” Oyama said from Tokyo.

Furthermore, whereas Japanese Americans had 10 years to file their applications (from the enactment of the Civil Liberties Act in Aug. 10, 1988 to Monday), Japanese Latin Americans were given only two months, he complained. Also, Japanese Latin Americans should have been given more time because they are scattered all over the world, he added.

The deadline may be Monday, but Shimizu sees a longer fight ahead.

“Many consider what our families went through--forced deportation, hard labor and civilians thrust in war zones with hostage exchanges--crimes against humanity,” Shimizu said.

Researchers say more than 500 Japanese Peruvians were included in the two prisoner of war exchanges in 1942 and 1943. Some were forced to do hard labor, and 1,400 were confined to internment camps for the duration of the war.

For the federal government to treat the internees differently means that it has not internalized the Civil Liberties Act, she said.

“Is this the best the U.S. government can do?” Shimizu asked. “Is this the standard of justice and redress that should be promoted to the rest of the world?”