Published August 3, 2007
There's a notion that the legislative strategies and lobbying machinery of the JACL's redress campaign were created after the federal commission hearings were completed and a monetary redress bill was introduced in the Congress. The reality - the truth - is that the machinery was operational four years earlier and was a function of grassroots lobbying by JACL members to get the commission bill passed. I want to set the record straight on that because those who fought those early battles deserve credit for their accomplishments, especially when so few among their colleagues believed in what they were fighting for.
It was in 1979, with the introduction of the bill to create the federal commission that the grassroots lobbying began. It started with an initial effort to seek resolutions of support from city councils by JACL chapters as a way of educating local decision-makers and testing the lobbying ability of the organization. We went from there to focus on state legislators, pushing resolutions through different state houses for states' support of the redress effort. All were preparation for the two big battles that lay ahead: the bill to establish the commission, and the bill that would seek redress from the government.
At that time, the redress operation at the national level consisted of myself as a volunteer chair of the JACL's redress committee, Carol Hayashino, whom I hired for her street smarts and her research abilities, and Bill Yoshino, the new director for the Midwest region, a savvy strategic thinker and, ultimately, a key figure throughout the JACL's 10 year campaign. My role was to craft both the legislative and public affairs strategies for the campaign and move the issue into the public arena.
I had no experience in grassroots campaigning, nor did Bill or Carol, but it didn't take any special genius to understand that grassroots lobbying had to be a coordinated effort and implemented on several levels to be effective. We had to fight the battle in the public arena, which meant reaching out to the media and to audiences.
"Convince the public and you can convince the Congress," I had told Clifford Uyeda, elected as JACL national president in 1978 and the person who selected me to run the redress campaign. The formula was simple enough. It was getting it done that was, of course, the real challenge.
The nexus of the campaign was the lobbying effort in Washington, D.C., and that effort was coordinated with JACL chapters and coalition partners both locally and nationally. Ultimately, education became the linchpin of the campaign because I knew that without the public's support, we would never get a bill passed through the Congress. This was a campaign that would be fought in the public arena because it was important to convince the public that the internment wasn't justified and that the branding of Japanese Americans as disloyal to this country was an act of racism and greed.
Consequently, we focused on informing our chapters about facts of the internment through informational and lobbying packets as we introduced the commission bill in the Congress, and it was the chapters that began the arduous task of educating their communities and elected officials. The battle was fought at the grassroots level at first by a handful of JACLers who formed the backbone of the lobbying effort as we fought for passage of the commission bill, and then for redress legislation.
All of this was choreographed around a larger strategy that focused on target areas, with the Midwest being key to our strategy. We assumed strong support from the West Coast states and from the Northeast, but it was apparent to me early on that we needed the Midwest vote. There were more total votes in the Midwest than in the West Coast region, and just as importantly, this was the Heartland, this was Middle America with its strong moral sense and basic beliefs in American democracy and justice. It was also an area that had urban centers with enormous political clout.
And this is where Bill Yoshino became so critical from the beginning and to the ultimate success of the campaign. He coordinated with chapters throughout the region and worked on building coalition partners from city to city. It was a monumental effort just in the Midwest, but it was my belief that we would live or die by what happened there. And that's exactly how it turned out because it was the Midwest vote that ultimately got us over the top with both the commission and redress bills.
The JACL lobbying machinery that served so well to get passage of the Civil Liberties Act needed oiling and greasing at the start but became an efficient operation at various levels, getting congressional votes, building coalition partners, educating the public, and fighting for a historic piece of legislation in the Congress.
In 1979, only a handful of JACLers stood together to oil the wheels of the organization's lobbying machinery, but they persevered to the end. They were the silent heroes of that phenomenal campaign and asked for nothing more than a chance to set the record straight.
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