Model Minority Stereotype 1 9 7slurs and relentless bul.docx

Model Minority Stereotype | 1 9 7
slurs and relentless bullying and attacks by his unit
members before his death.
Another soldier, Harry Lew, committed sui-
cide after suffering threats and brutal hazing at the
hands of his fellow soldiers. These and similar inci-
dents serve to illustrate the ongoing prejudice that
affects Asian Americans. The experiences of Asian
Americans in the military vary. Some have come
forward to express that Asian Americans often en-
dure various types of harassment, from milder
forms of racial stereotyping to hazing. Others, how-
ever, have suffered none. But the incidents described
raised a large public outcry and led to issues of rac-
ism in the military being highlighted.
Conclusion
Asian Americans have fought with great distinc-
tion in many U.S. wars since the early 19th century.
However, Asian Americans have traditionally repre-
sented the lowest number of volunteers of any eth-
nic group in the country. Today, in some Califor-
nia areas such as the San Francisco Bay Area and
Los Angeles County, numbers for Asian American
recruited soldiers have risen to almost double their
representation in the general population. In 2010,
the proportion of enlisted soldiers grew to nearly
double that of the previous year. Reportedly, how-
ever, Asian Americans do not serve often in the front
lines. Most Asian Americans serve in some area of

technical support. In some cases, reportedly, Asian
Americans seek noncombat jobs due to cultural or
religious issues and others because they tend to be
more academically inclined and seek training that
may be useful in careers beyond the military.
The role played by Asian Americans in the U.S.
military and their distinguished military service
have highlighted their contributions as American
citizens. Consequently, this has helped dispel much
of the stereotyping traditionally disseminated about
people of Asian descent. This has contributed, some
argue, to open doors for Asian Americans in public
service arenas, such as judicial courts and the U.S.
House of Representatives and the Senate. For ex-
ample, Dalip Singh Saund, an Indian Asian Ameri-
can born in Punjab, in 1957 became the first Asian
American elected to Congress and served until 1973.
He had become a U.S. citizen in 1946. Saund was the
first Indian American to be elected to Congress and
was re-elected twice. Daniel K. Inouye, from Hawaii,
became the highest-ranking Asian American politi-
cian in the history of the United States. Inouye was a
veteran who had fought in World War II as a mem-
ber of the renowned 442nd Infantry Regiment and
received many military medals as well as the Con-
gressional Medal of Honor. He was elected to the
House of Representatives in 1959 and to the U.S.
Senate in 1962. From 2010, he served as the senate’s
president pro tempore until his death in 2012. The
following year he was posthumously awarded the
Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Trudy Mercadal

See Also: Chinese Americans; Japanese Americans;
Filipino Americans; Political Leadership.
Further Readings
Bielakowski, A. M. Ethnic and Racial Minorities in the
U.S. Military. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2013.
Moy, Victoria. Fighting for the Dream: Voices of Chinese
American Veterans From World War II to Afghanistan.
Los Angeles: Chinese Historical Society of Southern
California, 2014.
Moy, Victoria. “History Through the Eyes of Chinese
Americans Who Served Their Country.” TeaLeaf
Nation (July 8, 2013). http://www.tealeafnation.com/
2013/07/history-through-the-eyes-of-chinese
-americans-who-served-their-country (Accessed
November 2014).
Test, Samantha. “Attention Turns to Asian Americans in
the Military in Light of Recent Suicides and Increased
Enrollment.” Northwest Asian Weekly, v.31/17 (2012).
http://www.nwasianweekly.com/2012/04/attention
-turns-to-asian-americans-in-the-military-in-light
-of-recent-suicides-and-increased-enrollment
(Accessed November 2014).
U.S. Army. “Asian Pacific Americans in the United States
Army.” http://www.army.mil/asianpacificamericans/
history (Accessed November 2014).
Model Minority Stereotype
The model minority stereotype (MMS) is an over-
simplif ied perception of Asian American and

1 9 8 | Model Minority Stereotype
Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) that casts AAPIs as the
ideal minority population compared to other mi-
nority groups in the United States. The MMS pro-
motes the idea that all AAPIs are achieving social,
educational, and economic success, and that other
minority populations should act similarly if they
want to succeed. It is important to be conscious of
the MMS, which has been critiqued as both a po-
litical tool to divide race-based coalitions, and as
a rationale for denying AAPI inclusion, advocacy,
and allocation of resources. The MMS emerged as
a solution to racial conflict in the mid-1960s, when
the United States experienced violent political and
social unrest surrounding minorities’ civil rights.
Until then, Japanese Americans had been vilified as
enemies, and Chinese Americans were considered
unassimilable aliens.
In January 1966, the New York Times published
“Success Story, Japanese-American Style” by sociol-
ogist William Petersen. Petersen did not use the term
model minority, but he introduced the idea that Jap-
anese Americans had become “better than any other
group in our society, including native-born whites.”
In December 1966, the U.S. News and World Report
glowingly described Chinese Americans in “Success
Story of One Minority Group in U.S.” Both articles
emphasized how each group had overcome racism
and discrimination, and had succeeded by achieving
high education and occupation levels, being good
law-abiding citizens, and transmitting family values.
The articles favored each group compared to “prob-

lem minorities,” or “Negroes.”
The turn in public representation yielded a pos-
itive perception of Asian Americans, which schol-
ars and community members both embraced and
rejected. At the time, syndicated news columnists
promoted the idea of a model minority as a solution
to racial conflict. They called for social scientists to
study the phenomenon. Researchers’ findings sup-
ported the Japanese American success story, which
widened the perception that Asian Americans had
achieved equality with whites, and no longer expe-
rienced discrimination. The media and research-
ers implied that other minorities could and should
do the same, a stance scorned by activist Amy Uy-
ematsu as a way for “white America to hold up the
‘successful’ Oriental image before other minority
groups as the model to emulate.” Ki-Taek Chun, Bob
Suzuki, and Shirley Hune expressed concern that
the editorials and evidence supporting the MMS
continued to dominate perceptions of Asian Amer-
icans through the 1970s, despite closer examination
of contrary evidence. Ellen Wu places these articles
in the context of a century of whites controlling mi-
norities by creating positive and negative images to
sway public opinion.
Implications
The MMS is the belief that AAPIs are more like
whites than blacks in realizing the American dream
by easily assimilating, working and studying hard,
and achieving academic, occupational, and finan-
cial success. L. Ling-chi Wang writes that the model
minority narrative implies that AAPIs are law-abid-
ing, eager to please, respectful of superiors, and not

demanding more from their employers or the gov-
ernment. AAPIs are believed to excel in math and
science, to have few social and mental health prob-
lems, to know their place, and to raise children who
are the same. Wang asserts that the MMS served as
an opportune political tool for the media and gov-
ernment to redirect the political discourse on mi-
nority rights and redistribution of national wealth
and income. The public could focus on AAPIs in
contrast to the stereotypes of “rowdy, lazy, defiant,
broken and welfare-dependent families” of other
races. Wang’s thesis of the MMS as a political wedge
to divide minority groups explains why the MMS
persists as an overarching misconception about all
AAPIs five decades after its introduction.
Those who believe that Asian Americans are the
model minority question the objection to being pos-
itively portrayed. Citing the benefits of a stellar rep-
utation, they assert that AAPIs should not complain.
The MMS silences AAPIs by diminishing their ex-
periences as a diverse population facing racism, vi-
olence, and injustice. The MMS justifies discrimi-
nation in the form of ignoring AAPIs and excluding
them from wide-scale research studies that yield
longitudinal data to examine and address AAPIs’
needs in education, the workplace, the community,
and other settings. In addition, studies on AAPIs
need to disaggregate, or collect research data about
each group within the aggregate AAPI category, in
order to address the specific needs and issues of each
population. The dearth of data has translated into
Movies | 1 9 9

an assumption that AAPIs have no problems, and
therefore that they do not need help. The MMS con-
tributes to decision makers’ indifference to AAPI is-
sues and an inequitable allocation of resources.
Addressing the Stereotype’s Persistence
Aware of the role of research to propagate the MMS
as a political maneuver, community leaders and
scholars continue their advocacy and scholarship
to raise awareness on how the MMS narrows pub-
lic perceptions of AAPIs, and contrary to the ste-
reotype, affects their education, safety, welfare, op-
portunities, and success. Education scholars and
activists—including L. Ling-chi Wang, Don T. Na-
kanishi, Stacey J. Lee, Valerie Ooka Pang, Li-rong
Lilly Chen, Peter N. Kiang, Robert Teranishi, Sam-
uel D. Museus, Mitchell J. Chang, and Nicholas
Hartlep—have engaged in research to counter the
impact of the MMS, and advocate for ongoing re-
search. Rosalind S. Chou and Joe R. Feagin found
that AAPIs regularly experience systemic racism in
schools, workplaces, and public places. Dixie J. Koo,
Anthony A. Peguero, and Zahra Shekarkhar found
that Asian American immigrant youth and girls in
particular were vulnerable to school violence and
victimization. ChangHwan Kim and Arthur Saka-
moto found that less-educated AAPIs earn substan-
tially less than do comparable whites because of
their incongruence with the model minority image.
The National Commission on Asian American
and Pacific Islander Research in Education and
the Asian American Center for Advancing Justice
compiled comprehensive facts and demographic
data to dispel myths and illuminate the wide vari-

ation, disparities, and needs among Asian Amer-
icans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders.
Sunmin Lee and colleagues and Guofang Li and
Lihshing Wang documented AAPIs’ mental health
needs and the psychological impact of the MMS.
Alicia Yee Ibaraki, Gordon C. Nagayama Hall, and
Janice A. Sabin proposed that the MMS may lead
to doctors’ under-recommending cancer screening
compared with other populations. Melody Man-
chi Chao, Chi-yue Chiu, and Jamee S. Lee’s experi-
ment established a link between media representa-
tion of the MMS and reduced government support
for needy Asian Americans among individuals wel-
coming social change.
The growing body of knowledge on the MMS
reveals how this oversimplif ied perception of
AAPIs is a product of its political times, used as
a device and rationale for excluding AAPIs from
race-based coalitions, political discourse, and in-
valuable research. Ongoing advocacy and schol-
arship contribute to a more complex and accurate
view of AAPI diversity and issues to help policy-
makers and the public make more educated deci-
sions regarding the fastest-growing minority group
in the United States.
Jennifer A. Yee
See Also: Assimilation and Acculturation; Bamboo
Ceiling; Model Minority Stereotype.
Further Readings
Chou, Rosalind S., and Joe R. Feagin. The Myth of the
Model Minority: Asian Americans Facing Racism. 2nd

ed. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2015.
Hartlep, Nicholas D. The Model Minority Stereotype.
Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, 2013.
Ibaraki, Alicia Yee, Gordon C. Nagayama Hall, and
Janice A. Sabin. “Asian American Cancer Disparities:
The Potential Effects of Model Minority Stereotypes.”
Asian American Journal of Psychology, v.5/1 (2014).
Kim, Chang Hwan, and Arthur Sakamoto. “The Earnings
of Less Educated Asian American Men: Educational
Selectivity and the Model Minority Image.” Social
Problems, v.61/2 (2014).
Wu, Ellen D. The Color of Success: Asian Americans and
the Origins of the Model Minority. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2014.
Movies
Asians have always had a place in American enter-
tainment. However, their inclusion during the early
years of the movie industry was often unflattering.
Stereotypes defined the way that they were portrayed
on film. There were some Asian American movie
stars from the first days of Hollywood. Sessue Hay-
akawa started acting in silent movies when the indus-
try first began, and he was a popular star. However,
he was almost always cast as a bad person in the early
Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, Volume 24, Number 1,
2003,
pp. 38-60 (Article)

DOI: 10.1353/fro.2003.0017
For additional information about this article
Access provided by The Library of California
State University, Fullerton (15 Dec 2015 03:43 GMT)
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/fro/summary/v024/24.1fujita-
rony.html
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/fro/summary/v024/24.1fujita-
rony.html
“Destructive Force”
Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga’s Gendered Labor in the Japanese
American Redress
Movement
thomas y. fujita-rony
In recent years, scholars have significantly deepened our
understanding of the
instrumental role of women in political movements.1 As these
studies have
pointed out, gendered narratives of struggle have often limited
the ways in
which women’s work is perceived as contributing to these
efforts. Especially
when this labor is not visible to outsiders, their crucial
contributions have of-
ten gone underacknowledged, as when women act as informal
organizers, as
the bridges between differing sectors of a movement, or when
they perform

“support” functions.2
This article explores the labor of one such woman, activist Aiko
Herzig-
Yoshinaga, who played a vital role in the national movement for
Japanese
American redress in the 1980s and 1990s. Her discovery of
previously un-
known factual evidence and, crucially, her ability to recreate
and document the
“paper trail” leading to and contextualizing this factual
evidence for others
prompted one opposing lawyer to call her a “destructive force.”
3 Her efforts
were essential in the redress campaign that decisively shattered
the image of
government benevolence and innocence in the World War II
exclusion and in-
carceration of the West Coast’s Japanese American population.4
The article
that follows will discuss how her involvement was shaped by
previous experi-
ences in political struggles, and, significantly, by her decades of
experience as
a clerical worker, a field which has been a largely female
occupation in the
post–World War II era.5
Because of her involvement in the civil rights and antiwar
movements of the
1960s and 1970s, Herzig-Yoshinaga became curious about what
information
the government had collected on her and her family, both from
the wartime
years when she had been incarcerated on the basis of her
Japanese ancestry,

and from more recent decades. She discovered that while
contemporary
records were generally not available, information on the
wartime exclusion
and incarceration was publicly accessible.6 Upon her formal
retirement in
38 frontiers/2003/vol. 24, no. 1
03-N2739 5/21/03 9:30 AM Page 38
Todd Holmberg
1978, she dove into this vast sea of records, and began to
systematically retrieve
and catalog items she found significant. Shortly thereafter, she
joined an or-
ganization that eventually brought a $27 billion class-action
lawsuit against the
government. In 1981, a congressional commission charged with
investigating
the wartime treatment of Japanese Americans and indigenous
Aleuts recog-
nized her expertise, hiring her as the coordinator of research
with the title of
research associate.
The catalog she developed and the documents it indexed became
the core of
the commission’s evidentiary base. Shortly after joining the
commission, she
assisted a separate, independent effort to obtain evidence
showing that in win-

ning their wartime legal cases, Justice Department lawyers had
perpetrated a
fraud upon the Supreme Court. Late in 1982, after examining
hundreds of
thousands of pages of documents, she found irrefutable proof
that the U.S.
Army had knowingly lied about the “military necessity” of
Japanese American
exclusion and incarceration.
In addition to her document-finding and retrieval abilities,
Herzig-Yoshi-
naga was also able to provide detailed documentary evidence
that government
officials had knowingly engaged in deliberately planned illegal
actions. The
prompt and comprehensive provision of this vital evidence was
a critical fac-
tor in shaping the commission’s authoritative report
documenting and de-
nouncing the government’s wartime conduct, and the
recommendations that
an apology and monetary redress were due those who had been
incarcerated.
She later also provided the majority of the archival evidence in
the suits that
destroyed the legal underpinnings of the cases used by the
government during
the war to legitimize the exclusion and incarceration.
To explore these issues at greater length, I will begin by
profiling Herzig-
Yoshinaga’s personal and professional background prior to
1978, and then will
introduce a brief discussion on clerical labor to contextualize
her work during

the redress campaign. Next, her critical contribution to this
political struggle
will be dealt with in detail. I will argue that her work in this
movement was
deeply informed by her long experience as a skilled clerical
worker and that
this was crucial to the success of the redress campaign. By
doing so, I hope to
join a growing number of scholars who have charted the specific
ways women
have participated in political movements, and how their
experiences and
strategies have been shaped by gender.
an activist’s path
A California-born U.S. citizen, Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga was a
seventeen-year-
old high school senior in Los Angeles when she became one of
the roughly
Fujita-Rony: “Destructive Force” 39
03-N2739 5/21/03 9:30 AM Page 39
110,000 West Coast Japanese Americans subjected to
categorical exclusion and
incarceration during World War II.7 This unequivocal
expression of the power
of racism did not break her, but it profoundly changed the
course of her life.
Beginning in 1942, she was imprisoned at Manzanar, California,
where she be-
gan her married life and gave birth to her first child. Later, she

was confined at
camps in Jerome and Rohwer, Arkansas. In December 1944, the
Supreme
Court found in favor of Mitsuye Endo, who had contested the
continued im-
prisonment of Japanese Americans considered loyal, and the
camps were or-
dered closed.8 After her release, Herzig-Yoshinaga returned to
the Los Angeles
area, where she took classes to develop her clerical skills, and
found employ-
ment with a temporary agency.
While working there one day, racism hit her “right between the
eyes,” when
she was sent out to take dictation at a law office.9 The lawyer
to whom she re-
ported asked if she was of Japanese descent, and when informed
of that fact,
brusquely told her that the agency would have to send someone
else. In this
same period, her marriage fell apart, and in its aftermath, she
moved from Los
Angeles to New York City to join her widowed mother and four
siblings.10 In
New York, she again married, and had two more children. This
marriage also
ended in divorce, leaving her as a single parent of two
daughters and a son.11
During this period of her life, Herzig-Yoshinaga concentrated
on being a
“homemaker,” which, as she pointed out, is a “very serious,
honorable posi-
tion.” She became part of the close-knit ethnic community
centered on the

Japanese American United Church in Manhattan, a community
that helped to
sustain her as a single parent of color.12 At this time, she also
sought to improve
her employment options. An honor student at the outbreak of
war, Herzig-
Yoshinaga had been denied graduation because she was
“Japanese.” In New
York, she took night courses to obtain her high school diploma
at the age of
twenty-five, and again found employment as a clerical worker
and eventually
as an office manager, remaining in this kind of work for the
decades that
followed.13
Herzig-Yoshinaga worked at a nonprofit organization until the
early 1960s,
and because its mission involved both sexuality and issues of
government pol-
icy, she became familiar with the use of bureaucratic language
to talk about
controversial subjects. At this office, she continued to
encounter barriers of
race, class, and gender. She remembered being assigned the task
of arranging
the flowers delivered weekly to the office because she was
thought to be “good
with her hands.” As she noted, this simultaneously defined her
as appropri-
ately carrying out women’s work, as incapable of intellectual
activity, and as
racially endowed with flower-arranging skills. This work site
was also where
she began to think more critically about race as a social
construction through

03-N2739 5/21/03 9:30 AM Page 40
a discussion with an African American coworker who felt
unfairly passed over
for a promotion that Herzig-Yoshinaga had obtained. The
coworker had never
heard about the exclusion and incarceration of Japanese
Americans, and so
had not considered Herzig-Yoshinaga as sharing a history of
oppression. After
this discussion, the two became “good friends.” 14
Late in the tumultuous sixties, when her eldest daughter was an
adult and
her younger two children were in school, Herzig-Yoshinaga
began to move to-
ward greater political involvement. The primary vehicle for this
was Asian
Americans for Action (AAA), a group started in 1969 by two
activist women,
Shizuko “Minn” Matsuda and Kazu Iijima, both of whom were
second-gener-
ation Japanese Americans, or Nisei.15 This organization, the
first of its kind on
the East Coast, included one of the most famous Asian Pacific
American ac-
tivists, Yuri Mary Kochiyama, as well as her husband, William
Kochiyama.16 A
majority of the members of AAA were, like Herzig-Yoshinaga,
Nisei women
who had been excluded and incarcerated during the war.17 AAA

engaged in a
variety of activities and protests, including efforts to end the
war in Vietnam,
demonstrations against nuclear research, and consciousness-
raising. Herzig-
Yoshinaga stated that participation in the group “turned me
around,” and got
her thinking more actively about “minorities, about equality,
about ethnic re-
lations.” 18 Through this transformative group experience and
with the support
of the “wonderful members” of AAA, Herzig-Yoshinaga gained
confidence
and a much deeper understanding of oppression,
institutionalized racism, and
injustice.19
Shortly after joining AAA, she left the advertising firm she had
worked for
from the 1960s through the early 1970s for a new job at
Jazzmobile, a Harlem-
based nonprofit organization devoted to jazz music and
education. For the
first time, she was in an African American environment for
eight to ten hours
a day.20 She recounted how one of her supervisors told her a
fact of his life was
to wake every morning knowing that the day would bring
brutality and hu-
miliation based on his race, the only question being the form it
would take. Ap-
preciated for her clerical and managerial skills, and embraced
by her coworkers
and the musicians she worked with, Herzig-Yoshinaga heard
many such sto-
ries of prejudice and unequal treatment in the three years she

spent there. She
left with a much keener eye for detecting discrimination and a
stronger deter-
mination to oppose injustice.21
After three years of working at Jazzmobile, she became the
clerk of the board
of the United Church Board for Homeland Ministries (UCBHM)
of the
United Church of Christ (UCC). In this job she joined a network
of Nisei
women who worked for various boards, agencies, and ministries
of Christian
denominations with offices in New York. She described the
UCBHM and her
03-N2739 5/21/03 9:30 AM Page 41
coworkers there as aware and socially conscious individuals,
many of whom
had participated in movements for social justice. Thus, she was
greatly disap-
pointed when some board members objected to divesting UCC
investments in
South Africa on the grounds that it was fiscally unsound, even
though the cor-
porations indirectly supported the Apartheid regime. She was
shocked to see
“good, well-meaning Christian people” prioritizing money
instead of “what
we as human beings owe each other.” 22

Herzig-Yoshinaga’s work and political experiences thus enabled
her to
quickly grasp the importance of a talk given in 1976 at the
Japanese American
United Church by Michi Nishiura Weglyn, a fashion designer
and a fellow New
Yorker. Weglyn, who had been incarcerated at the Gila River
camp, had re-
cently published Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of
America’s Concentration
Camps. It passionately argued that governmental misconduct
was present in
the planning, execution, and rescinding of both the exclusion
and the incar-
ceration. Her work built on earlier research and documented the
fact that the
highest levels of both the civilian and military leadership knew
that multiple in-
vestigations by both military and civilian security agencies had
determined that
Japanese Americans were not dangerous and that the military
necessity to cat-
egorically exclude and incarcerate was, thus, a myth. Given
this, the actions
taken against Japanese Americans were therefore less an honest
mistake than a
methodically planned and executed violation of a group’s civil
rights due to fear
and prejudice. Weglyn’s painstakingly documented book was
based on a mas-
sive amount of research, utilizing primary source materials from
the National
Archives and the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library in Hyde
Park, and a num-
ber of the more incriminating documents were included in the
book itself.23

For Herzig-Yoshinaga, Weglyn’s work was a revelation, for
although she had
read and thought much on issues of race and oppression, she had
“never really
studied the causes and effects of the exclusion and incarceration
period.” 24
Weglyn and Herzig-Yoshinaga became “fast friends,” as Herzig-
Yoshinaga ex-
panded her knowledge of the exclusion and incarceration with
Weglyn’s sup-
port and advice by phone and through correspondence over the
decades that
followed.25
finding needles
Like Weglyn, Herzig-Yoshinaga was not formally trained as an
archival re-
searcher. The exclusion and incarceration had dashed her
educational dreams
as a young woman, and Herzig-Yoshinaga’s responsibilities as a
single parent
after the war made it a struggle to even attain her high school
diploma. How-
ever, by the time she began her research in the late 1970s, she
had amassed de-
cades of experiential learning as a clerical worker. The skills
she acquired and
03-N2739 5/21/03 9:30 AM Page 42

sharpened through years of constant practice in this
overwhelmingly female
occupation proved instrumental in her later political labor.
The technical skills clerical workers possess and deploy include
those of
composition, rhetoric, and archival research, in addition to an
array of inter-
personal skills. This combination of competencies is what
makes them indis-
pensable in most professional spheres.26 One of the most
important of these
skills is archival research, which is in general loosely referred
to as “filing”
when carried out by clerical workers. It was precisely this skill
that enabled
Herzig-Yoshinaga to play her pivotal role in the redress
campaigns. Because no
index is comprehensive and because filing errors virtually
always occur, to
fully access the information in a set of files in paper form, it is
necessary to un-
derstand how the files were created and used. This knowledge,
along with the
ability to recall not only the location and content of documents
but the pos-
sible connections between them, and thus the places where lost,
improperly
shelved, or other topically related files might reside, is an
important skill for
clerical workers. Therefore, a degree of detective ability, allied
with experien-
tially based knowledge developed through actively working
with a set of files,
is essential to locating and providing information. Further, it is

often the case
that clerical workers, knowing that they will be responsible for
typing and ed-
iting reports based on the information they find, present that
information with
an eye towards issues of composition and logical argument, thus
“invisibly”
shaping the final products.27 In general, however, this vital
work goes unac-
knowledged due to a socially constructed dichotomy between
the “support”
work of clerical workers and the “action” of managers and
technical personnel,
a separation that is further reinforced by prevailing gender
hierarchies.28
Locating and retrieving the massive amounts of information that
are re-
quired in legal cases and government inquiries is a serious
matter, especially
when the information is spread across the records of a number
of institutions.
Furthermore, the difficulty of finding historical documents is
often heightened
by the problems of organizing and maintaining the sheer
quantity of informa-
tion necessary in this kind of work. In the archives themselves,
indexing and
categorization are seldom priorities, and because both
researchers and archiv-
ists are subject to human error, indexes and catalogs are seldom
completely ac-
curate, increasing the difficulties of information retrieval. In the
instance under
discussion, locating and making available the elusive “paper
trail” would prove

to be crucial.
what the government had collected
In 1978 Herzig-Yoshinaga married John “Jack” Herzig and
moved to the Wash-
ington, D.C., area where he worked. At this point in her life,
with her children
03-N2739 5/21/03 9:30 AM Page 43
grown, and with a spouse who brought home the salary of a
senior executive,
she had for the first time the “luxury of not having to go to a
job.” After dis-
covering that FBI and other law enforcement records were
largely restricted,
she decided she would see what existed “in terms of historical
documents
about myself and my family,” at the National Archives, to see
“what the gov-
ernment had collected” during the war. The staff at the National
Archives was
“very, very helpful,” she recalled, and “encouraged me to keep
looking and
looking, and giving me leads on where I could look for more
information over
and above my own family history.” In this journey, she used
Weglyn’s book “as
a guidepost, because she gave meticulous, meticulous attention
to the sources
of her information.” In addition, “there was a constant

communication be-
tween Michi and me,” for Weglyn encouraged Herzig-
Yoshinaga’s research
from New York and gave her “advice on where I could look.” 29
It was here that Herzig-Yoshinaga began the labor that would
prove instru-
mental in the struggle for Japanese American redress. Although
her research
began with a few pages punched and placed into a single
notebook, “it started
to become notebooks, many books, and then it became xerox
boxes, many
boxes, one after the other,” until they occupied nearly every
available space in
her home, including one of the bathtubs. Herzig-Yoshinaga was
able to collect
this massive amount of information by examining documents in
the archives
whenever they were open, working Monday through Saturday,
putting in fifty
and sixty hours per week for years. For Herzig-Yoshinaga, “it
was a wonderful
experience” and she “became quite familiar with the records,
thanks to the
help of a lot of people.” 30 The records she examined beginning
in 1979 in-
cluded those of the War Relocation Authority that ran the camps
as well as ones
deposited by the army’s Western Defense Command, the unit
that planned
and carried out the exclusion. Her extensive research also led
her to explore
the provost marshal general records and those of the assistant
secretary of
war, along with the archival holdings of many other agencies

and units of the
government.31
The foundational core of expertise for this effort was Herzig-
Yoshinaga’s
long experience as a clerical worker. She had learned over her
years on the job
that there was only one way to truly know what was contained
in any set of
files. In every area that seemed promising, each page of each
folder of each box
would have to be examined and its contents and location within
the archives
precisely and accurately recorded. The resulting notations
would then have to
be systematically preserved in a form that would allow access at
a later date, and
this information would provide the basis for pursuing further
research. This
painstaking process is extraordinarily time-consuming. It is also
very difficult
to carry out without error because it demands strict attention to
detail at all
times, despite the tremendously tedious nature of the task.32
03-N2739 5/21/03 9:30 AM Page 44
To provide some idea of the magnitude of the project Herzig-
Yoshinaga
took on, the files of the War Relocation Authority alone consist
of roughly
three thousand cubic feet of records, enough to fill over two

hundred and fifty
standard four-drawer file cabinets; or, put another way, the
collection contains
several million pages of documents.33 These records were not
easy to access,
for as one researcher testified under oath in 1985, “the files of
the WRA in
the [N]ational [A]rchives had a very incomplete indexing
system.” 34 Herzig-
Yoshinaga’s task was roughly equivalent to indexing all the
information in a li-
brary, working from a card catalog that only gave a subject
description by shelf,
without giving individual book titles or authors. Further,
because the stacks at
the National Archives are closed to the public, she had to be
able to describe
what she wanted before she could ask for it to be “pulled” from
storage.
The records Herzig-Yoshinaga was working with had been used
for research
purposes since the war by a number of trained archival scholars
as well as lay
members of the public such as Weglyn.35 However, these
researchers had been
unable to discover documentary proof of governmental
misconduct of a kind
that would allow judicial redress, let alone evidence that the
whole episode was
anything other than an “honest mistake.” Important evidence of
irregularities
had emerged, and the portrayal of the exclusion and
incarceration as a wise
and necessary action had been rendered untenable in scholarly
circles, notably

through the work of historian Roger Daniels, but nothing had
emerged that
was legally actionable.36 Thus, Herzig-Yoshinaga knew that if
evidence proving
government wrongdoing existed, it would not be easily located.
The task she
set herself was akin to finding a single needle in a field full of
haystacks.
To ensure thoroughness, Herzig-Yoshinaga developed a detailed
cross-
referencing classification scheme categorizing documents in
terms of date,
subject, and physical location. Her years of clerical work and
her previous po-
litical activism had equipped her with a critical eye for
language and a sensi-
tivity to implicit meanings, or as she put it, “seeing more than
what was written
on the paper.” 37 As a result, she was able to discern patterns
and weave to-
gether fragments to create coherent wholes that had eluded
others for over
thirty years. A crucial part of her ability to do this was built
into her indexing
and cataloging, as she took the unusual extra step of noting
when documents
she looked at mentioned other documents, adding a huge
additional burden
to her labors.38
As she charted the vast sea of documents, Herzig-Yoshinaga
realized that the
publications of Weglyn and the other researchers had only
revealed the tip of
the iceberg, for she was confronted again and again with factual

evidence
demonstrating that abuses of power had occurred at every level,
in every
branch and agency of the government, and across the entire time
span of the
episode. It infuriated her that government officials had so
casually disregarded
03-N2739 5/21/03 9:30 AM Page 45
the individual rights guaranteed everyone under the
Constitution. Her re-
sponse to this was to strive to be even more meticulous and
exhaustive in her
research, to fulfill her obligations as wartime government
officials had not. It
was clear to her that by doing so she might be able help correct
a massive in-
justice of long standing and to confirm her strongly held
democratic belief that
“one person can make a difference.” 39
The results of this research and her indexing were recorded on
paper, as
Herzig-Yoshinaga did not have access to the computer
technology that today
would be used to create a relational database. The technological
assistance she
had was an electric typewriter that could temporarily store the
data from a
single index card, so that copies made at the same time did not
have to be man-

ually retyped. Each document was referenced by at least four
cards. One or
more were filed by the subject or subjects referred to in the
particular docu-
ment, another card was filed by the document’s date, a third set
was filed by the
document’s sequential accession number, and a fourth set noted
the precise lo-
cation of the document in the archives.40
No scholar or other researcher had ever attempted the
monumental task of
a page-by-page reading of a significant portion of the enormous
holdings at
the National Archive on these issues. The “snowball” search
mounted by
Herzig-Yoshinaga, which attempted to follow up on an ever-
increasing set of
leads, is virtually never employed with an archive of any size.
The usual model
is more akin to finding buried treasure, a goal-driven, steady
elimination of
possibilities until only one site remains, which is then
excavated. While such
searches run the risk of overlooking information that has been
idiosyncrati-
cally placed, misfiled, or deliberately hidden, this risk is
generally accepted as
unavoidable within the bounds of practicality.
Throughout this effort, Herzig-Yoshinaga was ably assisted by
the husband
she married at the beginning of her archival odyssey, a fact
sometimes rec-
ognized in joint awards they have been given. The solidity of
Jack Herzig’s

support for Herzig-Yoshinaga did much to sustain her,
spiritually and intel-
lectually.41 As a career military officer and combat veteran,
Herzig had faith-
fully carried out his oath to defend and protect the Constitution.
He felt deeply
betrayed by the leaders who had so offhandedly disregarded the
same oath,
denying the constitutional rights of Americans of Japanese
ancestry, while he
and his comrades in arms were fighting and often dying
overseas to defend and
protect those rights. Contrary to the common belief that World
War II veter-
ans are firmly entrenched in traditional gender roles, he
cheerfully took on
work that included delivering her to the archives every morning,
providing her
brown-bag meals for sustenance, and eventually giving over his
retirement,
and much of their apartment, to the quest for justice she had
embarked upon
03-N2739 5/21/03 9:30 AM Page 46
and that he had joined. Herzig also provided vital technical
support to Herzig-
Yoshinaga’s research and, especially after his retirement,
labored alongside
Herzig-Yoshinaga in the archives to retrieve and catalog
documents.42

letting others know
As a result of her intensive work in the archives, Herzig-
Yoshinaga was poised
to become a pivotal player in a collective struggle to obtain
justice for Japanese
Americans. In March of 1980, William Hohri of the National
Council for Jap-
anese American Redress (NCJAR) met Herzig-Yoshinaga at a
New York City
conference. Formed roughly a year earlier, NCJAR sought to
pursue legislative
redress from Congress immediately, in opposition to the more
moderate posi-
tion of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), which
contended that
a congressional commission should first determine whether or
not a wrong
had been committed before redress was sought.43 Hohri had
been correspon-
ding with Michi Weglyn, and through her had become aware of
Herzig-Yoshi-
naga’s work. Herzig-Yoshinaga agreed to join NCJAR,
providing it with the
vital asset of her knowledge and the documents she had already
uncovered.44
The study commission proposal gained the backing of Congress,
and the
Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians
(CWRIC)
came into being on July 31, 1980.45 In light of the creation of
the CWRIC, NC-
JAR decided to change its tactics, choosing to pursue justice
through the courts
rather than through legislative means.46 Herzig-Yoshinaga’s

archival research
would now form the documentary basis upon which a $27
billion class-action
lawsuit would be founded. The evidence provided by Herzig-
Yoshinaga and
arguments NCJAR presented based on it were strong enough
that the class-ac-
tion lawsuit succeeded in being heard by the Supreme Court.
While the law-
suit was eventually dismissed, it remained active until after
Congress had
passed the redress legislation. While it remained alive, it played
a significant
part in publicizing the issues. The NCJAR lawsuit demanded
$220,000 for each
individual whose liberties had been denied. This was more than
twenty times
greater than the $20,000 per surviving incarcerated person that
the redress bills
proposed, allowing proponents to portray the legislative
solution as a moder-
ate alternative.47
In June of 1981, Herzig-Yoshinaga was hired as Research
Associate for the
CWRIC.48 Her status as a researcher for the commission
allowed her greater
access than she had possessed as a private individual, and as the
de facto head
of a small team of researchers, she could ensure that a much
greater number of
documents would be examined.49 Her catalog and index were
adopted by the
commission for its work, and the thousands of pages she and her
husband had

03-N2739 5/21/03 9:30 AM Page 47
amassed, along with contributions from Weglyn, formed the
core of the
CWRIC’s primary documentation.50
Herzig-Yoshinaga’s many years as a clerical worker made her
an expert ar-
chival researcher and disseminator of knowledge, her lack of
formal academic
training notwithstanding.51 At the commission, Herzig-
Yoshinaga’s work was
characterized by multiple responsibilities that required her
attention, a situa-
tion she had faced previously as a clerical worker, and also as a
working
mother. Rather than being free to pursue her own research
interests and
schedule, meeting the challenge of attaining justice meant that
her own ardu-
ous research was constantly being interrupted, for she had to
attend to the re-
search demands of others, both from research assistants asking
for advice on
how to proceed, as well as the needs of the commission report’s
authors and
editors, who required specific facts and documentary evidence
to carry out
their work. She was thus simultaneously setting the day-to-day
operational
priorities for the researchers, advising those who were less
familiar with the

materials on how to locate and index documents, and responding
to the con-
stantly changing overall research agenda given to her by the
commission’s sen-
ior staff. In addition, she was also attempting to identify
potential witnesses to
be called to testify in two of the ten public hearings held by the
commission to
amplify the record found in the documents.52 Herzig-Yoshinaga
took on all
these tasks in addition to her own individual responsibilities as
the most expe-
rienced archival researcher on the commission.
While she was working at the CWRIC, she met and befriended
attorney and
legal historian Peter Irons.53 Irons was interested in finding
information about
the Yasui, Hirabayashi, and Korematsu Supreme Court cases
that had upheld
the war powers of the executive branch, and the later Endo case
that closed the
camps. These challenges, the first three of which were decided
in favor of the
government, were central to the commission’s work, and
Herzig-Yoshinaga
and Irons agreed to share their findings.54 Irons, a First
Amendment authority,
filed a number of Freedom of Information Act requests in an
effort to obtain
documents.55 In October 1981, these requests yielded
documentary evidence
that the Justice Department had knowingly deceived the
Supreme Court dur-
ing World War II. Justice Department attorneys had discovered
that the army’s

Western Defense Command’s official report on the exclusion
and incarcera-
tion, Final Report: Japanese Evacuation from the West Coast,
1942, contained se-
rious factual errors and falsehoods regarding charges of
espionage and
sabotage.56 Despite this discovery, Solicitor General Charles
Fahy decided to il-
legally withhold this information from his opponents and to thus
also misrep-
resent evidence before the Supreme Court.57
Unfortunately, Irons was not allowed to copy any of the memos
and letters
03-N2739 5/21/03 9:30 AM Page 48
he had found detailing this set of actions. The official
responsible for screen-
ing records for public use was unavailable due to illness, and in
the absence of
clearance, permission to duplicate these vital documents was
denied. Irons
called Herzig-Yoshinaga, who, as a researcher for the
commission, had the
right to access any nonsecret document related to the CWRIC’s
work.58 She
immediately copied all the documents, which provided proof for
the first time
of Justice Department misconduct in the cases that upheld the
exercise of pres-
idential war powers under the Constitution.59

Another indispensable piece of evidence was discovered by
Herzig-Yoshi-
naga late in 1982. Her cross-referencing of documents had
revealed that the
fraudulent Final Report mentioned above was actually a revised
and corrected
printing, created to address even more serious constitutional
problems that
were present in an earlier version. Ten copies of this typeset,
earlier version of
the Final Report had been printed in April 1943 and sent to
Washington by the
Western Defense Command. However, when Assistant Secretary
of War John
J. McCloy read one of these advance copies, he realized that the
report was not
only at odds with official War Department policy regarding the
end of ex-
clusion, it accurately presented the utterly unconstitutional
rationale of the
commanding general regarding the impossibility of determining
the loyalty of
Japanese Americans.60
McCloy’s solution to this problem was to pressure the head of
the Western
Defense Command, Gen. John L. DeWitt, into altering the
offending argu-
ments. It was then ordered that all evidence that an earlier
report had ever been
printed and sent to Washington was to be destroyed. Once this
had been done,
DeWitt officially submitted the revised Final Report as if the
original version
had never existed.61

These actions successfully concealed the racist basis of the
exclusion and in-
carceration not only from the public, but also from the Justice
Department
lawyers who defended the government’s actions before the
Supreme Court.
Even the revision that the War Department reluctantly provided
to the Justice
Department contained errors and falsehoods, but this crucially
altered official
document concealed the true reasoning behind the exclusion and
incarcera-
tion, and thus stopped short of making flatly illegal arguments.
Herzig-Yoshinaga’s extensive research had discovered the
correspondence
between McCloy and DeWitt’s command which “showed
detailed exchange of
information as to what page, what sentence, what word should
be changed.” 62
She also discovered, however, that while the military had
worked diligently to
destroy all the evidence, they were never able to find and
destroy the tenth
copy of the original Final Report. She held on to the faint hope
that she might
someday locate this “smoking gun” document. One day in the
fall of 1982, as
03-N2739 5/21/03 9:30 AM Page 49

she was waiting to meet with an archivist, she happened to
notice a copy of the
Final Report sitting on a desk. She also noted that the binding
differed from the
other copies she had seen. Intrigued, she opened it and “noticed
all these notes
written on the margin by somebody.” She soon realized that
“these were the
corrections that were suggested by McCloy’s office” and that
the printed text
differed from the publicly available version she knew.63 She
had found the
missing tenth copy, and with it, documentary proof that there
had been no
“military necessity” to deprive 120,000 Americans of their
rights.
a remembering mind
However, it was not only Herzig-Yoshinaga’s ability to find
documents that
defined her contribution to the struggle for Japanese American
redress.
Equally important was her ability to retrieve documents and
other informa-
tion on demand for use by others. Herzig-Yoshinaga was an
instrumental con-
tributor to the CWRIC’s final report, a document that would
incorporate the
historical and legal scholarship on the issue, the testimony of
over seven hun-
dred witnesses, and the information contained in the tens of
thousands of
pages of primary documents gathered by the commission.64
Angus Macbeth,

the principal author of the CWRIC’s report and its de facto
operational chief,
was not a specialist in Japanese American history.65 A private
attorney, and a
former deputy assistant attorney general in the U.S. Department
of Justice, he
joined the commission as special counsel in October of 1981.66
In order to write the report, Macbeth had to become an expert
on virtually
all aspects of an episode that encompassed the lives of over a
hundred thou-
sand people. He had but a year and a half to both research and
write up his
findings, starting from scratch. Macbeth’s deep knowledge of
the law and his
determination to scrupulously fulfill his duties resulted in a
powerfully argued
and painstakingly detailed document. Herzig-Yoshinaga’s
ability to provide
full and comprehensive documentary evidence on almost any
subject upon
demand freed him to concentrate on the actual task of
constructing a legally
sound argument.67
In an extraordinary recognition of her labor, Macbeth’s
introduction to the
commission’s report singled out Herzig-Yoshinaga as someone
to whom he
owed a “special debt,” noting that she “in large part found and
organized and
remembered the vast array of primary documents from which
the report was
written.” 68 Herzig-Yoshinaga’s encyclopedic knowledge of the
ocean of gov-

ernment records allowed Macbeth to boldly reach an
unprecedented con-
clusion regarding the exclusion and incarceration of Japanese
Americans. In
03-N2739 5/21/03 9:30 AM Page 50
February 1983 a unanimous commission released its 452-page
report, Personal
Justice Denied.69 The language used by Macbeth regarding the
government’s
actions during World War II is unequivocal:
The promulgation of Executive Order 9066 was not justified by
military
necessity and the decisions which followed from it— detention,
ending
detention and ending exclusion—were not driven by analysis of
military
conditions. The broad historical causes which shaped these
decisions
were race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political
leadership.70
This authoritative report materially aided another critical aspect
of the
struggle for justice, the efforts to attack the three successive
Supreme Court
cases that legitimated the government’s right to exclude and
incarcerate. In
January 1982, a team of lawyers led by Peter Irons had informed
Yasui, Hira-

bayashi, and Korematsu that it might be possible to reopen their
wartime cases
through the obscure writ of error coram nobis.71 Coram nobis
allows a person
who has been tried, convicted, and who has served their
sentence to petition
the courts when evidence can be presented that the conviction
was based on
fundamental factual error. It is the sole exception to the rule
that a decision
upheld by the Supreme Court is final and cannot be appealed.
In these cases, Justice Department attorneys had concealed
evidence from
the Supreme Court, as has been recounted previously. The
documents
unearthed by Irons, together with Herzig-Yoshinaga’s discovery
of the one
surviving copy of the original Final Report substantiating the
army’s racist
justification for exclusion and incarceration, formed the basis
for filing suit. All
three men agreed to once again take up the challenge.72
In 1983, backed by the research of Irons and Herzig-Yoshinaga,
the efforts of
the pro bono coram nobis lawyers, and the findings of the
CWRIC, the “im-
possible” was achieved and Korematsu’s criminal conviction for
refusing to
surrender his rights and report to be incarcerated was set
aside.73 Korematsu’s
courtroom victory, while it did not overturn the Supreme
Court’s ruling, ef-
fectively destroyed the legal foundation upon which much of the
legitimacy of

the government’s actions had been based.74 Korematsu’s
success was followed
the next year by Yasui’s victory. In the Hirabayashi case,
however, the govern-
ment raised an issue that crucially depended on Herzig-
Yoshinaga’s research
expertise.75 The government argued that Hirabayashi had lost
his right to file
suit because he had waited for nearly forty years to act and that
all the evidence
had been available by 1949.76 Herzig-Yoshinaga was brought to
the stand to
testify about the difficulties of research and the immense labor
involved in
finding the original version of the army’s Final Report. After
considering the
03-N2739 5/21/03 9:30 AM Page 51
evidence, District Judge Donald S. Voorhees granted
Hirabayashi’s coram no-
bis petition, specifically noting Herzig-Yoshinaga’s testimony
in his decision.
He denied the government’s argument regarding timeliness,
holding that dis-
covery of the original version of the Final Report “would have
been exceedingly
difficult” for the plaintiff, based on Herzig-Yoshinaga’s clear
and detailed ex-
planation of her efforts.77
The Korematsu, Yasui, and Hirabayashi coram nobis teams’

arguments con-
vinced three successive federal judges to set aside convictions
that the ultimate
legal authorities in the judicial system had defined as proper.
Herzig-Yoshi-
naga was the tireless and precise source of the factual evidence
that made these
victories possible. Her knowledge and expertise enabled her to
provide not
only answers to specific questions, but to also supply the
contexts in which
documents were generated, to trace the paper trail delineating
how decisions
were shaped, and to identify the individuals involved and their
roles with the
exactitude that legal proceedings require. Lorraine Bannai, the
attorney in
charge of providing the factual evidence needed for all three
coram nobis pe-
titions, called her an “unsung hero.” 78 Irons, the overall
coordinator of the ef-
fort, credited her work both by noting her efforts in the text he
edited on the
successful drive to vacate the wartime convictions, and by
dedicating that work
to her and her husband.79 Perhaps the most telling comment on
her work,
however, comes not from her compatriots, but from an unnamed
Justice De-
partment lawyer who was in effect bested by the research and
office manage-
ment skills of an elderly clerical worker of color who had never
attended
college. In a newspaper interview, the frustrated attorney could
not bring him-
self to recognize Herzig-Yoshinaga as a person, instead

referring to her as a
“destructive force.” 80
for the good of everybody
Herzig-Yoshinaga’s ability and determination to find, organize,
and recall
enormous amounts of information was greatly enhanced by her
work as a po-
litical activist and her decades of experience as a clerical
worker, allowing her
to masterfully provide others the raw material they needed to
accomplish their
own tasks. It was the confluence of these streams of experience
that made
Herzig-Yoshinaga’s support for writers, attorneys, and others so
effective. Her
comprehensive command of government records enabled the
creation by the
CWRIC of an incontrovertible repudiation of the military
necessity argument
for exclusion. Herzig-Yoshinaga’s skills and knowledge also
provided lawyers
and judges with the grounds to set aside the cases that upheld
the legality of ex-
03-N2739 5/21/03 9:30 AM Page 52
clusion and incarceration during World War II. In addition, it
was her evi-
dence that kept the class-action lawsuit alive before the
Supreme Court, so that

its potential political embarrassment and huge monetary cost
remained a
threat until after both the House and Senate passed redress bills,
allowing these
efforts to be cast as moderate responses to the issue.81 The
commission’s report
and the two legal efforts were the foundation for the passage of
redress legisla-
tion and cemented the present-day popular understanding of the
camps as a
civil rights disaster and an illegal abuse of government
power.82 Building on
the sturdy foundation Herzig-Yoshinaga largely provided, the
teams she was a
part of were freed to focus on the reports and briefs that toppled
the barriers
to justice that had stood for so many years.
In this quest, her “opponents” were exhaustion, inattention, and
self-doubt.
As with Mitsuye Endo, the only woman of the four Japanese
Americans who
brought Supreme Court challenges during the war, Herzig-
Yoshinaga’s con-
tributions were vital, “for the good of everybody,” and have
often been over-
shadowed.83 Her achievements as part of a dedicated team
largely served others
who attracted more public notice.
What Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga’s actions demonstrate is that even
the seem-
ingly ordinary individual can strike a mighty blow for justice.
They also dem-
onstrate, however, that when those blows are struck, the relative
importance

accorded them may well rest upon definitions that need to be
expanded.
Herzig-Yoshinaga was called an “ignoramus” by a frustrated
Justice Depart-
ment attorney for carrying out her seemingly irrational
multiyear search in the
archives.84 This self-defined “ordinary person” created the
solid base from
which the myth of a legally permissible “honest mistake,” was
destroyed, ex-
posing the deliberate machinations hidden for so many years.85
Her vision
sharpened by her activism, she did what she had done for
decades, contribut-
ing skills, knowledge, and an extraordinary mind for detail that
had been
honed over years as a clerical worker. And just as the vital work
of secretaries
and office managers is often overlooked and minimized in
public, particularly
because of the gendered way in which value is often assigned to
labor, so, too,
was hers. Her story underscores the importance of critically
analyzing the
kinds of labor performed by women in political movements, and
how this la-
bor and its recognition might be affected by issues of gender,
race, and class.86
Herzig-Yoshinaga’s work did not fit easily into prevailing
conceptions of the
“critical,” or the “valiant.” Nor did she herself fit the
established pattern of a
champion of justice, coming from a group praised for its
supposed exemplary
submissiveness, and being a retired, working-class woman of

color who had
never been able to attend college. But as long as we continue to
take these kinds
03-N2739 5/21/03 9:30 AM Page 53
of labor for granted, and to see “importance” in narrow terms,
we will not only
overlook heroes, we will lose valuable lessons in how the task
of achieving free-
dom and justice for all may be accomplished.
notes
1. The author is among the many scholars, activists, and other
interested parties
who have been beneficiaries of the immense labor of Aiko
Herzig-Yoshinaga and John
A. “Jack” Herzig. Their unflagging enthusiasm and
determination to extend justice to
all who have been wronged has been an inspiration. Their
generosity in sharing their
wide-ranging and comprehensive knowledge regarding the
exclusion and incarcera-
tion of the West Coast’s Japanese American population is
unmatched, as is their hos-

pitality and patience with questions and interviews. This article
is dedicated in deep
appreciation to them, and for the example they set for all who
seek to redress wrongs.
2. For two examples of work in this area, see Ann Bookman and
Sandra Morgen,
eds., Women and the Politics of Empowerment (Philadelphia:
Temple University Press,
1988); and Nancy A. Naples, ed., Community Activism and
Feminist Politics: Organizing
Across Race, Class and Gender (New York: Routledge, 1998).
Belinda Robinett, How
Long? How Long? African-American Women in the Struggle for
Civil Rights (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1997) discusses the importance of the
“bridge leader.”
3. Josh Getlin, “Redress: One Made a Difference,” Los Angeles
Times (South Bay),
June 2, 1988, A1.
4. Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga, interview with author, August 11,
2001.
5. Often erroneously thought of as requiring no specialized
training beyond basic
literacy, “pink-collar” work is characterized by its generally

modest wages, limited op-
portunities for advancement, and relatively low social status.
See Evelyn Nakano Glenn
and Roslyn N. Feldberg, “Clerical Work: The Female
Occupation,” in Women: A Fem-
inist Perspective, ed. Jo Freeman, 2nd ed. (Palo Alto: Mayfield
Publishing, 1979). See
also Margery W. Davies, Woman’s Place is at the Typewriter:
Office Work and Office
Workers, 1870 –1930 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
1982); Louise K. Howe,
Pink Collar Workers: Inside the World of Women’s Work (New
York: Putnam, 1977); and
Linda Valli, Becoming Clerical Workers (Boston: Routledge
and Keegan Paul, 1986).
6. Although the term “internment” is often used, it is incorrect
when applied to any
person holding U.S. citizenship. The right of the government in
wartime to intern for-
eign nationals from hostile countries was authorized under the
Alien Enemies Act of
1798. The act specifically exempts naturalized citizens. Two
thirds of those affected thus
did not fall within the strictures of the act, being a step removed

even from naturalized
U.S. citizenship, as they were U.S. citizens by birth (Act of July
6, 1798, 1 Stat. 577).
7. For the prewar period, see Valerie J. Matsumoto, “Japanese
American Women
and the Creation of Urban Nisei Culture in the 1930s,” in Over
the Edge: Remapping the
03-N2739 5/21/03 9:30 AM Page 54
American West, ed. Valerie J. Matsumoto and Blake
Allmendinger (Berkeley: Univer-
sity of California Press, 1999); and, more generally, David Yoo,
Growing Up Nisei: Race,
Generation and Culture Among Japanese Americans of
California, 1924 – 49 (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 2000).
8. No Japanese American on the West Coast, citizen or
permanent resident, was
ever found to have committed an act of sabotage or espionage
(Commission on
Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians [CWRIC],
Personal Justice Denied:

The Report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and
Internment of Civilians, 2 vols.
in 1, with a new forward by Tetsuden Kashima [Seattle: Civil
Liberties Public Education
Fund and the University of Washington Press, 1997], 3, 231–39,
471–75).
9. Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga, telephone conversation with author,
June 14, 2002.
10. Joy K. Morimoto, “A Housewife-Turned-Researcher Who
Made History,” Asian
Week, July 20, 1990, 16.
11. Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga, interview with author, January 26,
1999.
12. Herzig-Yoshinaga, interview, January 26, 1999. See also
Susan Matoba Adler,
Mothering, Education and Ethnicity: the Transformation of
Japanese American Culture
(New York: Garland, 1998); Christie W. Kiefer, Changing
Cultures, Changing Lives: an
Ethnographic Study of Three Generations of Japanese
Americans (San Francisco: Jossey-
Bass, 1974); Sylvia Junko Yanagisako, Transforming the Past:
Tradition and Kinship

Among Japanese Americans (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1985); and, more gen-
erally, Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Grace Hang, and Linda Rennie
Forcey, eds., Mothering:
Ideology, Experience and Agency (New York: Routledge,
1994); and Joanne Myerowitz,
Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America,
1945–1960 (Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 1994).
13. Herzig-Yoshinaga, interviews, January 26, 1999, August 11,
2001.
14. Herzig-Yoshinaga, telephone conversation, June 14, 2002.
15. Glenn Omatsu, “Always a Rebel: An Interview with Kazu
Iijima,” Amerasia Jour-
nal 13 :2 (1986 –87): 84. Herzig-Yoshinaga noted that Iijima’s
husband, Tak, was also a
member (Herzig-Yoshinaga, interview, August 11, 2001).
16. See Diane C. Fujino, “Revolution’s from the Heart: The
Making of an Asian
American Woman Activist, Yuri Kochiyama,” in Dragon Ladies:
Asian American Femi-
nists Breathe Fire, ed. Sonia Shah (Boston: South End Press,
1997); and Patricia Saun-

ders and Rea Tajiri, coproducers and codirectors, Yuri
Kochiyama: Passion for Justice,
videorecording (New York: Women Make Movies, 1994).
17. Mitziko Sawada was another notable member of AAA, but
unlike Herzig-Yoshi-
naga, had spent the wartime years in Japan. Herzig-Yoshinaga,
interviews, January 26,
1999, August 11, 2001.
18. Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga, interview with author, June 28,
1997. See also Robinett,
How Long?, for an insightful discussion of the ways in which
gendered and racialized
understandings of political work may hamper analyses and
understandings of women’s
03-N2739 5/21/03 9:30 AM Page 55
participation in political movements, in addition to the
previously cited Bookman and
Morgen, Women and the Politics of Empowerment; and
Kathleen M. Blee, ed., No
Middle Ground: Women and Radical Protest (New York: New
York University Press,

1998).
19. Herzig-Yoshinaga, interview, January 26, 1999. For the
importance of women’s
networks, see Naples, Community Activism and Feminist
Politics, especially her intro-
duction to the volume, “Women’s Community Activism and
Feminist Activist Re-
search,” 1–27.
22. Herzig-Yoshinaga, telephone conversation, June 14, 2002;
and William Minoru
Hohri, Repairing America: An Account of the Movement for
Japanese-American Redress
(Pullman: Washington State University Press, 1988), 61.
23. Michi Weglyn, Years of Infamy: the Untold Story of
America’s Concentration
Camps (New York: Morrow, 1976).
24. Herzig-Yoshinaga, interview, June 28, 1997.
25. Herzig-Yoshinaga, interview, August 11, 2001.
26. For an analysis of these issues see Nakano Glenn and

Feldberg, “Clerical Work,”
326 –31. See also John Hoerr, We Can’t Eat Prestige: The
Women Who Organized Har-
vard (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997). For a
particularly trenchant set of
analyses, see Jean Tepperman, Not Servants, Not Machines:
Office Workers Speak Out!
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1976).
27. Nakano Glenn and Feldberg, “Clerical Work,” 313–26. Of
course, the unac-
knowledged labor of clericals might conceivably extend to
“invisibly” authoring the re-
ports as well.
28. Davies, A Woman’s Place, 5–6.
30. Herzig-Yoshinaga, interview, June 28, 1997; Aiko Herzig-
Yoshinaga, personal
communication with author, September 7, 2001.
31. Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga, interview with author, November
22, 2000. In the 1985
Hirabayashi coram nobis hearing, Herzig-Yoshinaga listed the
following as sources for

her research: the Assistant Secretary of War files, the
Department of Justice files, the
Federal Communications Commission files, the General and
Special Staff of the
United States Army files, the Navy Department files, the
records at the United States
Naval Historical Center, and the War Relocation Authority
files, in addition to records
from the Roosevelt Presidential Library in Hyde Park, New
York, and files at the Fed-
eral Records Centers in San Bruno, California, and Suitland,
Maryland. Testimony of
Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga, Trial Transcript at 558, Hirabayashi v
United States, 627 F.
Supp. 1445 (W.D. Wash. 1986) (No. C83–122V). Herzig-
Yoshinaga later noted that she
03-N2739 5/21/03 9:30 AM Page 56
had inadvertently left the Federal Records Center at Laguna
Niguel, California, off the
list she recounted at the hearing (Herzig-Yoshinaga, interview,
August 11, 2001).

32. Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga, testimony at 605–7, Hirabayashi
(No. C83–122V). At
625–26, Herzig-Yoshinaga testified that even when a document
was known to exist
through citation in published works, its location could be
difficult to obtain because
rather than indicating a precise location, the citation might well
indicate a large num-
ber of files, boxed records, or even whole ranges of shelves.
33. National Archives and Records Administration, Guide to
Federal Records in the
National Archives of the United States, Records of the War
Relocation Authority
(WRA), Record Group 210, 1941– 47 (Online catalog version,
November 19, 2000,
http://www.nara.gov/ guide / rg210.html#210).
34. Peter H. Irons, testimony at 448, Hirabayashi (No. C83–
122V).
35. For the best introduction to this history, see Roger Daniels,
Concentration
Camps, USA: Japanese Americans and World War II (New
York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston, 1971); and The Decision to Relocate the Japanese
Americans (New York: J. B.

Lippincott, 1975).
36. Daniels, whose two influential monographs are mentioned
above, is arguably
the dean of Japanese American history, and was the historical
consultant to the
CWRIC.
38. Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga, interview with author, November 5,
2000.
40. Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga, email to author, September 7, 2001.
41. Herzig-Yoshinaga, interview, June 28, 1997. Joint awards
include those from the
National Council for Japanese American Redress (NCJAR), the
Association for Asian
American Studies, and the National Japanese American
Historical Society, in addition
to the joint dedication in Peter Irons’s work on the coram nobis
cases, Justice Delayed:
The Record of the Japanese American Internment Cases
(Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan
University Press, 1989), iv. Herzig-Yoshinaga, telephone

conversation, June 14, 2002.
42. After his service in the Pacific as a combat-decorated
airborne infantryman,
Herzig had risen to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the Army,
and so had an exten-
sive and detailed understanding of the practices and procedures
of that organization.
Because he had spent much of that time as a specialist in
counter-intelligence, he had
great familiarity with the specifics of how and why decisions
about security issues are
made (John A. “Jack” Herzig, interview with author, November
22, 2000).
43. Hohri, Repairing America, is a narrative of the NCJAR’s
formation, the political
project it was formed to undertake, and actions the group took
to achieve its goals.
44. Herzig-Yoshinaga, telephone conversation, June 14, 2002;
and Hohri, Repairing
America, 48, 61, 65. Jack Herzig had earlier read of NCJAR’s
efforts and had mailed
03-N2739 5/21/03 9:30 AM Page 57

them materials helpful to their work, but the first direct contact
between NCJAR and
Herzig-Yoshinaga was this meeting.
45. CWRIC, Personal Justice Denied, 1.
46. Hohri, Repairing America, 79–81.
47. Hohri, Repairing America, 191; and Mitchell T. Maki, Harry
H. L. Kitano, and
S. Megan Berthold, Achieving the Impossible Dream: How
Japanese Americans Obtained
Redress (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 128.
48. Herzig-Yoshinaga, testimony at 552, Hirabayashi (No. C83–
122V); and Hirabay-
ashi v United States 627 F. Supp. 1455 (W.D. Wash. 1986).
49. Maki, Kitano, and Berthold, Achieving the Impossible
Dream, 98; and Herzig
Yoshinaga, testimony at 553, Hirabayashi (No. C83–122V).
Dream, 98.
51. This labor of clerical workers often escapes formal public
notice. Demonstrating
this in a literal sense, the Commission on Wartime Relocation

and Internment of Civil-
ians is defined on the second page of its report, Personal Justice
Denied, as the nine
Commissioners and the Special Counsel, rendering all others
invisible, and by impli-
cation, of lesser importance. See CWRIC, Personal Justice
Denied, ii. Similarly, in legal
briefs and judgments, there is an explicit requirement that
plaintiffs, attorneys, and
judges are to be identified. Contributors to the effort such as
Herzig-Yoshinaga, who fit
into none of these categories, are typically unnamed, and their
work often remains out
of sight.
52. The hearings took place in New York and Washington, D.C.
(Herzig-Yoshinaga,
testimony at 553, Hirabayashi [C83–122V]).
54. Yasui v United States, 320 US 115 (1943); Hirabayashi v
United States, 320 US 81
(1943); Korematsu v United States, 323 US 214 (1944); Ex
Parte Endo, 323 US 283 (1944);
and Irons, Justice Delayed, 12.

55. Irons, Justice at War: The Story of the Japanese American
Internment Cases
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), viii.
56. Irons, Justice at War, 280 –87.
57. The solicitor general is the official responsible for arguing
the government’s po-
sition in Supreme Court cases. Irons, Justice Delayed, 3–9.
58. This did not apply to “classified” or other secret documents
(Herzig-Yoshinaga,
testimony at 601, Hirabayashi (No. C83–122V).
Dream, 130.
60. Irons, Justice at War, 207–9.
61. Irons, Justice at War, 209–11.
03-N2739 5/21/03 9:30 AM Page 58
64. CWRIC, Personal Justice Denied, 1. Agnus Macbeth was

aided in his task of writ-
ing the report by editors Judith Dollenmayer and Kate Beardsley
(xxiv).
65. Paul Bannai was appointed executive director, but resigned
in September 1981.
Macbeth took over his duties, but was given the title of “Special
Counsel”. Hohri, Re-
pairing America, 88.
66. Herzig-Yoshinaga, testimony at 617, Hirabayashi (No. C83–
122V); and Maki,
Kitano, and Berthold, Achieving the Impossible Dream, 97.
Leslie T. Hatamiya states
in Righting a Wrong: Japanese Americans and the Passage of
the Civil Liberties Act of
1988 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), 89, that
Macbeth was “picked” in late
September.
67. Macbeth’s official title was Special Counsel; the CWRIC’s
legal counsel was
Donna Komure (Maki, Kitano, and Berthold, Achieving the
Impossible Dream, 109,
256).
68. CWRIC, Personal Justice Denied, xxix.

69. The report was released on February 24, 1983 (CWRIC,
Personal Justice Denied,
xvii).
70. CWRIC, Personal Justice Denied, 18.
71. Irons, Justice Delayed, 3– 4.
72. Irons, Justice Delayed, 6 –7. Herzig-Yoshinaga and Jack
Herzig also supervised
the work of research teams of law students led by attorneys
Nicholas Chen and Phil
Nash. These teams were tasked with finding additional materials
to bolster the coram
nobis cases. Nash and Chen also worked on the NCJAR lawsuit
(Herzig-Yoshinaga, in-
terview, August 11, 2001).
73. Irons, Justice Delayed, 225. Coram nobis requires
petitioners to file at the origi-
nal sentencing court, in this case, the San Francisco District
Court.
74. Only the Supreme Court can overrule a Supreme Court
decision, so while Ko-
rematsu’s record has been cleared through his coram nobis
victory, the legal precedent

still stands.
75. Herzig-Yoshinaga, interview, June 28, 1997. Although it
lies outside the scope of
this article, Jack Herzig’s labor was crucial in the struggle for
redress in another way.
Prior to the outbreak of World War II, United States
intelligence agencies had broken
the codes used by the Japanese. Opponents of redress argued
that secret Japanese
communications showed that Japanese Americans were engaged
in espionage and sab-
otage, and that this was the reason that the decision was made to
exclude and in-
carcerate the Japanese Americans of the West Coast. It was
stated that the fact that the
Japanese codes had been broken was itself a secret, and this was
why the decoded
communications code-named “MAGIC,” declassified in 1977,
had never been brought
up. Herzig’s background as an army counterintelligence officer
allowed him to au-
thoritatively critique this specious argument. His research
findings and incisive testi-

03-N2739 5/21/03 9:30 AM Page 59
mony before the House Subcommittee on Administrative Law
and Governmental Re-
lations, and in the 1985 evidentiary hearing for Hirabayashi
(No. C83–122V) proved
that the “MAGIC” communications did not indicate spying or
sabotage by Japanese
Americans and indeed that some of the most damning
information, argued to be
“proof ” of espionage, was available from local newspapers. See
Maki, Kitano, and
Berthold, Achieving the Impossible Dream, 143– 44.
76. Hirabayashi v United States, (1986), 1455.
77. Hirabayashi v United States, (1986), 1455.
78. Getlin, “Redress,” A1.
79. Irons, Justice Delayed, iv, xi.
81. The House passed H.R. 442 on September 17, 1987, while
the Senate passed its
version on April 20, 1988. The reconciled conference report was

adopted by the Senate
on July 27 and by the House on August 4, 1988 (Maki, Kitano,
and Berthold, Achieving
the Impossible Dream, 174 –86).
82. See Hatamiya, Righting a Wrong; and Maki, Kitano, and
Berthold, Achieving the
Impossible Dream. The proponents of redress legislation were
also beneficiaries of
Herzig-Yoshinaga’s labor, for she generously shared her
findings with them, despite the
political differences between the backers of legislative efforts
and of the lawsuit.
83. Mitsuye Endo, “Mitsuye Endo,” in And Justice For All: An
Oral History of the
Japanese American Detention Camps, ed. John Tateishi (New
York: Random House,
1984), 61.
86. Despite the attempts by those she has worked with to
highlight her contribu-
tions, Herzig-Yoshinaga’s work is less well-known than might
be expected. This is the

first academic piece devoted to her role in the movement to the
author’s knowledge, al-
though there is a sizable historiography on the Japanese
American camps and redress.
03-N2739 5/21/03 9:30 AM Page 60
Instructions: X2 Essay
Goal
Your goal for the essay is to demonstrate your understanding
and insight into
the course materials and class activities. The essay should
reflect sufficient
detail to show that you have completed course readings and are
reflecting
upon and critically engaged with the course. This writing
exercise covers
class discussions, videos and readings for Week 1 to 6.
Description
Write a total of 3 to 5 pages double-spaced answering the
question:
“Where are you from?”
Answering the following may be helpful: How have the
readings help you

understand the relationship between your own individual
experiences, history
and culture with “Asian Pacific America” and/or “America.”
Include your name, course#, section#, and date in the upper
right corner. No
name = zero points.
Use MLA format for citations and include a Works Cited page.
Not part of
page count.
Use specific examples from course materials (required), your
own
experiences and ideas to illustrate your answer.
Submit online by 23:59 on Friday. March 3
F16 08/20/2016

ASAM 300
Instructions X2 Essay - ASAM 300 Spring 2017
Professor Eric Estuar Reyes
I want you to include that I am middle eastern ( Saudi Arabia )
born and raised in the middle east. The main reason behind
coming to the united states is to get my bachelor and hopefully
my masters degree after. I have faced a lot of stereotypes that
we are rich just cause we are middle eastern’s, or camel riders
and a sand nigger. Living currently in the U.S. Faced
difficulties as a second language speaker just like asian
americans. Considered as a minority, and faces model minority
expectations. Being here in the states did not change the fact
that i am proud of my culture and I would not be ashamed of it.
I am not a US citizen but I would really like to be. If that
happens I would be considered as a first generation american, as
my parents are not anywhere near the united states. The writing
has to be compared with asian american’s and the contemporary
asian america. refer to Contemporary Asian America : a
multidisciplinary reader / edited by Min Zhou and Anthony C.
Ocampo and don’t forget to cite and include work cited page.

Model Minority Stereotype 1 9 7slurs and relentless bul.docx

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

More from raju957290

More from raju957290 (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Model Minority Stereotype 1 9 7slurs and relentless bul.docx