About This Website

The Internment narrative most of us are familiar with goes something like this: After the US declared war with Japan, over 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry residing along the west coast — two thirds of whom were American-born citizens — were rounded up from their homes and placed in internment camps, their only crime being their race. With only a few notable examples of resistance like Gordon Hirabayashi and Fred Korematsu, the vast majority of Japanese Americans went along with these evacuation orders willingly, their cooperation a sign of their loyalty to America. Not only did they willingly comply, the military-age men wanted so much to prove their loyalty that they volunteered to serve in the US Army in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which would go on to suffer more deaths than any other unit and become the most decorated combat team during the war.

It was a narrative that I always felt great ambivalence towards. Were there really no widespread acts of civil disobedience during this time? Since when was compliance with injustice synonymous with patriotism? If the rights of American citizenship are supposed to be self-evident and inalienable, why did Japanese Americans feel their loyalty was something that had to be proven rather than presumed? After being stripped of their most basic civil rights, why did Japanese American men feel compelled to join the military — a racially segregated unit at that — which just several years earlier had expelled them from their ranks as “alien enemies” even if they were native-born citizens? And where was the outrage that the families of the brave men who formed the 442nd Regimental Combat Team remained behind barbed wire, even as they were sent into the most dangerous theaters of war so that other non-Japanese lives could be spared?

Imagine my surprise, then, when I discovered how different my family’s story was from the narrative I had grown up hearing my whole life. My grandfather was the lead defendant in United States vs Masaaki Kuwabara, the first civil rights case ruled in favor of Japanese Americans during WWII. 

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There’s more to the Japanese American wartime experience than we have been led to believe. What other untold stories and unsung heroes are missing from that narrative? This site is dedicated to unearthing and sharing the courageous stories of Japanese American "Internment"-era protest, resistance, and civil disobedience that have yet to be told, starting with my grandfather's story.