FW: [immigrationpilot] FW: Tetsujiro 'Tex' Nakamura -- advocate for WWII JAs
Daniel Huang
Daniel Huang
Policy Advocate, Immigrant
Rights Project
Asian Pacific American Legal Center
1145 Wilshire
Blvd., 2nd Floor Los Angeles, CA 90017
Tel: (213) 977-7500 Ext.
237 Fax: (213) 977-7595
From: immigrat...@yahoogroups.com [mailto:immigrat...@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Karen K. Narasaki
Sent: Monday, July 30, 2007 4:24 PM
To: peggynagae consulting; Don T. Nakanishi; Dale Minami; rose ochi; d...@jacl.org; MA...@starbucks.com; Sumi Cho
Cc: Vincent A. Eng; Aimee J. Baldillo; Stephanie Anderson; Tong Lee; Max Niedzwiecki; Kerri Sherlock; immigrat...@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [immigrationpilot] FW: Tetsujiro 'Tex' Nakamura -- advocate for WWII JAs
Thought you might find the attached article of interest. It is about the fight to restore citizenship to the group of Japanese Americans during WWII who renounced their US citizenship. Quite fascinating.
From: Neil
Horikoshi [mailto:ne...@us.ibm.com]
Sent: Monday, July 30, 2007 1:30
PM
To: Karen K. Narasaki; Lucy
M. Lee; Lisa Campbell-Thornton
Subject: Fw: Tetsujiro 'Tex'
Nakamura
FYI; forwarded from Michael
Yaguchi.
Regards, Neil
Neil H. Horikoshi
Director,
Global Business Development
6710
Rockledge Drive
Bethesda, MD
20817
(301) 803-3616
(8-262) FAX(845)-432-0635
Judy Brown, Assistant; 803-3653, FAX 803-3653
ne...@us.ibm.com
----- Forwarded
by Neil Horikoshi/Bethesda/IBM on 07/30/2007 01:30 PM -----
|
"Yaguchi, Michael J CTR JCS J5/NAC" <Michael...@js.pentagon.mil> 07/30/2007 08:59 AM |
|
Neil and Kai ... Very interesting story
v/r
Mike Yaguchi
From:
"Cedrick Shimo" <csh...@msn.com>From Los Angeles
Subject Wayne Collins, Tex Nakamura and the
renunciants
From:
Martha Nakagawa<miik...@aol.com> From Los Angeles
area
Subject: Tetsujiro
"Tex" Nakamura
-Article continued in Attachment
I'm taking the liberty of forwarding an article I wrote for the
Nikkei West on Tetsujiro "Tex" Nakamura, who assisted Wayne Collins in
the renunciation lawsuits.
/s/Martha
Nakagawa
------------------
Taking on the Government: A Profile of Attorney Tetsujiro
Nakamura
By Martha Nakagawa Written for Nikkei
West
At the end of World War II in 1945, Tetsujiro Nakamura, 87,
made a decision that would affect the next two and a half decades of his life
and impact an estimated 5,600 Nisei. That decision was to voluntarily remain in
the Tule Lake War Relocation Authority (WRA) camp in an effort to stop
deportation proceedings and to help restore United States
citizenship to the Nisei, who had renounced their citizenship under government
duress.
"I had leave clearance but I stayed on", said Nakamura. "I
wanted to do something for these people. You know, the government gave them a
raw deal."
Nakamura traveled to San Francisco to meet with Ernest Besig with
the San Francisco ACLU. Besig, although interested in the renunciation cases,
referred Nakamura to Wayne Collins, who had earlier handled the Tule Lake stockade cases. In recalling his
first meeting with the legendary Collins, Nakamura said, " He talked very
rapidly, and he was saying things that were very new to me.…He had this theory of
government duress. He figured the governmeent is responsible for everything from
the inception of evacuation to the "no no" situation to not providing protection
inside the camps. I thought this guy had a good, sharp mind. Nakamura recalled
that Collins agreed to take on the case after coming up to Tule Lake and meeting with an estimated 500
Tuleans over three days.Little did Collins or Nakamura foresee in 1945 that the
renunciation cases would stretch out to 1968.
* * *
Nakamura was born in San
Francisco on July 16, 1917, the second son of Kichisuke
and Koto Yamamoto Nakamura. When Nakamura was about three, his mother passed
away from complications of appendicitis. The father, who worked in the
import/export business before becoming an insurance salesman, remarried, and
Nakamura was raised by his step-mother, Shizuyo Masumoto. In total, Nakamura had
two brothers, Michitaro Richard and Hiroyuki George, and two half-sisters,
Yuriko and Aiko.
During Nakamura's
early years, the family made frequent moves but settled in Sacramento's prewar
Japantown when he was about 12-years-old. The family lived at 1515 Third Street in
Sacramento until
the government's forced removal during World War II. In Sacramento, Nakamura's
older brother, Michitaro, then 15, passed away, also from complications of
appendicitis.
During Nakamura's junior high school years, he
received the nickname, "Tex." I was playing basketball, and I
was shorter than the others so they joked around and called me the "˜Texan," and
the name stuck, said Nakamura. And it was hard to pronounce my Japanese name,
Tetsujiro.
Like other Nisei, Nakamura attended Japanese language school
everyday after American school. During the summers, he worked alongside other
Nisei and Issei, picking fruits in places such as Penryn, Loomis and Suisun Bay. But Nakamura didn't want to become a
farmer. He wanted to be a lawyer.
In those days, there were a lot of discriminatory laws against the
Japanese like the Alien Land laws, said Nakamura. I realized the
Issei had a tremendous barrier, and they were also having a difficult time with
the language so I saw this need and thought going into law would be the best way
to help the people.
After graduating from Sacramento High
School, Nakamura went to junior college before entering the
University of California, Berkeley as a pre-law student in 1937. He
graduated in 1939, when the country was still in the throes of the Great
Depression.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
+ + + + + + +
I was having a hard time making contact with my
family from outside, said Nakamura. All the telephone conversations were
censored, but I sensed something was happening so I went back to Tule Lake.
Out in Idaho, Nakamura had had no
idea that the Army troops had come in and declared martial law, following a
protest in Tule
Lake. Upon his return,
Nakamura put his legal knowledge to work by getting a position at Tule Lake's legal aid office. There was a WRA
project attorney who was supposed to give legal assistant but he couldn't
understand Japanese,said Nakamura. And it was the Issei, more than the Nisei,
who needed help.
Nakamura's work varied from helping the Issei collect
money owed on crops sold before incarceration to those who wanted to cash out on
their life insurance.
In 1944, the renunciation issue came to the
forefront after President Roosevelt signed Public Law 405, allowing
United
States citizens to renounce their citizenship
in time of war. Although the Renunciation Law applied to all citizens, it was
passed with the sole purpose of handling the Tuleans.
Many came to
Nakamura's office for advice. I told them not to renounce,said Nakamura. I told
them although your citizenship might not be worth the paper it's written on now
and you might not have any rights now, it might come in handy later. I told them
you could always renounce your citizenship later, even in Japan.
By then, the activities of the Hoshidan, the Seinen Dan, and the
Joshi Dan were in full swing. Nakamura recalled a lot of fear and confusion
among the Tuleans, some thinking they had to renounce in order to keep the
family together. Nakamura said there were even demands for segregation within
Tule
Lake. Although Nakamura was
never overtly threatened, his family, none of whom renounced, requested that he
stop his involvement. “My family asked me to quit because there was a lot of
hostility and people were getting beatened up, said Nakamura. But sometimes you
have to do certain things to help the people. See Attachment for the entire
article by Martha Nakagawa
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