Advocacy

“LEADING THE WAY”

         The JACL has a history of advocating for policies that protect and promote the welfare of Japanese Americans, Asian Americans and other communities.  Locally, JACL Hawai‘i's history includes joining the campaign seeking redress for the blatant discrimination toward Japanese Americans during WWII, which resulted in the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, the measure that provided redress for Hawai‘i’s Japanese Americans who were unlawfully interned during World War II.

The Congress recognizes that, as described in the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, a grave injustice was done to both citizens and permanent residents of Japanese ancestry by the evacuation, relocation, and internment of civilians during World War II.

As the Commission documents, these actions were carried out without adequate security reasons and without any acts of espionage or sabotage documented by the Commission, and were motivated largely by racial prejudice, wartime hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.

The excluded individuals of Japanese ancestry suffered enormous damages, both material and intangible, and there were incalculable losses in education and job training, all of which resulted in significant human suffering for which appropriate compensation has not been made.

For these fundamental violations of the basic civil liberties and constitutional rights of these individuals of Japanese ancestry, the Congress apologizes on behalf of the Nation.”

Based on the findings of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC), the purposes of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 with respect to persons of Japanese ancestry included the following:

1) To acknowledge the fundamental injustice of the evacuation, relocation and internment of citizens and permanent resident aliens of Japanese ancestry during World War II;

2) To apologize on behalf of the people of the United States for the evacuation, internment, and relocations of such citizens and permanent residing aliens;

3) To provide for a public education fund to finance efforts to inform the public about the internment so as to prevent the recurrence of any similar event;

4) To make restitution to those individuals of Japanese ancestry who were interned;

5) To make more credible and sincere any declaration of concern by the United States over violations of human rights committed by other nations.

          JACL Hawai‘i also stood shoulder to shoulder with other civil rights organizations in working the phone banks, talking to voters and taking out advertisements to Protect Our Constitution when the Alliance for Traditional Marriage waged an attack on the Hawai‘i State Constitution in 1998 to prohibit same gender marriage.  More recently, the JACL Hawai‘i advocated with the Family Equality Coalition, to obtain equal rights for same sex couples, by seeking passage of a civil unions bill through the Hawai‘i State Legislature.

          JACL Hawai‘i was also the first non-Hawaiian organizations to formally take a position in support of native Hawaiian self-determination, at the 1984 JACL National Convention in Hawai'i.  JACL Hawai‘i joined in a brief to support the Kamehameha Schools when its admissions policy came under legal attack.  JACL Hawai‘i also coordinated JACL National's support in joining in a brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to leave intact the Hawai'i Supreme Court's unanimous opinion that the lands must be preserved intact until claims can be resolved.