Redress: The Inside Story of the Successful Campaign for Japanese American Reparations

The story of how nearly 100,000 Americans achieved reparations and an official apology for one of the most shameful episodes in US history.

"Redress gives us an insider's step-by-step view of how a bold and determined group of Japanese Americans achieved an unprecedented goal that, at the beginning, looked impossible. We have a lot to learn from their extraordinary success." --Adam Hochschild

For decades the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans remained hidden from the historical record, its shattering effects kept silent. But in the 1970s the Japanese American Citizens League headed a campaign for an official government apology and monetary compensation. Redress is John Tateishi's firsthand account of this against-all-odds campaign. Tateishi, who led the JACL Redress Committee for many years, admits the task was herculean. The campaign sought an unprecedented admission of wrongdoing from Congress. It depended on a unified effort but began with an acutely divided community; for many, the shame of "camp" was so deep that they could not even speak of it. And Tateishi knew that the campaign would succeed only if the public learned that there had been concentration camps on U.S. soil.

Redress is the story of a community reckoning with what it means to be both culturally Japanese and American citizens, and what it means to prevent terrible harms from happening again. This edition features a new preface about the lessons Tateishi's story might have for reparations efforts today.

John Tateishi, born in Los Angeles in 1939, was incarcerated from ages three to six at Manzanar, one of America's ten World War II concentration camps. He studied English Literature at UC Berkeley and attended UC Davis for graduate studies. He played important roles in leading the campaign for Japanese American redress, and as the director of the Japanese American Citizens League, he used the lessons of the campaign to ensure that the rights of this nation's Arab and Muslim communities were protected after 9/11.