At a virtual town hall meeting in August, generations of Japanese American community organizers spoke alongside leaders from the Black reparations movement. .

Called “Reparations Then, Reparations Now!” the meeting coincided with the 40th anniversary of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians hearings, which marked a turning point in the Japanese American redress movement.

“Just as Black Americans supported our community’s struggle for redress, we will strive to support and show solidarity with Black people as they fight for reparations today,” said Michael Nishimura, a 29-year-old doctoral student and organizer.

The event was hosted by the Japanese American social justice organizations Nikkei Progressives and Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress, which are part of a growing coalition of organizations pushing for the passage of H.R.

John Tateishi, 82, was sent to Manzanar, one of the United States’ 10 concentration camps, when he was just 3 and later became national director of the redress campaign for the oldest Asian American civil rights group, the Japanese American Citizens League.

He traced the origins of the community’s reparations movement to the 1960s, when third-generation Japanese Americans, called sansei, had graduated from college and started challenging the older generation’s silence about World War II, which he said was the result of complex cultural factors and trauma. .

Groups such as the JACL and Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress started formally lobbying the government over the reparations, and by 1980, the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians was formed to study the subject.

“I presented a caveat that what I was going to talk about may not have any application or interest in their strategies,” said Tateishi, author of the 2020 memoir “Redress: The Inside Story of the Successful Campaign for Japanese American Reparations.” “We faced a very different kind of situation than African Americans do and did with the American public.”.

The civil rights movement “was deeply embedded in our early formation and early thinking,” Masaoka said of the Japanese American redress movement.

Mervyn Dymally, D-Calif.; and the Congressional Black Caucus — were also integral to the redress movement, said traci kato-kiriyama, an artist and organizer with the group Nikkei Progressives.

“This Black American cries out as loudly as my Asian American brothers and sisters on this issue,” Dellums said, urging Congress not to strip key provisions from the Civil Liberties Act.

In fall 2020, the Japanese American organizations Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress and Nikkei Progressives formed a joint committee to study reparations for Black people in the U.S. .

Usually, about 45 organizers attend the meeting, Heath said, including representatives from the JACL, American Civil Liberties Union, Color of Change, Movement for Black Lives and a number of faith organizations, including the National Council of Churches, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism and Network Lobby for Catholic Social Justice.

40, she told lawmakers that Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress and Nikkei Progressives support H.R.

In these letters, Doi said, community members reflected on how their own history of racial violence during internment was “a starting point for solidarity” with Black Americans that are facing what is admittedly a “much longer history of racial violence.”

Some of the letters also talked about the impact of receiving redress and how the movement, legislation and reparations initiative “started a healing process” within the Japanese American community

Heath has been the central link connecting Japanese American community organizations to the legacy Black reparations advocacy organizations, according to Kenniss Henry, the N’COBRA national legislative commission co-chair