Born in Seattle: The Campaign for Japanese American Redress

by Robert Sadamu Shimabukuro

The story of the World War II internment of 120,000 Japanese American citizens and Japanese-born permanent residents is well known by now. Less well known is the history of the small group of Seattle activists who gave birth to the national movement for redress. It was they who first conceived of petitioning the U.S. Congress to demand a public apology and monetary compensation for the individuals and the community whose constitutional rights had been violated.

Robert Sadamu Shimabukuro, using hundreds of interviews with people who lived in the internment camps, and with people who initiated the campaign for redress, has constructed a very personal testimony, a monument to these courageous organizers’ determination and deep reverence for justice. Born in Seattle follows these pioneers and their movement over more than two decades, starting in the late 1960s with second-generation Japanese American engineers at the Boeing Company, as they worked with their fellow activists to educate Japanese American communities, legislative bodies, and the broader American public about the need for the U.S. Government to acknowledge and pay for this wartime injustice and to promise that it will never be repeated.

Genres: History, World War II, Nonfiction

178 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2001

Reviews

[Marleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The amazing story of how Japanese Americans fought for and achieved redress for their treatment during WWII. It is the only minority group in the United States that has achieved monetary reparations and an apology. This was a difficult journey marked by lots of different opinions in the community on how to get this done. In the end, it was through community support and a coordinated plan to share our story with the public as well as a Supreme Court’s decision that found the government’s actions were based on lies.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

In American US history, most of us have learned about Japanese internment camps after Pearl Harbor. What I never learned about in history class however was about the movement for Japanese American Redress. Born in Seattle details the logistics and persistent efforts of Seattle Japanese American activists to seek financial redress from the American government for Japanese American suffering during WWII.

[James Crawford · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book about how some people worked very hard in order to get a form of redress to those of Japanese ancestry who had been interned during World War II in the various internment camps. The book is one dealing pretty much specifically with the stories of certain people involved and is really focused on just the redress movement, so there's very, very little about the actual internment process here.

The book notes that a Senator from California, S. I. Hayakawa, was opposed to the redress movement.

The author says that the redress movement was important in that it let a lot of people know about what had happened during the internment process, and it raised the level of respect for Japanese Americans.