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Photo: Naoko Shiraoka

By Junko Iwabuchi

Author Junko Iwabuchi

On a Sunny Saturday Morning in LA
His face brightened with a big affectionate smile when he replied“Yeah?” to me as I said “I used to live with a Japanese American
family in the Bay Area up north when I was a student.” The
distinguished looking gentleman, elderly but in good physical shape,
was Norman Mineta. He was standing right in front of me and wewere at the historic site of Nishi Hongwanji Buddhist temple in Los
Angeles, now the home of the Go for Broke National Education
Center (“Go for Broke” is the motto of a World War II JapaneseAmerican military unit, the 442nd RCT, well known in military history
for their exceptional valor and sacrifice), for the inauguration of their
newly installed exhibition titled “Defining Courage”.
Mineta is a longtime politician from San Jose, California, a diehard
Democrat, and the first presidential Cabinet member of Asian
American descent, who served both the Bill Clinton and George W.
Bush administrations. Along with his friend Republican Senate Whip
Alan Simpson, he is also known as the driving force behind the CivilLiberties Act of 1988, which officially apologized to JapaneseAmericans, redressed the injustices they suffered during World War
II, and awarded restitution payments of $20,000 to JapaneseAmerican survivors.
It was Saturday, May 28, during the Memorial weekend of 2016,
and on the previous day President Barack Obama had made ahistoric visit to Hiroshima. I was in Los Angeles that week to visit

and conduct interviews at the Japanese American National Museum
as a part of my research trip on Japanese American history andI couldn’t help asking Japanese Americans how they felt about
Obama’s visit to Hiroshima. The site of Nishi Hongwanji Buddhist
temple that once functioned as a temporary house for the JapaneseAmerican National Museum and is now the location of the Go forBroke National Education Center, is across the plaza from the current
Japanese American National Museum. Mineta is the chairman of theboard at the museum and after chatting with museum staff
members, I found out that he was flying into town for theinauguration of the Go for Broke National Education Center on Fridaynight. On Saturday morning, I went to the inauguration ceremony
with the firm determination to meet Mineta, who is a veteran himself,and ask how he felt about Obama’s Hiroshima visit.
It was a bright and typically sunny LA morning and for me, as
someone born and raised in Japan who still has a Japanesepassport, it was the first time to attend a Memorial Day event
honoring the veterans of the U.S. military. The first part of the event
was defined as a Memorial Day commemoration of fallen heroes andhonoring the surviving veterans of WWII. It took place in front of theGo For Broke Monument that bears the names of 16,126 Nisei(second-generation Japanese American) soldiers and the main
inscription on the stone reads as follows: Rising to the defense of
their country, by the thousands they came — these young JapaneseAmerican soldiers from Hawaii, the states, America's concentration

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Mr. Norman Mineta and the author

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Opening ceremony at the Go for Broke National Education Center

Japan SPOTLIGHT • May / June 201759

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Elderly veterans escorted by young cadets

camps — to fight in Europe and the Pacific during World War II.
Looked upon with suspicion, set apart and deprived of theirconstitutional rights, they nevertheless remained steadfast andserved with indomitable spirit and uncommon valor, for theirs was afight to prove loyalty. This legacy will serve as a sobering reminderthat never again shall any group be denied liberty and the rights ofcitizenship. — Ben H. Tamashiro
I’m used to listening to the American national anthem on various
occasions, but I had never been at ceremony where I had to recite
the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag myself. I felt a strange sensation
in my stomach when I heard the last phrase “with liberty and justicefor all” as I looked towards the veterans in their 90s who had once
been incarcerated in wartime relocation camps, deprived of theirliberty and justice as American citizens, and had to fight to regain itby proving their loyalty to the country through joining the militaryforces. These elderly veterans were born in the United States andwent to school here, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance every day until
one day they were suddenly denied their rights as citizens. I wasstanding there, just observing the ceremony as a journalist fromMr. Tokuji Yoshihashi, formerly of the 100th Infantry Battalion
during WWII

another country, but I couldn’t help being overtaken by emotion andfelt tears surging up in my eyes. I couldn’t figure out what exactly
was happening with me then, but as I saw the elderly Nisei veterans,
who are as tiny and frail as any old Japanese American men, trying
to stand tall, even though some of them were confined towheelchairs, and looking bright and proud, I felt a strong bond withthem as if they were my own grandfathers.
The elderly veterans were ushered to another location for theinauguration of the Go for Broke National Education Center escorted
by young cadets after the anthem and the Pledge of Allegiance had
been performed with the presence of the color guard flown in fromthe state of Hawaii. I rushed in the direction that they were walking
with a camera in my hand and I spotted one veteran, Tokuji
Yoshihashi (91 years old at that time), who had kindly spoken withme before the ceremony. He recognized me in the crowd and waved

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The Go for Broke Monument that bears the names of 16,126 Nisei soldiers

60 Japan SPOTLIGHT • May / June 2017

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Local news media at the ceremony

at me smiling and immediately I smiled and waved back to him. We
were able to exchange words only for 10-15 minutes (I did ask him
how he felt about Obama’s visit to Hiroshima the day before) but
when I saw him walking, smiling and waving at me, I felt as if I had
become his proud granddaughter and nearly cried one more time.

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Elderly Japanese American Men Are
All Grandfather to Me
As the program went on, religious leaders of every faith (and everycongregation in the case of Christians) in the community took to thepodium to give a speech of congratulation on the inauguration of thenew exhibition at the Go for Broke National Education Center.
I wasn’t surprised by the long list of speakers from Buddhist andChristian backgrounds as I assumed there are lots of Buddhists andChristians among Japanese Americans, but I was rather astonishedwhen an African American Imam appeared to speak on behalf of theMuslim community as I didn’t know a single Muslim JapaneseAmerican personally. Now I see the relevance of comparing Franklin
D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 on wartime relocation ofindividuals with Japanese ancestry based on “race prejudice, war
hysteria, and a failure of political leadership” to President Donald
Trump’s recent Executive Order banning travelers from six (originallyseven) Muslim countries, but this was before the presidential
election in November. I learned later that Mineta was strongly against
racial profiling of Muslims in the US after 9.11 when there was asurge of prejudice and hate crimes against them. That was theapparent reason why an Imam was included.
I waited patiently until people dispersed after the ceremony as
Mineta seemed enormously popular and surrounded by a huge
crowd for quite a while. Finally it was my turn and I introduced
myself as a journalist from Japan and asked that belated question ofhow he felt about Obama’s visit to Hiroshima. He was very cordial in
response and said “I’m pleased” twice in a soft, yet clear voice. Thenhe continued, “I was very, very pleased that he is the first sitting
president to be able to visit Hiroshima. I know there have been a lotof people seeking an apology from President Obama on thisoccasion, but I think it is very hard trying to make a judgment forsomething that happened in 1945 using the lens of 2016. It was adifficult thing that they had to face at the time. So I wouldn’t try asecond guess for people on what they did at that time and I justcommend President Obama for making this historic first visit toHiroshima.”
I also asked him if he thought Prime Minister Shinzo Abe should
go to Pearl Harbor in return during his tenure, and he said, “Well,once again, that’s a judgment he has to make. People criticize him
for going to Yasukuni Shrine where war criminals are part of theworshiped and if he does that China, Korea and everybody else jumpon him about it. Everybody makes his own decisions based on how
they feel the impact would be in terms of international relations andinternational relations are not a one-day event. They are continuing.
So people in politics have to make their own decisions and I would

The historic site of Nishi Hongwanji Buddhist temple in Little Tokyo

leave it up to each one of them to make that judgment.”
Then he started asking me if I was born in the US and as soon asI mentioned that I was born near Tokyo, he told me his parents werefrom Shizuoka Prefecture. Then it was my turn to tell him that I used
to teach at a University in Shizuoka and that brought us into a lively
conversation for quite some time. Mineta told me about his annual
visits to his relatives in Shizuoka and lamented that some of theJapanese words that he knows are regarded as outdated. He has acurious mind and seemed delighted when I mentioned that I spent
most of my entire time in the US with a Japanese American family.
Strangely enough for someone so distinguished, he sounded in a
way much like the grandpa of the Japanese American family thatI used to live with. I don’t know what exactly, but there must be
some kind of a bond among people who share the same ancestry
and I felt very comfortable and enjoyed talking to him.
Later that year in December 2016 Abe did make a visit to Pearl
Harbor with Obama and I’m sure Mineta was pleased about that too.
But at that time, on a sunny Saturday morning in May, we didn’t evenhave a clue who the next president of the US would be.

Following the Path of Japanese Americans
When I first arrived in the US in the 1980s, I was a young student
and saw myself as a temporary resident. I was/am Japanese andI thought I was going back to Japan eventually. So it felt puzzling at
first when people asked me if I still have relatives in Japan, or people
assumed I was one of the kids of the family I lived with as we wereactually all close in age. This was several years before the Civil
Liberties Act and nobody talked much about the incarceration ofJapanese Americans during WWII. I was too busy with my own life
studying, hanging out with friends at school, and took no interest in
the history of Japanese Americans then, even though grandpa had aprominent friend Henry Sugimoto who was a painter well known for
his work documenting everyday life at the war relocation camps.
Now I know that his works are in museums across the US and evenin Japan, but there was no way of knowing his celebrity status at thatJapan SPOTLIGHT • May / June 201761SpecialArticle 3
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The exterior of the Japanese American National Museum

time mainly because grandpa never told me how good a painter hewas. It’s too bad I missed the chance of talking to the artist.
Grandpa and grandma didn’t talk much about their experience at
the camp in general, but the interesting thing is that grandpa, forsome reason on a hot summer evening after dinner, talked about theday when the FBI came to escort him for interrogation. This tragic
incident happened before FDR’s Executive Order 9066, and even
before Pearl Harbor, and he was detained for a few days to beinterrogated because he had transferred a large sum of money (so hetold me) in preparation to take his Nisei (second generation) wife andAmerican-born family to Japan. The allegation was that this money
was meant to help the Japanese government’s war effort. He wasreleased and returned home after a few days, but he always said,“You could hear a troop of cockroaches move around in the dark”
with a big grin on his face. Grandma always reacted with a little
shivering gesture and protested “Daddy, you told that story how
many times to Junko? More than enough…” in Japanese. Grandma
was a Santa Cruz-born Nisei and educated in English, but she wasfluent in Japanese. Grandpa was originally from Kagoshima in Japanand he preferred speaking in Japanese even then. I had the privilegeof hearing this story of the FBI and the cockroaches only because
I speak the language whilst all of his grandchildren were not able tounderstand complicated stories like that in Japanese. And the story
somehow remained in my head.
I went on to work at a museum in New York after finishing up myMaster’s and went back to Japan for a couple of years before I got
another scholarship to study in Italy. By then, it was 1988 and theCivil Liberties Act was approved and both grandpa and grandma
became the recipients of restitution payments. We talked every sooften about the official apology from the US government andrestitution when I visited them during these periods, but they
seemed to care less about the situation and grandpa in particularsaid, “It is the Japanese government who started the war. I don’t
need the restitution money paid by the US government.” I didn’tknow what to say to that.
Grandpa passed away while I was still living in Florence in 1990
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An exhibition of Japanese Internment Camps during WWII at the Japanese American
National Museumand grandma has been gone for several years too now. But afterI finished my studies of Baroque paintings in Italy and the artcollection of King Charles I in England at Essex University andpublished several books on arts, culture and lifestyle, I started
thinking about what grandpa said about WWII. He said to me once
starkly, “It was good that Japan lost the war. That was the only
inevitable way to end the atrocities committed by the JapaneseEmpire. Just imagine the world the other way around…what a horror
it must have been.” I wasn’t sure if grandpa really meant it then, but
now I’m pretty sure he meant it.
I have always had a feeling that grandpa was angry with theJapanese government over the war because his beloved younger
brother, a brilliant young man who graduated from UC Berkeley inengineering magna cum laude, ended up lost in action (they couldn’t
find any remains) in the Philippines somewhere in the jungle
because he was drafted by the Japanese government as soon as hewent back to Japan to be with their parents. Grandpa must have felt
guilty about his brother’s loss of life until the time of his own deathas his brother should have been able to survive as long as heremained with grandpa and his family.
Unfortunately, I can’t talk to grandpa and grandma anymore, butwith my recollection of grandpa’s story of the day the FBI came, I am
now determined to go to the National Archive in Washington and digup the interrogation documents on that incident. He said to me thatthe file they brought out before they started interrogation was abouta foot high and all his details were documented since the day he wasborn in Kagoshima. I would like to locate these documents, share thefindings with the whole family and verify them as much as possible.
That will be my next writing project and it seems relevant at the timeof the presidency of Donald Trump.
Junko Iwabuchi is chief writer and partner at web media “Agrospacia” andadjunct professor at Aoyama Gakuin University. She is a former Helena
Rubinstein Fellow at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, andparticipated in the Rotary Foundation scholarship program to study in Florence,Italy. She is a frequent contributor to newspapers and magazines in Japan onarts, culture, lifestyle and media.