Interviews

1. Don’t Rock the Boat

2. Speaking with Sparky

3. The Scale of the Issue

4. A Common Cause

5. Evolving History

Miyatake,Henry

(1929 - 2014) One of the earliest proponents behind the redress movement.

Don’t Rock the Boat

We set up two days for the education of these people because this was a problem: educating Japanese Americans. It's a issue that, they really don't understand the terms of the constitutionality of the process that we went through. And the people that I thought we would have the easiest time, it turned out to be the most difficult. And this was surprising to me. I thought these guys, they're smart enough to understand the Constitution and all this kind of material. They were able to understand the Hirabayashi case. So I thought for sure that these guys would be supportive, but they turned out to be the worst opposition.

Well, there's two strong opposition functions. One is that they thought we would rock the boat. This is a very controversial issue, especially when we demand monies from the U.S. Congress for damages that were done to us. And it would damage the reputation and integrity of Nikkei Americans. That was one point of view. The other one was, you're demeaning the character of Japanese Americans to go after money.

Date: October 14, 1999

Location: Washington, US

Interviewer: Tom Ikeda

Contributed by: Denshō: The Japanese American Legacy Project.

Interviewee Bio

Henry Miyatake was born in 1929 in Seattle, Washington. During World War II, he was incarcerated while a teenager at Puyallup Assembly Center and Minidoka incarceration camp in Idaho. In camp, he wrote and defended an essay criticizing the United States' treatment of racial minorities. His teacher refused to accept his paper, resulting in a failed grade and preventing him from graduating.

Although it was a radical idea, Miyatake was one of the earliest proponents behind the redress movement from the early 70s. Along with a few others, he prepared a plan for the Seattle chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) to seek redress from the U.S. government for the incarceration of persons of Japanese ancestry.

Miyatake’s efforts met resistance from the community until the first “Day of Remembrance” was held on November 25, 1978 at the site of the former Puyallup Assembly Center. This event, that Miyatake helped organize, was one of several watershed moments that helped galvanize the Japanese American community on the road towards righting a wrong.

He passed away on September 16, 2014 at age 85. (April 2015)