Licensing

Tsuyako "Sox" Kitashima - Her work

From 1980-1989, Tsuyako Sox Kitashima became heavily invested in the campaign for Redress and Reparations through her membership in NCRR and later, JACL. Thanks to lessons from her father that taught her to become involved in community activity (27), Sox saw the importance of involving herself in this issue. In addition to speaking at Commission hearings, letter folding, addressing, sealing, and stamping, lobbying Congress at the capitol at least three times, and putting on rallies and workshops to outreach to others in the community, Sox continued to work on this issue even after Redress was issued.

That is, even after the monetary compensation of $20,000 for each person was agreed upon, there were many Japanese Americans who were skeptical, afraid, or not knowledgeable about their eligibility to receive reparations. To help remedy this, Sox worked directly with people on their applications, getting to know each person’s story and identifying very closely with their difficult life experiences. Sox also continued to speak, as she is during Day of Remembrance in 1988 in this photo, about the Redress victory, even once appearing on the Fox Network about the importance of such an issue.

As a Japanese American woman involved with this campaign, Sox fit well within the gender dynamic of the kinds of work that women took part in. Her roles did not consist of heading up the Commission that put on hearings, or becoming involved in politics, or taking on a leadership position within any organization. Sox's work might be characterized by some as all the "behind the scenes," unseen work that actually made Redress and Reparations possible. Although she spoke on her experiences both at the hearings and with press sometimes about the campaign, and put in countless hours to make Redress and Reparations a possibility, Sox's work is not widely known, nor is her story widely told.

But her work and her life experiences, and those of women just like her, are indispensable to this movement. The women of the Japanese American community who became involved in this kind of activism and advocacy work must be recognized for their efforts, for without that our communities are not doing proper justice to those who most deserve it.

Source: Kitashima, Tsuyako Sox and Morimoto, Joy K., A Birth of an Activist: The Sox Kitashima Story. San Mateo: Asian American Curriculum Project, 2003.