From DiscoverNikkei.org
Mike Masaoka
First national spokesperson for the Japanese American Citizens League (1915-1991)
As the first national spokesperson for the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), Mike Masaoka played a key role lobbying on behalf of the Japanese American community in the United States. Born in Fresno, California, his family moved to Salt Lake City, Utah where he became a champion debater and graduated in 1937 from the University of Utah in economics and political science. Just before the outbreak of WWII, at the age of 25, he became National Secretary and Field Executive of the JACL.
Throughout the WWII period, Masaoka campaigned among the Japanese community to support the JACL’s decision to cooperate with the government’s policy of forced exclusion in establishing the War Relocation Authority internment camps. As a demonstration of loyalty to the United States, he opposed legal challenges to the government’s internment policy and advised the government on how to run the camps. Masaoka and the JACL led the call for the drafting of the Nisei out of the camps and campaigned for the Army to create a segregated unit of Japanese volunteers, the highly decorated 442nd Regimental Combat Team of WWII. He served as the unit’s publicist.
Following WWII, Mike Masaoka was instrumental in winning repeal of the Japanese Exclusion Act of 1924. As the JACL’s Washington representative (1952-1972), he worked tirelessly to advance the cause of Japanese Americans through crucial times, when supporters were few and financing was scarce. His lobbying resulted in amendments to the Walter-McCarran Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1952 which gave Japanese immigrants the same rights as Europeans. He also represented JACL as a founding member of the Leadership Council on Civil Rights, and joined Dr. Martin Luther King’s 1963 march on Washington. In 1972, he left the JACL to become a fulltime lobbyist.
Mike Masaoka passed away in Washington, D.C. in 1991. The consulting firm, Mike Masaoka Associates continues to lobby on behalf of American and Japanese commercial interests. His autobiography, “They Call Me Moses Masaoka”, written with Bill Hosokawa, was published in 1987.
As of August 26, 2006