Discover Nikkei

https://www.discovernikkei.org/en/interviews/clips/1790/

Japanese American solidarity

I think if I have any one message to my own community is that we have been a part of the movement for social change for a very long time, and there have been people individual people who have lead the way. I can cite people like Yuri Kochiyama, people like Warren Furutani, Dale Minami, there have been role models coming up ahead of us Robert Takasugi, I have to include him and I pay tribute to those folks who always cared about community, but brought our community into the mainstream of the struggle or the larger struggle and brought us a place there and made space for all of us to be a part of it. And to take part in this in this much larger struggle that was bigger than us. But, but really that we are honored to be a part of.

I often see these old photos of all these people that marched with Martin Luther King back at the time when it was a lot less fashionable and really in many ways, that's where people are today. Marching with...I continue watching the Black Lives Matter when there wasn't wasn't a whole lot of us was a very isolating experience in many ways but not isolating because it was so much to do and so much so much support outside of the movements and outside of our marches that we always knew that that was there at least that part of that. We knew that people care enough about that to feel it will show up in that there was enough committed, absolutely conscientious people that would show up every single time.


activism communities equality Japanese Americans justice law social action social justice

Date: July 14, 2020

Location: California, US

Interviewer: Matthew Saito

Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum; Japanese American Bar Association

Interviewee Bio

Mia Yamamoto is a Sansei transgender attorney and civil rights activist. She was born in the Poston concentration camp in Arizona in 1943 where her parents were incarcerated. She joined the Army and served in the Vietnam War. Inspired by her father's courage to speak out against the unconstitutional incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, she attended the University of California Los Angeles's School of Law and has been a leader in the field of social justice, including working with the Japanese American Bar Association. (March 2021)

*This is one of the main projects completed by The Nikkei Community Internship (NCI) Program intern each summer, which the Japanese American Bar Association and the Japanese American National Museum have co-hosted.

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