Page Title

President Reagan won the opportunity to inform a senior visiting Japanese politician of this concern. Yoshiro Mori, Japan's Minister of Education, came to Washington, DC, shortly after Nakasone made his H.R. 442 statements. The purpose of the visit was to sign a math and science educational exchange program agreement between Japan and the United States. Reagan asked for "deep background" on Mori from both Fuller and the National Security Council (NSC). According to the president's sources, Mori was a "nationalist" and "ruthless tactician" for Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Positioned to replace Nakasone someday, Mori might have even influenced Nakasone, the "deep background" reports suggested, to make his H.R. 442 comments.

Upon meeting Mori, Reagan's position was clear and unswerving. Japan had no right, he explained, to influence American domestic politics. Since the Reagan administration was attempting to penetrate the Japanese market at the time (stressing U.S. Midwest agricultural products) and complaining about Japanese efforts to halt and even sabotage the American effort, Mori might have asked Reagan to stop interfering in the Japanese economy. This did not happen. Instead, he urged the White House to change its mind on H.R. 442, and these urgings, he insisted, were that of "one good friend to another."(FN19)

This would be the end of the direct U.S.-Japanese confrontation over internment redress. The points had been made. But Reagan would continue to list (privately) what he simply called "national security concerns" as a reason for redress legislation opposition. In reality, these national security concerns were rooted more in pride and emotionalism than security policy.

Nevertheless, it was not the first time that the plight of Japanese Americans had been confused with matters of "security."

On September 17, 1987, H.R. 442 passed the House by a vote of 243-141. It was not a straight party vote, and the opposition to redress included some members of Congress who, by reputation and political credentials, were expected to champion Japanese-American rights. For instance, one of Congress's powerful legislators, Claude Pepper (D) of Florida, also the nation's leading spokesperson for the rights of the elderly, thought a fight with Reagan on H.R. 442 would be counterproductive to his pro-senior citizen legislation. Although a Democrat with a liberal pro-civil rights/civil liberties record, Pepper hoped that Reagan's own status as a senior citizen and the well-cultivated Pepper-Reagan friendship would influence the conservative president's decision to approve liberal-leaning senior citizen rights measures from Congress. H.R. 442 suggested a threat to the Pepper-Reagan relationship and, despite the irony of voting against his career as a champion of the rights of the downtrodden, Pepper voted with the fate of his senior citizen legislation foremost in mind. (FN20)

From the House, H.R. 442 passed to the Senate. Its new Senate version was numbered S.1009. This Senate measure differed little from H.R. 442, preferring a compensation budget of $1.3 billion for an estimated 60,000 Japanese Americans. Thanks to the Alaska delegation, S.1009 also added a rider offering $12,000 apiece and an apology to those Alaskan Aleutian Islanders who were also relocated in World War II. A budget of $21.4 million was set aside for the Aleutian compensation package. This Aleutian rider only added to the Reagan administration's complaint of Congress's "fiscal irresponsibility" in a time of government cutbacks and proposals for a balanced budget.

Events continued to move slowly, particularly in the atmosphere of "Irangate" and time-consuming debates over Reagan's Contras policy in Nicaragua. Redress was an important issue, but it was never a top White House or congressional priority. Consequently, one of the president's staunchest congressional supporters, Representative Daniel Lungren (R-CA), recommended a compromise to break the deadlock. Although a member of the House, Lungren urged his Senate colleagues to write a simple, non-binding resolution that employed "apologetic rhetoric" and no compensation budget. Senator Orin Hatch (R-UT) praised this compromise, vowing to introduce legislation on behalf of the Lungren "initiative."(FN21)

In response, the Japanese-American community moved against Lungren in a political offensive that won results.

The Lungren initiative coincided with California Governor George Deukmejian's nomination of Lungren for the post of state treasurer. Lungren was interested in the post and, for a time, no one doubted this Reagan favorite would be confirmed. Pulling together a coalition of Asian-American political activists, San Francisco attorney and redress champion Donald Tamaki blocked the Lungren appointment. Tamaki's attacks on Lungren's "race politics" worked, and it shocked Washington.

Representative Matsui, who offered advice and staff assistance to Tamaki's "Stop Lungren" movement, violated an unwritten California delegation rule of congressional collegiality by aiding Tamaki. Both Matsui and Tamaki made it clear to the press that the Japanese-American community "could not be taken for granted anymore" and that the "kid gloves were off." Even though the entire Asian-American community constituted no more than 7 percent of California's population, it maintained a disproportionate number of the state's university students and professors, scientists, engineers, and CEOs. It was time to flex political muscle, Tamaki argued, and he thanked non-Asian Republicans and Democrats for recognizing the importance of full redress through their support of the Stop Lungren effort. Indeed, public opinion across California indicated strong support for both H.R. 442 and S.1009. Reagan, Deukmejian, and other Republican luminaries, Tamaki argued, should have realized that Lungren's antiredress position would lead to unfortunate political consequences. It was unclear whether Tamaki was, in fact, talking about Lungren or Reagan here, but the warning to antiredress politicians was obviously made. Deukmejian countered that Tamaki and his Democratic friends would use any issue to achieve political power. The Stop Lungren movement, he proclaimed, had been "emotional blackmail" and "gutter politics at its worst." Few agreed, and even The Washington Post predicted that, as the 1988 election heated up, Reagan's opposition to redress would falter thanks to the new, aggressive politics of the Japanese-American effort. (FN22)

Reagan discussed this developing situation with an old friend from his days on the National Governors Council, Thomas Kean (R), Governor of New Jersey. Reagan told Kean that he had difficulty understanding the "motivations" of Japanese-American redress activists and their congressional backers. He wondered if the whole matter constituted little more than a Democratic Party measure to embarrass his administration in time for the 1988 election. More to the point, he noted that over the many years since World War II, he had never been convinced that Japanese Americans had been "forced into internment." Many, he believed, had gone to the camps "on their own volition."(FN23)

Kean, who disagreed with his old friend's assessment, pursued the matter, urging East Coast redress activist and former internee, Grant Ujifusa, to write the president on behalf of the people of New Jersey. Ujifusa's mission, said Kean, was "to educate the White House." Indeed, Ujifusa put together a powerful package of letters, petitions, and photographs from former internees. "We did not voluntarily leave our homes, our neighborhoods, and our work," Ujifusa wrote Reagan. "We were ousted from our rights and our property."(FN24)

In his own personal letter to Reagan, Ujifusa resurrected an old story about Reagan's late 1945 involvement in a military ceremony honoring a dead Japanese-American soldier. What happened in that ceremony soon became an issue in the redress effort itself. After more than forty years, the Reagan story took on quite a few versions. They varied from Reagan being present at the military ceremony to leading it in prayer. His exact words uttered at this ceremony also grew in eloquence and significance as his role there became a matter of concern to anyone interested in redress.

The most accepted version of this tale had Captain Ronald Reagan, on December 9, 1945, taking part in a special ceremony honoring Kazuo Masuda, who was killed in action on the banks of the Arno River in Italy one year earlier. Masuda had been part of the 442 Regimental Combat Team, and the ceremony involved the posthumous awarding of the Distinguished Service Cross.

General Joseph Stilwell, and not actor/Army Captain Ronald Reagan, presided over the ceremony. The medal was offered to Masuda's parents, and Stilwell had flown 3,000 miles to Santa Ana, California, for this event. A tired Stilwell bowed to movie star and former broadcast announcer, Ronald Reagan, to say a few words. This he did, but the exact words were not recorded by the press corps, including the Japanese-American reporters working for California's Pacific Citizen. The latter was even present at the scene. Perhaps exhausted by so many military funerals and awards ceremonies, the 1945 press appeared much more fascinated by the flashy clothes of Louise Allbritton, the attractive Universal movie starlet who accompanied Reagan to the ceremony, than they were by the event itself. (FN25) Reagan was there to represent the Santa Ana chapter of the American Veterans Committee.

Accompanying Ujifusa's letter to Reagan was also a powerful treatise by June Masuda Goto, the late Kazuo Masuda's sister. She reminded Reagan of his "heroic words" at her brother's award ceremony in which she remembered him saying, "Mr. and Mrs. Masuda, just as one member of the family of Americans, speaking to another member, I want to say for what your son Kazuo did--Thanks." Mrs. Goto urged the president to sign redress legislation into law in the name of her brother "Kaz" and in the name of a "young, courageous Ronald Reagan."(FN26)

It was not too long before members of Congress were talking about Reagan's 1945 "heroism" and contrasting it to the present. Although its true origins remained suspect, the "discovery" of the Masuda eulogy or speech more than assisted the redress cause. By summer 1988, Reagan's Masuda comments in their entirety mixed the metaphor of World War II idealism and sentiment with the 1980s goals of his administration.