By JANICE YEN
I’ve been a member of NCRR since it was founded in 1980. Before that I was a member of the Little Tokyo People’s Rights Organization (LTPRO), which sought to provide affordable housing in Little Tokyo and to prevent the dispersal of the low-income, working-class residents of residential hotels.
While in college I asked my mom if I could buy a single-lens reflex (SLR) camera. She asked her brother-in-law, who was stationed in Japan with the MIS, to buy a Japanese camera for me through the PX. Within months I was the proud owner of a Minolta SRT101, which I took everywhere … to Days of Remembrance, the Washington, D.C. lobbying trip, marches and rallies in L.A., and of course on vacations.
NCRR has been fortunate to have individuals who were willing to write about NCRR’s redress campaign, support work, and core principles of unity. We also had amateur photographers who snapped countless photos over the years.
As part of the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, a modest amount of money became available through the Civil Liberties Public Education Fund. NCRR applied for grants to document its history and the Days of Remembrance that NCRR organized in Los Angeles. NCRR in partnership with Visual Communications also received grants to 1) Preserve the over 150 1981 Los Angeles CWRIC testimonies (the 13-volume DVD compilation is called “Speak Out for Justice”) and 2) to produce a docu-drama, “Stand Up for Justice,” about Ralph Lazo, a Mexican American high school student who accompanied his Japanese American school friends to the Manzanar concentration camp.
We were able to apply for funds though the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program sponsored by then-Assemblymember Mike Honda.
NCRR conducted oral histories of several of its members who were active during the redress campaign. They included our officers (Alan Nishio, Kay Ochi, Richard Katsuda, Kathy Masaoka, Suzy Katsuda and Jim Matsuoka) and individuals like Miya Iwataki (NCRR’s legislative chair), who contributed so much to NCRR’s redress/reparations work. Later Rei Osaki, Jim Saito, and Janice Yen were also interviewed.
NCRR’s history and the Day of Remembrance write-ups can be found on NCRR’s website, www.ncrr-la.org. Video excerpts of the oral histories can also be found on NCRR’s website. The testimonies from the L.A. CWRIC hearings are on the Visual Communications website, www.vconline.org. Information about “Stand Up for Justice” is also on the VC website.
NCRR worked with the CSU Dominguez Hills library to preserve NCRR’s photo collection and documents donated by its members. CSUDH scanned hundreds of photos and memorabilia from the late 1960s to 1990s during the redress campaign and when the checks for reparations were dispensed. Jim Matsuoka donated most of his archives to CSUDH and several pieces were donated by Kay Ochi, Janice Yen, and Roy Nakano.
Photos taken by Wilbur Sato, Unity newspaper, Kathy Masaoka, Kay Ochi, Gann Matsuda and many other members and friends found their way into the NCRR archives. Scanning of photos continues and we hope to have many more online in the coming months. The photos can be found in the Gerth Archives of CSUDH: https://libguides.csudh.edu www.digitalcollections.archives.csudh.edu
Finally, NCRR is proud to have published our history in book form. “NCRR: The Grassroots Struggle for Japanese American Redress and Reparations” was published in 2018 by the UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press with graphic designs by Qris Yamashita and made possible by the mentorship of UCLA Emeritus Professor Lane Ryo Hirabayashi. Glen Kitayama’s master’s thesis is at the beginning of the book and provides a scholarly analysis of NCRR; the thesis is followed by several essays written by NCRR members grouped by subject and illustrated by countless photos.