The Japanese American Story…Intro

Intro: The Japanese American Citizens League (JACL)

Background of a civil rights organization

The Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) was founded in 1929 by young Japanese American leaders who felt the need for a national organization to benefit their fellow Americans of Japanese descent who faced discrimination and prejudice on a regular basis. There were many anti-Japanese and anti-Asian laws on the books at that time which the JACL leaders wanted to have removed.

The JACL continues to monitor and respond to issues related to civil rights of all Americans with particular emphasis on Japanese Americans and other Asian and Pacific Islander Americans. The JACL is the oldest and largest Asian American civil and human rights organization in the United States.

Striving to tell the Japanese American story, which includes the forced removal from the West Coast states of people of Japanese ancestry, is important for the JACL and Japanese Americans. It was later determined by a commission that the evacuation and incarceration denied Japanese Americans their constitutional rights and were the result of racial prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership at that time.

The JACL has a teacher training program and provides teacher workshops to assist educators in bringing information about this period in history to students. Educators may contact any JACL office for information about the program and curriculum guide to teach about this chapter in our nation’s history.

Along with other groups, numerous individuals, and members of Congress, the JACL worked to secure redress for those wrongs. The passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 (the Redress Bill) signed by President Ronald Reagan was the culmination of over fifteen years of dedicated effort to bring some sense of justice to the wrongs of the forced evacuation and incarceration of innocent citizens.

Leaders within the JACL want to ensure that the unfortunate incarceration of innocent Japanese Americans and immigrants from Japan during World War II will not be repeated against any other people.

With a headquarters building in San Francisco and a Washington DC Legislative and Advocacy office, the JACL also has some regional offices. The JACL has been a membership-driven organization and has more than one hundred chapters located throughout the United States including Alaska and Hawaii. It also has a chapter in Japan.

The JACL strives to be inclusive and is open to interested persons regardless of ethnicity. Many of the leaders, who have served or who currently serve on the National Board of the JACL are not of Japanese descent. The JACL now has corporate partners that provide financial sponsorships to sustain the organization and its programs.

The national organization and the local chapters of the JACL promote values of and opportunities for cultural, educational, social, civic, service, and leadership aspects of life. Advocacy work in the civil rights area is a vital function of the JACL, and preserving the Japanese American history is important to the organization. More information on the JACL may be found at: www.jacl.org.

Thank you for reading. [This is taken from the book: The Japanese American Story As Told Through a Collection of Speeches and Articles, www.thejapaneseamericanstory.com. It tells at the end of the “about” portion at the website how to get a free ebook.]