The Seattle JACL was proud to be a community organizer of the Memorial Celebration of Henry Miyatake. The following are remarks made by incoming 2015 Seattle JACL President, Paul Tashima. Pauls words resonate for all those who worked on the Redress Campaign. My name is Paul Tashima and Im the incoming president of the Seattle JACL, but Im not here speaking on behalf of the JACL. I was asked to speak as a yonsei and, to my deep regret, someone that never knew Henry Miyatake. For some background, I did not grow up in Seattle. I spent the first twenty-three years of my life in Ohio, where my grandparents rarely spoke about their wartime experiences and the only time I felt my Japanese heritage was my fondness for nori and ochazuke. Seven years ago I moved to Seattle not knowing much about Japanese American history, not knowing much about the 442nd or MIS, the history of Bainbridge Island, the meaning of the Puyallup fair grounds, the birth of the Seattle redress movement, and not knowing the name Henry Miyatake. I never knew Henry Miyatake, but I now know of him and know that where we are today relied upon his ideas and the actions that rippled forth from them. I now know that who we are today as a community, and as a nation, is much indebted to people like him, people that consider the rightness of things, the correction of things, and the path that must be tread. The redress movement is often cited as righting a wrong, but I think this is only partly correct. I dont believe you can ever truly make right the devastation of 120,000 incarcerations and the indignity of living behind barbed wire, for the true recompense of such tragedy cannot be measured by monetary means and cannot be repaid by any government. To me, the redress movement was the formal recognition that harm was done to American citizens, and that while $1.6 billion cannot make up for these mistakes, it is enough to remind us about the value of our constitution and a reminder to be ever vigilant for such trespasses again. To me, the redress movement was not about righting a wrong: it was about righting our path as a nation so that we may be all the stronger. It was not about fixing our past, but, rather, our future, and for that we can thank Henry Miyatake. Our community has names: Minoru Yasui, Gordon Hirabayashi, Fred Korematsu, Edison Uno, Daniel Inouye – men and women for whom shikataganai was not enough, who worked tirelessly for a better America. We remember them for their contributions not just to our community, but for all communities without a voice, all people that could some day feel the iniquity of being the social pariah. When asked to speak today, I considered that our history, where we have been and what we have fought for, only lives for as long as we tell it. As we pass on a better world for the next generations, we must endeavor to tell them how it came to be, upon whose shoulders they stand. Because it is in the telling of our history that we can be grateful for those that paved our way and the future they have given us all. It is my hope that we can do so, that such names may never be lost to time. I did not know Henry Miyatake, but I am sincerely grateful for the path he set before us.
Posted on: Sun, 07 Dec 2014 06:14:25 +0000
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