Description:

This presentation examines Japanese American redress, a campaign that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s in which Japanese Americans pushed for a formal apology and monetary compensation from the federal government for their unjust incarceration during World War II. It hones in on a critical element of the redress campaign: the 1981 hearings held by the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC). During the hearings, Japanese Americans testified to the economic losses and emotional traumas of incarceration, but many testimonies were also infused with stories of environmental inequities. While Japanese American redress was fundamentally a fight for justice, it was also a fight for environmental justice. Japanese Americans’ losses and suffering did not unfold in an environmental vacuum. Instead, they were deeply embedded in the landscapes left behind and the landscapes where they spent the war.