At 40: Asian American Studies
@ San Fr ancisco State
Self-Determination Community
Student Service Asian American Studies Department College of Ethnic Studies San Francisco State University 2009
The “Legacy” of Edison Uno Wesley Ueunten
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riting this essay on the late Edison Uno has been difficult, to say the least. The idea for the article came when Ben Kobashigawa and I decided to revive and restructure the former Nikkei Studies Center and Edison Uno Institute at San Francisco State University into the Edison Uno Institute of Nikkei and Uchinanchu Studies or EUINUS. In the Japanese American community, Uno’s name comes up often as one of the first to teach a Japanese American Studies course at SF State and as an early advocate of compensation for Japanese Americans who were in the internment camps during World War II. It was because of his pioneering work that we decided it was important to keep his name in our newly restructured institute. Thus, I chose “The Legacy of Edison Uno” to be the title of my essay. However, after writing and re-writing this essay so many times that I lost count, something dawned on me: I was looking for the “legacy” of Edison Uno as if it were the Holy Grail that would tell us how to set up EUINUS and how to solve issues that now face Japanese Americans. After going through this arduous process, I would venture to say that Uno would question the use of the word “legacy” with his name. If he were alive today he might warn me about using the word “legacy” with his name, since a legacy could also refer to those students who get into Ivy League schools without having to try hard because of what their parents or grandparents or great-grandparents were. Using the term “legacy of Edison Uno” would invite similar inaction since people might believe that struggles are things in the past and not ongoing. Standard English is the medium of expression that pidgin English (or more officially, Hawaiian creole) speakers like me have had to learn as a second language. In this language that is still foreign to me, nouns that end with “y” seem to have tyrannical control over our thoughts. As mentioned earlier, “legacy” leads us to think in terms of
past achievements disconnected from the present. When we talk about Japanese American “identity” or “community” we tend to imagine entities that are formed a priori to and separately from our existence. If it is not nouns that end with “y” that rule over us, the words that end with “ture” do. We often explain Japanese American behavior in terms of “nature” as in the discourses of Japanese American identity: “A Jap is a Jap” was the justification for putting Japanese Americans into internment camps during World War II even though most of them were American citizens. Now that such blatant racism has, at least publicly, gone out of style; Japanese American “culture” is seen as the reason for their being “successful,” “passive,” or “quiet.” I am not really sure, however, if we have collectively been able to distinguish between nature and culture since both suggest that there is some anciently rooted “something” that determines the behavior, ability, potential, and even loyalty of Japanese Americans. In any case, when speaking or writing in this language called Standard English, I notice that nouns seem to have priority over the verbs. They become the last words in our conversations. Just as nature and culture become explanations of what Japanese American do and what we are, and legacy is chosen to represent Edison Uno, we invest in nouns the power to be the answer. Words such as “Manifest Destiny,” “military necessity,” and “national security” also come to mind. They have been used to explain and justify anything from genocide, slavery, and imperialism to incarceration, internment, and invasion.1 It’s no wonder I have struggled to write this essay. How can you write about a person who spent his life challenging and resisting anything that confined him and other fellow humans to any constricted place or position in such a language that contains the seeds of our own subordination? I would like to apologize in advance to the people 209
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The “Legacy” of Edison Uno
who knew Edison Uno for this far-from-complete essay on him. There are more people I need to talk to who knew him that I simply did not make the time and effort to. There are still more materials written by and about him that I have not gone through. I take full responsibility for this essay’s shortcomings and every bit of criticism is deserved. However, as we embark on this endeavor to establish EUINUS, I would like to suggest humbly that if there has been any lesson that I have learned in this search for a “legacy” of Edison Uno, it would simply be: “Take nothing for granted.” Easier said than done – but that is the point. Dignity vs. Military Necessity Lissen Uno You Don’t like conditions here, in the good ol’ U.S.A. then GET THE HELL OUT!!! GO BACK TO JAPAN, YOU GOOK!!! ALSO, SLOPE, Practice what you preach and take all the NIGGERS to JAPAN with you, you DINK HYPOCRITE!! Its FUCKERS like you who’ ll turn San Francisco into another Wash., DC, or New York City – fuck this beautiful City up, raise our taxes sky high!! You SHIT talk an act like you speak for all us SAN FRANCISCANS!!! WAKE UP, YOU FUCKIN JAP!! IT JUST AINT GOIN TO WORK!! CANT YOU SEE THAT? You fuckin JAP, nice and cozy in a white neighborhood, and smug, – PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH, JAP, an MOVE TO HUNTERS POINT OR THE FILMORE!! Signed Hard-workin, Law Abidin WASP who MINDS HIS OWN BUSINES!!! [Letter postmarked August 11, 1971 sent to Edison Uno from San Francisco. From folder entitled “Hate Mail – 1968-1975” in Edison Uno Papers kept at UCLA Special Collections]
Edison Uno was not from Japan. He was born in Los Angeles in 1929 and attended public schools there until 1942, when – in the name of military necessity – his family was relocated to the Amache Relocation Camp in Granada, Colorado and then incarcerated in a Department of Justice internment camp in Crystal City, Texas. While three of Uno’s older brothers had left camp to serve in the Pacific and European wars, he and his father remained interned until after the war ended. His mother and sisters had been released after the truce with Japan. When his brothers returned from their overseas assignments, they found Edison and his father still incarcerated. Thus, the majority of Uno’s teen years were spent confined to an internment camp ironically run by the
Department of Justice in the country of his birth. Citizenship and the military service of his elder brothers were no guarantee for freedom. An excerpt of a 1973 interview of Uno gives us an indication of how the interment experience impacted his life as well as a lesson in dignity from his mother: The junkman came to haul the stuff away. Everything. But like most people of her generation, my mother had gotten one thing she couldn’t part with, because it was worth more than it really was. In her case it was a secondhand piano she’d bought for $175 – a fortune in those days – and all it did, really, was collect dust and she’d pile all kinds of knick-knacks on it. Nobody in the house could even play it. Anyway, the junkman saw the piano after he had shoved all our stuff into his truck, and asked my mother how much she wanted for it. But she just shrugged – her English wasn’t too good – so he offered her $5. She began weeping. He said $15 was all he could give her for it, you know, he said it was used and all that. My mother suddenly straightened up, her fists clenched, then hurried to a neighbor’s to use the telephone. She told someone at the USO if they needed a good piano, they could come over and take it away.
Uno’s release from camp also marked the blossoming of his ambitious energy. After returning to Los Angeles, he graduated high school with scholastic honors and had even been elected senior class president. After serving fourteen months in the US Naval Reserve (1951-52), Uno attended Los Angeles City College (AA in government/ minor in public administration) and Los Angeles State College (BA in political science/minor in government). Around this time he attended the first national YMCA conference held in Iowa, where he was elected to be the chairman of 5,000 delegates. Along the way, Uno became active in the Japanese American Citizens League in 1947. He served as president of the East Los Angeles Chapter of the JACL from 1950 to 1951. At 19, he was the youngest chapter president in the organization’s history. From 1955 to 1958, Uno represented people who were claiming war-time losses suffered during the evacuation before the Department of Justice Claims Division in San Francisco. The claims were successfully adjudicated. He actually moved to San Francisco in 1956 and attended law school there from 1957 to 1958. His work in the community continued as he was a charter member of the Nisei Voters League of San Francisco in 1959. If that was not enough, Uno managed an importexport firm and was a manager of a national mail-order business that specialized in judo and karate supplies from 1958 to 1964. He was also editor for the first national
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directory of the Judo Black Belt Federation of the United States. As overwhelming as Uno’s activities were, this is only a partial listing that I gleaned from interviews and documents. There is a feeling of urgency that is reflected in his record of service – a need to make up for lost time spent incarcerated, which was by his own accounting, “fourand-a-half years – 1,647 days, to be exact.” However, Uno was not simply making up for lost time. Around 1959, before he reached the age of 30, Uno suffered a heart attack. Following the attack he entered a period of intense brooding during over the question of having “to end one’s days so soon.” When he was interviewed in 1973, he recalled that he eventually gained a sense of awareness of the world and the people around him. Realizing his mortality seemed to liberate him as he revealed, “After I overcame my fear of death, I really began to live.” Nurture vs. Nature and Culture “People still ask me why I do these things,” Uno said dryly. “I can’t give them a ready answer. It seems that after all the years I’ve been beating my head against the wall, I’ve gotten calloused, you know, more stubborn. What the Japanese call katai-atama. Still, I see myself as a farmer casting seeds into the wind; some will germinate and others won’t. Or, to put it another way, I use the green-stick technique. “You bend a green twig and if you’re careful enough, the stick will retain its curve when it sets. Too much pressure and it snaps; too little, you don’t have any effect at all. I guess you can say I try to change people, especially the young, by changing their ways of looking at things. And you know, I get my comfort when some kid whose name I don’t even remember comes up to me after a talk and shakes my hand, saying ‘I know you don’t remember me, but seven years ago I heard you talk....’ And, you know, that really makes me feel good.” And here, his face lights up with a big, warm smile.2
Much of Uno’s work was directed at the next generations. In 1964, he became operations manager at the Student Union at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). In 1968, he became a financial aid officer at the San Francisco Medical Center and was responsible for the administration of student financial aid. From 1969 to 1974, he was Assistant Dean of Students at UCSF. In 1973, he was dismissed shortly after he publicly charged his superior with indifference toward the housing needs of the students. His firing was met with a large outpouring of support from the students who supported him for his dedication to their needs and for his work to improve student services, which few other administrators did. The greater community also supported him as he received letters of support from politicians, minority
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organizations, co-workers, professionals, and other people of all backgrounds. The settlement of his grievance was made three months after his dismissal notification. Despite the support he got from the larger community, Uno was seen as a “radical” within the Japanese American community for not fitting into the “quiet American” stereotype that many Japanese Americans themselves actively encouraged. It was understandable that they would do so since it was related to the racism against Japanese Americans that was manifested in the internment experience. However, Uno refused to succumb to any notion that Japanese Americans are quiet by nature or culture, especially when social justice was at stake. Richard Wada, one of the participants in the SF State Strike, points out that Uno had definitely been influenced by his internment experience: He could see that the internment experience was not an isolated event, but that there was a social continuum that linked Japanese Americans with other Asian Americans and other people of color. Wada points out that we need to keep in mind that the African American community was much larger than it is now. It was still a big force in San Francisco and had deep relations with other communities. It is hard to understand activism in San Francisco without understanding the Civil Rights Movement and other social protests that were taking place at the time. Uno was involved in such struggles as the protest against the House of Un-American Activities Committee meetings in San Francisco and with protests against the racist hiring practices at the Sheraton Palace Hotel and automobile dealerships on Van Ness which were notorious for not hiring African Americans. The late 1960s was a busy time for Uno. During this time, Uno contributed over 200 voluntary hours to investigate the SF police department, police commission, courts, and jails as part of his duties as an appointed member of the San Francisco Committee on Crime. Simultaneously, he was an active member of the SF JACL Chapter’s Civil Rights Committee. In the same years, Uno had worked with a small handful of Nisei to repeal the Emergency Detention Act of 1950, also known as “Title II,” which continued to give legal justification for actions similar to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Title II was repealed in 1971 and Uno received one of the pens used in signing the measure to repeal it from President Nixon. Uno also began publicly supporting the student strike at SF State. His support simultaneously marginalized and energized him: They [the Japanese Americans] used too many cultural crutches to avoid changing their archaic views and to promote creative independent thought. But I’d always
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The “Legacy” of Edison Uno looked at myself as an agent of change. Here were the students – particularly the Third World ones – literally getting their heads knocked in, and there was the administration. Nobody from my community was saying anything. So I began organizing an Asian coalition against the administration. We had our first meeting right in my living room.
In the same year, Uno was asked by SF State students to teach one of the first courses on Japanese American history. Uno also taught at Stanford University, Lone Mountain College, and the California School of Professional Psychology. Through his courses, many students, including Japanese Americans, learned for the first time of the internment camps. More importantly, however, they were exposed to his activism that went beyond teaching about what happened, but also provided examples of what can and has been done. Edison Uno vs. Earl Warren WAAAAAAAAA!!! BOOO HOOO!!! OH BOOOO HOOOOO HOOOOO HOOO!!! BOOOOO HOOOO!! … ALL RACISM MUS GO!! DOWN WiF RACISM!! ALL JAPANISE ARISE!! NO MORE RACISM!! DOWN WiF WHItE RACISM, incluing iffEN JAP Racism!!! BOOOOO HOOOOO!!! EEEEeeeeeeeeeehh!!! … I FiL SORry FO Myself!!! NO MO Racism!! AAA WA MA MAMA!!! … SANGA BISHI!! SANGA BISHI!!! SANGA BISHI!!! MOOOOteM!!! DO GAATS!!! GAAAAHH!!! eRL WARRN STIL HAF NOT ApoLOGISEd HuMbly TO Edson Uno!! EDSon Uno Cant save Fas! Waaa Hooo!! Hooo! … Edson Uno fo CHIFF Justis of SUPRIMM Cott banZai!!! PS Edson – ITS wAteR UNDA DA BRIGE! FoGet iT!! DON Go stiring UP HOSS MANUR!! Good GRIFF!! [Letter sent to Edison Uno on July 17, 1969 (scrawled in
pencil). From folder entitled “Hate Mail – 1968-1975” in Edison Uno Papers kept at UCLA Special Collections]
For seven years, Uno corresponded with the retired Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren. In 1942, as California State Attorney, Warren implemented the mass evacuation of Japanese Americans under Executive Order 9066 signed by President Franklin Roosevelt. It is widely believed that Warren wanted to consolidate his political base for his quest to become governor by organizing the evacuation of the Japanese Americans. Ironically, Warren, who was known as a “hanging judge” before the war, established a reputation after the war as a great civil libertarian and defender of civil rights as Chief Justice. The letters that Uno sent to Warren asked him to publicly admit his motivations for implementing the mass evacuations of Japanese Americans during World War II. Uno actually respected Warren and said that he felt that he was a “great man” whose burden of the past would be lifted by an admission of guilt. Until his death, Warren never made that admission despite Uno’s relentless sevenyear pursuit. Uno recalls, “Well, for seven years I kept writing. I have an Earl Warren file two inches thick!” Uno actually met Warren soon before his death in 1973. When Warren came to San Francisco to address an American Civil Liberties convention, Uno patiently waited to see him. Uno remembered the moment: “Ah, so you’re Mr. Edison Uno,” he said.“I remember you from your letters. Well, within a short while, Mr. Uno, you’ ll be pleasantly surprised.” Whether he had a premonition of his death, I can’t say. When he passed away in May of this year, I still felt a tinge of dissatisfaction about my fruitless efforts. You never really get used to that, you know. About a week later, however, a reporter from the Washington Post called me and told me he had read about my correspondence with the Chief Justice. I mentioned Justice Warren had written an autobiography to be published after his death by a New York publisher. It’ ll come out in January. Anyway, the reporter checked it out, and, sure enough, Earl Warren, the great man that he was, admitted in that book he had been torn with anguish by what he had done, and that its memory had haunted him all his life. “But you know,” Mr. Uno reflected, shaking his head thoughtfully. “It really takes a great man to admit his wrongdoing.
Many times students being confronted with our history of racism will ask, “Why bring the past up?” or “Why talk about something that happened a long time ago?” Or as the writer of the letter above stated, “ITS wAteR UNDA DA BRIGE! FoGet iT!!DON Go stiring
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UP HOSS MANUR!!Good GRIFF!!” As a pidgin speaker might say, however, “Dis not pau yet.” To paraphrase using the words of William Faulkner, the past is not dead. In fact, it’s not even past. As Uno wrote in 1973, we are not there yet. …Japanese Americans must constantly ask themselves: “Who are we?” “What do other Americans think I am?” “Why do they draw the erroneous conclusion that I am something I am not?” The whole question of dual identity results from what I call the quasi-American status of Japanese Americans.
At this juncture of the establishment of EUINUS and the 40th anniversary since the SF State Strike, instead of ending our dialogue with those fancy words that end with “y” – mo bettah we start with such questions as “Who,” “What,” and “Why.” Notes 1. I imagine that someone with a good education might just read this and dismiss my rant about a “tyranny of the y-nouns” as being Foucauldian or as just another way to talk about “social constructions.” My knowledge of Foucault is limited so I cannot comment on the first point, but I could not agree more with the second point: I am not saying anything new or special about how words (social constructions) do hurt people and how they become the reason and justification for us to use sticks and stones to break people’s bones. Further, when I redefine the legacy of Edison Uno in terms of what he did, I am not saying something that has not been written using the term “agency.” However, I think that the menace of the “tyranny of the y-nouns” is found in their tendency to become the definitive words on a lot of subjects. For example, when we talk or write about social constructions such as “race,” “class,” “gender,” “sexuality,” “nationality,” and “ethnicity,” I seriously wonder if we give too much agency to the ambiguous entity called “society” and not enough to human subjects. That is, “society” rather than ordinary individuals becomes the culprit or hero in our portrayals of social reality. “Society” is what either “messes us up” or saves us, not the ideas, intentions, choices, and actions of the people who make up that “society.” In other words, I am afraid of getting trapped in a tautological realm of “social constructions” by using social constructions to explain other social constructions. 2. Richard Akutagawa, “Edison Uno, The Un-Quiet American,” Zenger’s 9 Oct. 1973.
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