(Delivered on February 23, 2013 at the Philadelphia JACL Day of Remembrance Event, Main Line Unitarian Church, Devon, PA)

I am very happy to be with you today in Philadelphia, a city that I think was the epicenter of Japanese American redress.  Why?  Because Grayce Uyehara once lived here and Grayce Uyehara was the heart and soul of redress (note: Grayce currently resides in a suburb of Philadelphia).

As we know, the success of Japanese American redress is a tribute to the thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of people who worked on the effort.  But today I want to talk about just eight of them, beginning with Grayce.  And then I want to talk about Mike Masaoka, Spark Matsunaga, Dan Inouye, Bob Matsui, Cherry Kinoshita, Denny Yasuhara, and Tom Kometani.

For them, redress was isshou kenmei –  Japanese for all in, full throttle and non-stop. Continue reading “Scenes Behind the Scenes” by Grant Ujifusa →