Aiko Herzig Yoshinaga Papers

During her life and posthumously, Aiko Herzig Yoshinaga (Aiko) was recognized and honored with numerous awards and accolades for speaking out and fighting for social justice. She is best known for uncovering the “smoking gun” evidence that led to the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, resulting in redress and reparations for the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. Her research findings were also pivotal in bringing forth writ of coram nobis petitions in three wartime cases against Gordon Hirabayashi, Fred Korematsu, and Minoru Yasui, who were convicted of violating military orders under Executive Order 9066.

Aiko Yoshinaga, was born on August 5, 1924 in Sacramento, California. Her parents, Sanji Yoshinaga and Shigeru Kinuwaki, were immigrants from Japan. Aiko was the second to the youngest among six brothers and sisters: brother Nobukazu Frank and sisters Aya and Ei were born in Japan; brother Tsugio John and sister Amy were born in Sacramento. The family moved from Sacramento in 1933 to Downey briefly, and then to Los Angeles until 1942.

In Sacramento, Sanji Yoshinaga supported his family by managing hotels and running a small fruit and vegetable store. In 1933, when Aiko was 9 years of age, the family moved to Downey and stayed on her mother’s cousin’s farm for a few months until her father was able to find a home in “uptown” Los Angeles, a small community of Nikkei (Japanese American) families.

For the next 9 years, until Aiko was 17, the family settled in Los Angeles where she attended Hobart Elementary School, Berendo Junior High School, Poly High, and Los Angeles High School. At the latter, Aiko and her fellow Nisei (second generation Japanese American) students were a few weeks from graduating when their lives were interrupted by Executive Order 9066; Aiko would not receive her high school diploma until after the war.

In February 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which cleared the way for the removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans within designated “military zones” located primarily along the West Coast. The Yoshinaga family, living in a designated military zone, was initially sent to live in the horse stables at Santa Anita Racetrack before being imprisoned in April 1942 at Jerome, one of ten American incarceration camps. For Aiko, shortly before incarceration, she married Jake Miyazaki and joined him and his family at Manzanar. There, she gave birth to her first child, Gerrie Lani Miyazaki. Upon hearing that her father was gravely ill, she and her daughter transferred to the Jerome incarceration camp, and later to the Rowher incarceration camp. Her father died while imprisoned in Jerome.

At war’s end in 1945, Aiko and Gerrie relocated to Denver, Colorado with Jake’s family. After their divorce, Aiko and Gerrie eventually moved to New York City where her widowed mother and siblings lived. In 1948, after attending night school in New York City, Aiko earned her high school diploma. She also met and married her husband Davis Abe, a US. Army officer who served in the postwar occupation in Japan. While in Kyoto, Japan, she had two more children, Lisa Jo Abe and David Louis Abe. After divorcing her second husband, Aiko relocated to New York and became the single parent of two daughters and a son. She found work in secretarial and office clerical positions, supporting her family while at the same time, developing meticulous organizational and research skills.

A turning point for Aiko came over dinner table talks with her teenage daughter Lisa during the 1960’s when they would discuss current events. In Aiko’s own words:

I found myself hard-pressed to satisfactorily explain to my daughter, let alone myself, the stark contradictions between what we had been taught about American values and American democracy versus the stark realities carried into our home by the news. I had naively accepted the dictum that we lived in a society based on the rule of law, but it was increasingly clear that laws were not synonymous with justice and fairness. It became clear to Aiko that she had suppressed and denied her own painful memories of her incarceration and injustice. She started to confront issues of racism, including her own personal experiences, and sought to educate herself and become involved in political change. In New York, she joined a group called the Asian Americans for Action (AAA) and participated in demonstrations about social, economic and political issues in the U.S. and abroad. At one point, Aiko found herself arrested along with President Jimmy Carter’s daughter Amy while demonstrating in front of the South African Embassy to protest that country’s apartheid policy. Aiko would also meet Michi Nishiura Weglyn, author of Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps, who became a close friend and inspiration to Aiko in her pursuit against social injustice.

In 1978, Aiko married John “Jack” Herzig (Jack), a former U.S. Army Lieutenant colonel paratrooper. They moved to Washington, D.C. and Aiko began visiting the National Archives, initially to find documents relating to her family’s World War II incarceration. It was Weglyn who encouraged her to broaden her research to the various issues relating to the wartime exclusion history. Aiko found herself at the National Archives Monday through Saturday and spending 50 to 60 hours a week. After his retirement, Jack joined his wife as a research partner and together, they amassed about 8,000 documents from the War Relocation Authority and War Department records and other federal agencies. In 1980, the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Citizens (CWRIC) was created by the U.S. Congress to officially study the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. In 1981, Aiko was hired by the CWRIC as a researcher. Her documents and research proved invaluable to the study and was the core of the CWRIC’s 1983 final report, Personal Justice Denied, which led to the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, redress, and a formal apology by the U.S. government to Japanese Americans.

While conducting research at the National Archives for the CWRIC, Aiko along with her husband, uncovered the tenth copy of General John L. DeWitt’s final report. DeWitt’s report had documented the fact that J. Edgar Hoover of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Federal Communications Commission, the Office of Naval Intelligence and other agencies categorically denied that Japanese Americans had committed any wrongdoing. DeWitt’s report was never presented to the U.S. Supreme Court during the original 1944 case of Korematsu v. United States. Instead, it was suppressed and all copies, but one were destroyed. With the discovery of the tenth missing copy, it was revealed that the U.S. government based its decision to incarcerate Japanese Americans on racist and unconstitutional arguments versus its long-standing position of military necessity. This discovery was also instrumental in laying the foundation for writ of coram nobis petitions for three wartime cases, resulting in decisions to vacate the wartime U.S. Supreme Court rulings.

In July 1981, the CWRIC held hearings to hear testimonies from more than 750 people relating to the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans. After the CWRIC concluded its work, Aiko was hired by the Japanese American National Library in 1989 to edit and annotate the CWRIC transcripts prior to publication. Known as the Japanese American Historical Papers Project, Aiko worked on this project until 1996, when the Civil Liberties Public Education Fund (CLPEF) was created in response to the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. Aiko was hired by the CLPEF Board to transcribe the CWRIC hearings. In 1998, the CLPEF awarded the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) with a grant to facilitate the publication of the transcripts produced by Aiko.

In 2003, the Herzig’s relocated to Gardena, California after 25 years in the Washington, D.C. area. Sadly, in 2005, Jack died of colon cancer after a period of illness.

In 2010, Aiko published Words Can Lie or Clarify: Terminology of the World War II Incarceration of Japanese Americans, which reflected her experience as a researcher for the CWRIC that caused her to realize the power and usage of words. In 2011, the UCLA project was completed with the publication of Speaking Out for Personal Justice: Site Summaries of Testimonies and Witnesses Registry from the U.S. Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians Hearings (CWRIC), 1981, edited by Aiko and Marjorie Lee, a librarian at the UCLA Asian American Studies Center.

In her later years, Aiko continued to be sought after by groups, organizations, colleagues, students and others for her expertise, advice and support. She would share any information she had with them, including clippings, documents and resources in her vast files. She was frequently asked to speak and participate on panels, the recipient of many honors and awards, and featured in documentaries, including Janice Tanaka’s biographical film, Rebel with a Cause. She also participated on planning and advisory boards for major projects including the California State University Japanese American Digitization Project. On a June 2013 curriculum vitae, she listed herself as a “Prisoner, U.S. War Relocation Authority concentration camps”. In her words, she had evolved “…from a once naïve housewife to a concerned citizen, and now political activist.” Up until her death in 2018 at the age of 94, Aiko continued in her role as a political activist, helping others in speaking out and fighting for social justice.