What We're Coming To

With Martin Luther King Jr Day coming up next week, I wanted to write about a person who took a stand and made a difference.I wanted to write about a Japanese-American woman: Aiko Herzig Yoshinaga.

In her 50s, she began researching the internment camps where she and her family had been incarcerated during World War II.  When she passed away at 93, she had collected over 8,000 documents that filled countless file cabinets and a bathtub in her home. She had become a national expert on the topic, and, through her testimony to Congress, helped passed the 1988 Civil Liberties Act.

I am inspired by Yoshinaga's story because, 1) she started her project in her 50s and kept going (see my blog post Learning After 50, 9/4/19), 2) she was a woman who made a difference, and 3) through her efforts and out-spokeness – even though she was a victim -- she improved the accountability of our democracy.

However, Yoshinaga's story brings me home to the San Luis Valley where I live, and where there were no internment camps.

For many years my family has driven to New Mexico for the airport in Albuquerque, for shopping in Taos and Santa Fe, and to get through that state on our way to California and relatives there. We thought we were on Highway 285, but we always passed a sign that declared we were on the Ralph Carr Memorial Highway.

One day, we realized we had cell phones and, with the touch of a few buttons, we could finally answer that question: Who the heck is Ralph Carr and how did he get a chunk of highway named after him?

Ralph Carr was governor of Colorado  from 1939 to 1943, at the beginning of World War II.

He was Republican, and fought against Roosevelt's New Deal and unions.

However, he faced a crisis, along with all the Western governors, when the U. S. Congress passed legislation requiring all people of Japanese descent to be rounded up and sent away from our coasts to internment camps in the middle of the country.

Mr. Carr objected.

However, (Do you see a lot of howevers coming up around this guy?) he was not objecting, as his fellow Governors, to having Japanese people in his state. He objected to them being rounded up and incarcerated for no good reason. Turns out, he was a rabid anti-racist, maybe one of the first "antifa" in our state government.

Carr said, "An American citizen of Japanese descent has the same rights as any other citizen. ... If you harm them, you must first harm me. I was brought up in small towns where I knew the shame and dishonor of race hatred. I grew to despise it because it threatened [pointing to various audience members] the happiness of you and you and you." [Schrager, Adam. The Principled Politician: The Ralph Carr Story. Fulcrum Publishing; Golden, Colorado; 2008. Chapter 10: "Late March 1942," p. 193. As quoted in Wikipedia.]

Well.

Pretty strong words for a politician to his constituents. Here was a man, from the male majority, speaking up for "others" at risk of his own career.  

He lost the next election to a Democrat who wanted to use the National Guard to keep any Japanese- Americans from entering our state.

You can find a monument to Ralph Carr at the top of Kenosha Pass and others scattered around Denver, including Carr Street, which was near my own childhood home.

For his stand in defending Japanese-Americans during World War II when the Japanese were considered enemies of the U.S., Carr is still being honored in this state.

Now our family is pleased to travel the Ralph Carr Memorial Highway in honor of a principled man. We are pleased that the 1988 Civil Liberties Act resulted in reparations for survivors of the Japanese-American camps and an apology from President Ronald Reagan. 

We are hoping to see another chunk of highway named after Aiko Herzig Yoshinaga.

Through the efforts of Yoshinaga and Carr, this is what we are coming to: a more accountable, more just America.