Japanese American Citizens League

In 1929, several already-established Nisei organizations merged to form the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), most prominent among them Fresno's American Loyalty League (アメリカ忠誠協会, Amerika Chūsei Kyōkai)(headed by Nisei UC educated dentist Dr. Thomas T. Yatabe, 1897–1977), the Seattle Progressive Citizens League (シアトル革新市民連盟, Siatoru Kakushin Shimin Renmei), and the San Francisco-based New American Citizens League (新アメリカ市民協会, Shin Amerika Shimin Kyōkai) (headed by Nisei UC educated lawyer Saburo Kido, 1902–1977).[8] Aiming towards professionals and small business owners among the Nisei, the JACL sought to promote free enterprise, self-reliance, and loyalty to the United States. The organization thus excluded a hyphen from its name.[12]

Due in part to the active support of James Sakamoto and other Seattle activists,[13] the nascent JACL chose to hold its first national conference in Seattle in 1930.[14] It soon after began work to expand the citizenship rights of Japanese and other Asian Americans, who were considered unassimilable to American society and therefore ineligible for naturalization under the Immigration Act of 1924. Their first target was the Cable Act of 1922, which revoked the citizenship of women who married men ineligible for citizenship, namely Asian immigrants.[15] After a successful lobbying campaign, Congress amended the act in 1931. Next, the JACL began a campaign to allow Issei and other Asian American veterans of the First World War to become U.S. citizens.[15] In 1935, the Nye-Lea Act secured citizenship rights for these men.

In 1941, within hours of the Imperial Japanese Navy's attack on Pearl Harbor, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) began arresting Japanese American community leaders (mostly Issei Japanese language school teachers, priests, martial arts instructors, and business owners).[16] Members of the JACL testified at government hearings to promote a picture of Nisei as loyal and patriotic Americans, an effort to counteract rumors of fifth column activity that had spread in the wake of Pearl Harbor. At the same time, the JACL aided FBI and Naval Intelligence officials to identify potentially disloyal Issei, a move many Japanese Americans argued tried to buy political safety for a small segment of the community at the expense of its more vulnerable members.[17]

When President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, JACL leadership did not question the constitutionality of the exclusion of Japanese Americans from the West Coast. Instead, arguing it would better serve the community to follow government orders without protest, the organization advised the approximately 120,000 affected to go peacefully and distanced itself from those who actively opposed the order.[7] In an interview after the war, civil rights attorney Wayne M. Collins criticized these actions of the JACL. "The JACL pretended to be the spokesman for all Japanese Americans, but they wouldn't stand up for their people ... They led their people like a bunch of goddam doves to the concentration camps."[18]

Throughout the war, the JACL made efforts to ensure some measure of protection and comfort for Japanese Americans resettling outside government concentration camps, providing loans and establishing offices in Chicago to assist families resettling in the Midwest.[8] The organization argued for the right of Japanese Americans to serve in the U.S. military. In Hawaii, where at that time the JACL did not exist, many community leaders actively supported for men of Japanese descent to serve in the military resulting in the formation of the 100th Infantry Battalion , [19] and the 442nd Regiment Combat Team, when 10,000 signed up with eventually 2,686 being chosen to join the 1,500 from the mainland.[20]

Following the war, the JACL began a long series of legislative efforts to establish rights for Japanese Americans. The JACL embarked on a campaign to repeal California's Alien Land Law, which had prohibited all Japanese aliens (i.e. immigrants) from purchasing and owning land in the state.[21] In 1948, the JACL succeeded in gaining passage of the Evacuation Claims Act, the first of a series of efforts to rectify the losses and injustices of the World War II incarceration. In 1949, the JACL initiated efforts in the U.S. Congress to gain the right of Japanese immigrants to become naturalized citizens of the U.S..[22]

In 1970, the JACL endorsed a resolution, introduced by member Edison Uno, to urge Congress to compensate each camp survivor for each day they had spent in confinement.[23] Later, in 1979, the JACL's National Committee for Redress proposed the creation of a federal commission to investigate the incarceration. The following year, the JACL, with help from Senators Daniel Inouye and Spark Matsunaga, pushed a bill through Congress to create the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC).[24] In 1983, the CWRIC published its findings and recommended an official Government apology and redress payments to survivors. This was granted with the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 and signed by President Ronald Reagan.[25]

In 1994, at its national convention, the JACL passed a resolution affirming its commitment to and support of the basic human right of marriage, including the right to marry for same-sex couples. In 2012, the JACL was the first national civil rights membership organization to publicly and actively adopt this position, and praised President Barack Obama for his support for same-sex marriage.[26][27]

Since 2022, the JACL has championed the cause of reparations for slavery.[28][29][30][31] In addition to endorsing local proposals for reparations, JACL has demanded the Biden administration begin the process of studying federal reparations for African Americans.[32][33] JACL representatives testified in favor of the creation of the Philadelphia Reparations Task Force.[34]

The Bridging Communities Program brings youth from the Japanese and Asian American community together with Muslim and Arab American youth. High school students attend workshops on identity, community, organizing, culture, and empowerment. The program involves visits to the Tule Lake Relocation Center, Manzanar, and Minidoka National Historic Site concentration camps, which first confined Japanese Americans during World War II. The Bridging Communities program is funded by a grant from the National Park Service.

Organizational partners include the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Tule Lake Pilgrimage Committee, the National Japanese American Historical Society, Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress, Kizuna, and Friends of Minidoka.[35]

This three-day annual leadership training summit is a joint program organized by the JACL which includes participants from OCA National (formerly the Organization of Chinese Americans). Workshop topics range from coalition building techniques to the strategy of successful lobbying.

The JACL's Youth Leadership Summit was first established in 2010 and has been held annually in Chicago, Portland, and Washington DC.[36]

The JACL launched a National Scholarship and Awards Program in 1946. It offer scholarships to students at the entering freshman, undergraduate, graduate, law, financial need and creative & performing arts. All scholarships are one-time awards.[37]

The first JACL National Convention was held on August 29, 1930, in Seattle, Washington. The first post World War II National JACL Convention was held in Denver, Colorado. Adoption of a 14-point program of rebuilding which included Issei naturalization, reparations for discriminatory treatment during the war, re-examination of the constitutionality of the evacuation, stay of deportation on hardship cases involving Japanese nationals, a call for a national conference of minorities, elimination of racial discrimination in housing and employment, challenge of the alien land laws, creation of a research clearinghouse on the evacuation, and assistance of returning Nisei veterans.

The 1970 JACL convention was marred by the murder of Evelyn Okubo, an 18-year-old activist and attendee, by a black man. Nevertheless, the JACL continued its commitment to racial justice for all Americans, including African-Americans.[38]

The 2013 JACL National Convention was held July 24–26, 2013, in Washington, DC. The theme for the 44th convention was "Justice for All".