Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga

She was the lead researcher of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC), a bipartisan federal committee appointed by Congress in 1980 to review the causes and effects of the Japanese American incarceration during World War II.

[1] She later uncovered government documents that debunked the wartime administration's claims of "military necessity" and helped compile the CWRIC's final report, Personal Justice Denied, which led to the issuance of a formal apology and reparations for former camp inmates.

This action led to the imprisonment of over 110,000 Japanese Americans from the West Coast and Hawai'i under the justifications of "military necessity" and "national security" as the United States became involved in World War II.

[2] In the 1960s, Herzig-Yoshinaga became involved with Asian Americans for Action, a civil rights organization composed mostly of Nisei women that engaged in activism protesting the Vietnam War and nuclear research.

She also joined the staff of Jazzmobile, a non-profit organization dedicated to education through jazz music based in Harlem, which helped deepen her consciousness around race and racism in the United States.

[9] At the prompting of her friend, author Michi Weglyn, Herzig-Yoshinaga began looking into the records of the government agencies responsible for Japanese American incarceration that had recently been made available to the public in the National Archives.

"[7] Herzig-Yoshinaga found the single remaining copy of an earlier draft of the "Final Report," which explicitly stated that intelligence sources agreed Japanese Americans posed no threat to U.S. security in 1943.

[2] The document played a large part in the CWRIC's report, Personal Justice Denied, which concluded that the incarceration of Japanese Americans was the product of "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.

"[7][9] Additionally, thanks in large part to Herzig-Yoshinaga's discovery of this document, the convictions of Gordon Hirabayashi, Fred Korematsu, and Minoru Yasui were overturned, and the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 granted an official apology and $20,000 to each camp survivor or their heirs.