In 1969, Shizuko "Minn" Matsuda and Kazu Iijima founded the Asian Americans for Action (Triple A or AAA) in New York City.

She encountered Marxist critiques of racism through her older sister and the Young Communist League at Berkeley, and became involved in radical politics.

She was still living and working in the Bay Area when Japanese Americans on the west coast were subjected to incarceration under Executive Order 9066.

Unlike Iijima, Matsuda avoided the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II because she had moved inland to Utah prior to the signing of Executive Order 9066.

[3] In Salt Lake City, Matsuda managed to find a job creating ads for a retail store despite hostility toward people of Japanese heritage.

The AAA also took a stand against the renewal of the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan which allowed for American military bases on Japanese soil, including Okinawa.

Newspaper coverage of the event featured a cloth dragon with caricatures of Uncle Sam and Japan's Prime Minister Eisaku Sato as the head and tail.

[1] The group was instrumental in opening the United Asian Communities Center in New York City in 1972, but that program lasted only a short time due to lack of funding.