JACL, as you know, was split. The real opposition happened to be from [the] Seattle group, and they said, no, here we go again. They said, you people are copping out. But we didn’t think that we were copping out, we were just becoming very realistic. Because in politics, you have to be realistic, you just cannot have some idea, and then expect that to go all the way through. We thought that our going the commission route was the correct way to do it and it was up to John Tateishi now to present that to the national board, which he did at the spring national board meeting. And as we expected, a large contingent from Seattle was very much against it. In fact, some of them left JACL.
Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum
Interviewee Bio
Clifford Uyeda was born on January 14, 1917, into a family of oyster farmers in Olympia, Washington. Uyeda studied at the University of Wisconsin and from 1941 to 1945 attended Tulane University Medical School in New Orleans, LA. Uyeda went on to become a medical doctor in San Francisco, CA.
Uyeda became involved in the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) in 1960 when he served as San Francisco Chapter chair of the Issei Oral History Project. He helped in establishing the School of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University and played an important role in restoring the U.S. citizenship and presidential pardon of Iva Toguri, also known as “Tokyo Rose.”
After retiring from medicine in 1975, Uyeda became a full-time activist. In 1977, Uyeda served as National JACL chair of the Japanese American Incarceration for Redress committee. He was elected to serve as president of National JACL from 1978 to 1980. Uyeda continued to serve the community in various roles until his death from cancer in 2004 at the age of 87. (April 11, 2008)