From Designer to Detective
By GWEN MURANAKA
RAFU ENGLISH EDITOR IN CHIEF
Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Cal Poly Pomona marks 10th anniversary of the passing of Michi Weglyn.

Photos by MARIO G. REYES/Rafu Shimpo
An image of Michi Weglyn from the new documentary “Out of Infamy: Michi Nishiura Weglyn” is shown on as part of a tribute to the author and activist held Thursday at Cal Poly Pomona.

Bob Suzuki, Cal Poly Pomona dean emeritus, discusses his friendship with Michi and her husband Walter Weglyn. Also on the panel, from left, Dr. Franklin Odo, Phil Tajitsu Nash, Sharon Yamato and Nancy Kapitanoff.

Weglyn drew on research and her
own experiences in camp to write
“Years of Infamy”

In her own words, Michi Nishiura Weglyn described her remarkable life as a journey “from designer to detective work” in the new film “Out of Infamy: Michi Nishiura Weglyn” which was shown on Thursday as part of a tribute sponsored by Cal Poly Pomona.

To commemorate the 10th anni­versary of her passing, triends, family and admirers came to listen and share stories of Weglyn, who went from the Gila River concentration camp to de­signing costumes for the “Perry Como Show,” to writing what is one of the most important books on the forced re­location and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Published in 1976, “Years of In­famy” was the first book to tell the history of the camps from the perspective of a former internee. Through her research on the book, Weglyn unearthed documents, including the Munson Report, issued on Nov. 7 1941, which attested to the loyalty of Japa­nese Americans. With the support of Walter, a Dutch survivor of the Nazi Holocaust, Michi’s work on the book helped establish the wrongdoing by the U.S. government. The efforts of her and oth­ers eventually led to the passage of redress in August 1988.

Cal Poly Pomona Dean Emeritus Bob Suzuki recalled that he first met Michi and Walter Weglyn at a dinner in New York in 1976 and they soon became what he called his “Calabash aunt and uncle.” While he shared many years of friend­ship with the couple, he regretted never asking Michi why she wrote “Years of Infamy.”

The university es­tablished the Michi and Walter Weglyn En­dowed Chair of Mul­ticultural Studies in 1999 to promote the in­terdisciplinary study of ethnic and racial minor­ity groups in the United States. The symposium was sponsored by the endowed chair.

“Iwould guess that part of her mo­tivation stemmed from the increasing involvement of Asian Americans in civil rights in the early 1970s which raised the consciousness of many, in­cluding myself,” said Suzuki. “Ialso think it came from her sense that many Japanese Americans had never expi­ated the pain of their internment ex­perience. She once said the Japanese Americans were like victims of rape. On one hand they knew their rights had been outrageously violated, but on the other hand, like victims of rape, they tended to blame themselves.”

Phil Tajitsu Nash, professor and Weglyn’s literary will executor, brought a file that Weglyn had me­ticulously assembled on Secretary of War Henry Stimson, explaining to the students in the audience the tenacity it required in the pre-computer era. Weglyn’s work extended beyond re­dress and included urging justice for Japanese Peruvians and writing on behalf of individuals who had been denied redress.

“I love this document,” he said, showing a long docu­ment, which had been taped together from several pieces of paper in the Stimson file. “Michi would hand write something and there was no cut and paste function in Mi­crosoft Word. She would had write it and then she would cut it and paste something else on to it.”

“Remember she was not trained as a lawyer .... Michi had all these burdens of having to learn the technology, learn all these different things that you study in museum science, learn law.”

Following the discussion, a performance was held in honor of Weglyn featuring music by Daniel Ho and hula by Nani Edgar at the Cal Poly Recital Hall. The panelists will also be discussing Weglyn today at the National Forum for the Preservation of Democracy in Little Tokyo at 2 p.m.

Mary Karasawa, a friend of Weglyn’s from Gila River, expressed amazement at all that Weglyn had accomplished.

“If there’s anything good that came out of camp it was meeting someone like Michi,” said Karasawa.

“When she sent that galley proof to me of ‘Years of Infamy,’ Ithought tonight I’m going to open it up and read it. I was just crying I couldn’t believe it and it’s not easy reading. She used to tell me that it would take a whole day to write a page, she would write and revise it. It’s remarkable,” said Karasawa, a docent at JANM.

Aiko Herzig Yoshinaga, who along with Weglyn, found many of the documents for the redress movement, also attended the tribute. She said they met first when Yoshinaga was living in New York and stayed friends as Herzig Yoshinaga and her husband Jack moved to Washington, D.C.

“She was such a gracious person, so giving of her time and energy,” said Herzig Yoshinaga. “(The research) was harder for her, I lived down there so it was easier for me. She would use every minute when she was in (Washington) to try to be very productive because she had to go home to New York. She did a fantastic job in research.”