1Race, Memory, and Civil Society: the Japanese YWCA case

Draft - 4/24/01

8Mari J. Matsuda 1999*

INTRODUCTION

If the YWCA takes seriously its charge to eliminate racism, it has only one morally just and proper choice C to fulfill the intent and purpose of trust by returning the 1830 Sutter Street building to the Japanese-American community. The YWCA must recognize that its status as the paper owner and as trustee of the property is the direct result of the racist and racially discriminatory Alien Land Law which denied the Issei the ability to hold the building in their own right.

Testimony to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors by the Japanese-American and African- American Steering Committee of the Western Addition, San Francisco, California, USA.

6 March 1997.

It shall be the policy of the state to eradicate any vestiges of the racism of the California Alien Land Law and to take steps to ensure the enforcement of charitable trusts erected in response to that law.

California State Assembly and State Senate Resolution ACR 32, 31 April 1999.

By dragging our name through the mud of racism, YOU ARE BEING AFFECTED TOO. The government stepping in to pit one non-profit against another, without hearing both sides, sets a dangerous precedent.

YWCA of San Francisco and Marin, 'Dear Fellow Non-Profit Letter', 3 May 1999.

----------------------------------------------------o0o----------------------------------------------------------

At 1830 Sutter Street, children's laughter floats over the walls of a stucco building that is

both modest and lovely. Each week, the children at Nihonmachi Little Friends pick a different

culture about which to learn. While much of the school's daily cultural practice is Japanese, the

Page 1 of 43

Japanese-American experience is used as a springboard for learning about other cultures. Fourth

and fifth generation Japanese-American preschoolers mix easily with children from a multitude

of ethnic backgrounds, all of them boisterously singing Japanese nursery tunes. This is a new

model of multicultural education: in retrieving the language, history, and culture of one group, a

point of entry emerges for appreciation of the deeply intercultural character of the American

experience.

In 1996, the San Francisco YWCA attempted to sell the building at 1830 Sutter Street,

known as the Japanese YWCA. The proposal to sell the building and evict the tenants shocked the

Japantown community. The community claimed that the building was purchased with Japanese-

American funds in the 1920s, and held in trust by the San Francisco YWCA for the benefit of

Japanese Americans. Because of a series of racist laws and policies, Japanese immigrants could

not use 'whites only' YWCA facilities, nor could they take legal title to property. Under a practice

common at the time, the YWCA agreed to take paper title and hold the building in trust for the

Japanese Americans. Over half a century later, the YWCA decided to treat the building as its

own and sell it for a significant profit. A pitched political battle ensued in legislative and judicial

fora, as well as in the press and on the street. The Japanese-American community harbored

smoldering bitterness at having to relive its past disenfranchisement, and the YWCA lamented

that its good name was dragged through 'the mud of racism'.1 This small and continuing saga of

conflict within civil society, and the state's response to that conflict, is part of a much larger story

of the contradictions imposed by a history of racism.

Some observers of civil society argue for the democratizing potential of grassroots

organizations that operate outside of the partisan, captive, and bureaucratized structures of

government. In this view, civil society serves as a check on state power. This case study

suggests that civil society is not an absolute social good. The potential for good exists, but agents

of civil society must remain subject to normative claims. From the perspective of the Japanese-

American community, the state B as represented by legislative and judicial bodies B has proved

more willing to hear charges of racism in this particular instance than has a venerable community

organization, represented by the YWCA. The YWCA, for its part, has found the charges of

racism deeply insulting, and has reacted with heartfelt denials and a stance of victimization. The

YWCA points out that the predominant story of racism against the Japanese Americans is of state

Page 2 of 43

racism, including promulgation of the Alien Land Laws, which denied Japanese immigrants the

right to own land, and the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans. The community is,

in the words of the YWCA officials, 'barking up the wrong retribution tree B and now our state

and government officials are joining in'.2

The Japanese YWCA conflict evokes a now-familiar form of debate over racism in

modern, liberal society. A minority group charges racism, perhaps against a police department, a

college admissions office, or an employer. The immediate response is denial: We are not racist.

The face of racism - post-World War II, post-apartheid, post-civil rights movement - is not Our

Face. It could not be, for racism has become a universally acknowledged wrong.3 It is a wrong

understood as a deeply aberrational flaw in moral character rather than as a naturalized part of

cultural and institutional practices and assumptions: I am not a bad person; therefore I am not a

racist. The YWCA is not a bad organization; therefore it is not racist. If there is or was racism, it

is located out there, somewhere else, in another time and place, for which the YWCA bears no

responsibility.

If this is, as critical race theorists have argued, the predominant understanding of racism

under liberal legal ideology, then fighting racism is a difficult task indeed.4 The allegation of

racism immediately and predictably generates the denial, and preempts the space for reflection

about how, where, and why racism becomes institutionalized. Structural change, affirmative

action (referred to in some countries as positive discrimination), and collective responsibility to

discover and eradicate racial privilege become taboo topics.

In some cases, it is easier for minority groups to extract responses from governmental

actors, who might respond to the perceived threat of ethnic block voters, than it is to engage in

dialogue with organizations of civil society that are socially and psychologically bound to a self-

definition inconsistent with a charge of racism. There are notable moments in American history

in which state intercession in private acts of racism was critical for advancing the cause of racial

justice.5

At other times, of course, the state is a primary promoter of racist policies. The iron fist of

state repression, fueled by notions of racial superiority, has taken lives and forced people from

their homes. These are indelible moments of horror, and no child of the twentieth century dare

entrust the state with sole responsibility for pursuing racial justice.

Page 3 of 43

The challenge for friends of the civil society concept is to understand how organizations

of civil society are implicated in existing systems of domination, and how those organizations can

work effectively against such domination. Civil society without a normative critique is as

dangerous as the state without the same. Indeed, examples of civil society's complicity with the

state in promoting racial terrorism exist in U.S. history.6 Focusing on the relatively small case of

the Japanese YWCA is an attempt to bring anti-subordination perspective to civil society.

At the outset this author disclaims a neutral stance. I am a Sansei7 feminist. My father, an

American citizen, was interned at Heart Mountain, Wyoming, in a concentration camp

constructed of American racism and barbed wire. In their forced departure from Los Angeles, my

father's family lost their modest livelihood, their possessions, and their lives there. I feel a

personal connection to the effort to reclaim the legacy of the immigrant women who raised the

money to purchase the Japanese YWCA. As a scholar, I seek also a stance of empathy toward the

San Francisco YWCA, that group of public-spirited women who now stand so bereft at the

charge of racism. There is a path for them that makes them neither the evil racist nor the

immaculate innocent, but rather, a responsible institution of American civil society, subject to all

the challenges and promise that status implies, particularly with regard to race.

CASE STUDY

1. Who Stole the Cookie from the Cookie Jar?

In the spring of 1996, the Japanese-American community in San Francisco discovered that

the San Francisco YWCA, facing financial difficulties, planned to sell the Japanese YWCA

building for an asking price of 1.65 million dollars. The community, represented by a steering

committee with considerable credibility among San Francisco grassroots and civil rights

organizations, demanded meetings with the YWCA board, and attempted to purchase the building

at a discounted price. Negotiations proved fruitless, and the dispute escalated.

In the course of fighting the YWCA, the community groups unearthed an amazing

historical record. The YWCA's own minutes from the time of the purchase of the property in

1921 suggested that the funds for purchase were raised by Japanese immigrant women to build

their own YWCA. The property was 'to be bought by the local [YWCA] Association and held in

trust for the Japanese YWCA'.8 The vote to purchase the building endorsed a motion to offer 'not

Page 4 of 43

more tha[n] $6500 for the property and to hold it in trust for the exclusive use of the Japanese

YWCA'.9 The purchase was accompanied by a resolution stating, 'If this property is sold or any

income derived from it... the funds shall be applied to Christian work for the Japanese women

and girls in San Francisco after consultation with the Japanese YWCA Board or its successors.

No decision is to be made about the uses of this property without consultation with the Japanese

YWCA Board'.10

Thus, the good white women of the San Francisco YWCA, circa 1921, and their Issei11

counterparts in the Japanese YWCA, anticipated the possibility of a future sale, and sought to

assure that the Japanese-American community would remain the beneficiaries of that sale. This

agreement was temporarily lost to history because the Japanese YWCA, along with a thriving

Japanese-American community in San Francisco, came to an abrupt end with the World War II

relocation and internment of Japanese Americans. Once this history was reclaimed, the

community was even more adamant that the YWCA's proposed sale of the building was the

moral equivalent of theft.

The legal framework of this dispute is simple; the social and historical framework is less

so. The YWCA claims it has free and clear title to the Japanese YWCA, and that it can sell the

building or do with it as it pleases for the benefit of current YWCA programs. The YWCA

asserts that there was never a trust, or, if there was one, it was abandoned. The Soko Bukai, a

consortium of Japanese-American churches that represents the legacy of the Issei who bought the

building, claims that the YWCA's title is subject to a trust, and that the YWCA will violate the

trust if it sells the building or evicts the community groups. A current lawsuit may well determine

the doctrinal, legal answer to this question, but larger questions of justice remain. Understanding

those questions requires history.

2. You Stole the Cookie from the Cookie Jar!

An important building block of American capitalism is that we take title seriously. The

paper declaring legal ownership, or title, is a prerequisite to economic certainty, growth, and

development. Title determines who can sell, lease, and exploit property. Buyers, and others who

would deal with property owners, rely on title to make reliable investments. The question of

fairness and the role of history, if brought seriously to bear on the question of title, would destroy

Page 5 of 43

much of the utility of clear title as a key building block to economic growth. In legal terms, we

seek to 'quiet' or 'clear' title and remove 'clouds' on title. Rules and proceedings that clarify title

and extinguish challenges to title are favored. Claims that confuse ownership stand in the way of

development and are thus disfavored.

In political terms, an incessant cry of agony is shouted out every time a legal action to

quiet title succeeds, for all title in this country sits under a darkened cloud of unquiet. Not far

from 1830 Sutter Street is a famous bay, and in the bay there is an island called Alcatraz. Every

year, Native Americans return for a symbolic reoccupation of Alcatraz, their stubborn effort to

say 'your title is not quiet, not unclouded, for us'.12 It is a difficult charge to convey, that all

American title is clouded by genocide against Native Americans.13 This is not the self-image

Americans choose. It fits poorly with the simple dream of a white picket fence.

Fairness and equality are not norms embodied in the history of property ownership in

America. Feminists recall that for most of this country's history, women could not hold property

in their own name, reinforcing the male control over wealth that we live with to this day.14

African Americans recall 'being the object of property' under constitutionalized slavery.15 Asian

Americans recall Alien Land Laws targeting the Japanese and shaping the pattern of land

ownership, agricultural development, and wealth distribution in the western United States.16

Mexican Americans recall lands lost under the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.17 Descendants of

farmers, of Appalachian hill families, of anachronized small ranchers, of unfortunates caught in

the path of railroads, or mines, or highways and city redevelopment, recall losing land to tax

sales, adverse possession, eminent domain, and foreclosure B a laundry list of legal devices that,

in application, have sometimes wrought great dislocation, misery, and impoverishment to

American families who lacked power and influence. Given the regularity of the complaint that

land is grabbed, not fairly purchased, it is impossible for the law of property to concede too much

to fairness. While the principle of equity does make regular incursions into the law of property,

each time this happens it creates destabilizing contradictions even as it legitimizes the system.

Small concessions to fairness mask the coercion of legal terms such as eminent domain. The

Constitutional principle is known as the Takings Clause18: if the state takes it, it must take it

fairly. This invites an unwelcome conversation about fairness.

The story of the Japanese YWCA is thus part of a larger story of clouded title. The

Page 6 of 43

particulars of the Japanese YWCA story began more than one hundred years ago, when racial

hatred of Asian Americans coalesced with working-class populism in the first great wave of anti-

Asian violence and nativism. Chinese laborers, brought in to build the railroads and perform

undesirable work during the gold rush, were deeply resented by white workers, who turned their

legitimate fears of economic security into American-style racialized nativism.19 The Oriental

Exclusion Acts followed, forbidding citizenship to Asians. A little-known pattern of violence

helped keep the Chinese economically and politically disenfranchised. Lynchings, forcible

evictions, and massacres of Chinese workers were recorded up and down the west coast in the

mid-nineteenth century.20

Japanese immigrants followed the Chinese laborers, with the first significant numbers

arriving in the 1890s. By the 1920s, Japanese-American communities were well established,

though not welcome, on the west coast. Local laws and practices ensured that Japanese were kept

in their place: they were kept out of white schools, white neighborhoods, and white recreational

facilities. Despite these slights, the Japanese Americans stayed, started families, and built an

American life. As skilled agriculturalists, the Japanese immigrants made formerly unused land a

major part of America's breadbasket. They brought California into its modern agricultural

ascendency. Fear of Japanese economic success quickly resulted in Alien Land Laws, which

piggybacked on the Exclusion Acts.21 Rather than prohibiting Japanese from owning land, the

Alien Land Laws avoided overt racism by prohibiting non-citizens from owning land. Japanese

were, conveniently, not allowed to become naturalized citizens.

This pattern of fear and exclusion of Japanese Americans was thus well-entrenched by the

time Pearl Harbor was attacked. California had a good century of experience in hating and fearing

the yellow menace by that time, and a full lexicon associated Asians with disease, depravity, and

duplicity.22 This set the stage for the forced roundup and incarceration of Japanese Americans,

including many native-born U.S. citizens, in 1942. Like the Alien Land Laws, the internment

order euphemistically avoided a Constitutionally-flawed and racist reality. The order was directed

against 'aliens and non-aliens'. The non aliens referred to were the Nisei,23 American citizens like

this author's father.

Keith Aoki argues that it is important to see the internment as the culmination of the Alien

Page 7 of 43

Land Laws.24 It was part of the same ideological system, and had the same underlying cause: fear

of Japanese-American economic competition. Most significantly, the Alien Land Laws and the

internment worked in conjunction to distribute wealth and property away from Japanese

Americans to European Americans on the west coast. The internment order required Japanese-

American families to dispose of all their worldly goods overnight. Family heirlooms, businesses,

books, homes, farms, furniture, and household goods were given away or sold for a pittance.25 A

1 * The author acknowledges superb research and editorial assistance by Florence Felix, Hayley Macon, David Meyer, Anna Selden, and Kimberlee Ward.

1YWCA of San Francisco and Marin, 'Dear Fellow Non-Profit Letter', 3 May 1999.

2YWCA of San Francisco and Marin, 'Dear Fellow Non-Profit Letter', 3 May 1999.

31948, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 2.

4Lawrence, C., 1987, The Id, the Ego, and Equal Protection: Reckoning with Unconscious Racism, 39 Stanford Law Review 317 (describing unconscious racism and explaining why the legal 'intent' requirement allows continuation of American racism).

518 U.S.C.S. Appx 3A1.1 (1999) (making race a protected category in hate crime legislation); 42 U.S.C.S. 1982 (1999) (providing protection against race-based denials of access to housing); 42 U.S.C.S. 1983 (1999) (creating a right of civil action when one is deprived of a constitutional right or legal protection based on membership in a protected group, including race).

6Shapiro, H., 1988, White Violence and Black Response: From Reconstruction to Montgomery, Amherst, Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press: 31-32. Between 1882 and 1901, 1,914 African Americans were lynched by violent white mobs. In the decades following Reconstruction, racist whites increased the frequency of their violent attacks on African Americans, with the federal government refusing to enforce the constitutional rights of the victims.; Sims, P., 1982, The Klan, New York: Stein and Day: 2. In the 1920s, 'everyone' was joining the Klan. During this time there were four to five million Klan members nationwide, with 400,000 members in the state of Ohio alone. At least eleven governors and 'scores' of congressmen, senators, and local officials were elected through the power of the Klan.

7Third generation Japanese American.

8Minutes from the meeting of the Executive Committee of the San Francisco YWCA, 26 May 1920.

9Minutes from the meeting of the Board of Directors of the San Francisco YWCA, 4 February 1921.

010Minutes from the meeting of the Board of Directors of the San Francisco YWCA, 8 July 1921.

11First generation Japanese American.

212Lawrence, C.R. and Matsuda, M.J., 1997, We Won't Go Back: Making the Case for Affirmative Action, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company: 21; Johnson, T.R., 1996, The Occupation of Alcatraz Island: Indian Self-Determination and the Rise of Indian Activism, Chicago: University of Illinois Press: 15-25.

Page 8 of 43

few non-Japanese neighbors agreed to hold family goods, and many did so with generous grace.

Others ended up using or destroying what was entrusted to them as the war dragged on and

circumstances changed. Some interned families tried to hold on to their land, sending payments

from the internment camps to straw buyers. Many such arrangements ended in bitter dispute

when straw buyers died or exploited the situation. Other families were fortunate to have adult

Nisei children who held title, but because the families were not there to harvest crops or keep

businesses going, they lost their property to foreclosure, tax sales, and escheat proceedings

(designed to turn abandoned property over to the state). The State of California had an official

313Stannard, D.E., 1992, American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World, New York: Oxford University Press; Churchill, W., 1993, Struggle for the Land: Indigenous Resistance to Genocide, Ethnocide and Expropriation in Contemporary North America, Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press: 33-86.

414Matsuda, M.J., 1985 'The West and the Legal Status of Women: Explanations of Frontier Feminism, ' Journal of the West, Vol XXIV No 1: 47-56.

515Williams, P.J., 1991, The Alchemy of Race and Rights: Diary of a Law Professor, Cambridge: Harvard University Press: 216-217.

616Aoki, K., 1998, 'No Right to Own? The Early Twentieth Century 'Alien Land Laws' as a Prelude to Internment,' Boston College Law Review, Vol XL No 1: 55-56, Boston College Third World Law Review, Vol 19 No 1: 55-56.

717Acuña, R., 1998, 'Guadalupe hidalgo el tratado que nunca su cumplino,' La Opinion Vol 72 No 139: 1D; Acuña, R., 1981, Occupied America, A History of Chicanos.

818United States Constitution, Amendment V (1791). The 'Takings Clause' of the Fifth Amendment reads, '...nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation'.

919Aoki, K., 1998, 'No Right to Own?: The Early Twentieth Century 'Alien Land Laws' as a Prelude to Internment,' Boston College Third World Law Journal, Vol XIX No 1: 40; Chan, S., 1986, This Bitter-Sweet Soil: The Chinese in California Agriculture 1860-1910, Los Angeles: University of California Press.

020Kawanabe, K.S., 1996, 'American Anti-Immigration Rhetoric Against Asian Pacific Immigrants: The Present Repeats the Past,' Georgetown Immigration Law Journal, Vol 10 No 4: 701; Sandmeyer, E.C., 1991, The Anti-Chinese Movement in California, Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press: 48.

121Okihiro, G.Y. and Drummond, D., 1989, 'The Concentration Camps and Japanese Economic Losses in California Agriculture, 1900-1942', in R. Daniels, S.C. Taylor, and H.H.L. Kitano (eds) Japanese Americans from Relocation to Redress, Seattle: University of Washington Press: 68; Takaki, R., 1993, A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America, Boston: Little, Brown and Company: 381.

22Matsuda, M., 1999, 'McCarthyism, The Internment and the Contradictions of Power', 40 Boston College Law Review 18, 19 Boston College Third World Law Journal, 18.

323Second generation Japanese Americans

Page 9 of 43

policy of expediting escheat actions against incarcerated Japanese-American land owners, who

were hard pressed to hire lawyers while they were incarcerated.26

The internment and the Alien Land Laws are the key reasons why family wealth built up

by the Issei generation through decades of toil before the war disappeared and was never

reclaimed.27 After the war, the Nisei started from scratch, with the huge disadvantage of

educations disrupted by the internment, and war-fueled anti-Japanese racism and violence making

resettlement difficult. Thriving pre-war communities in places like San Francisco were never able

to make a complete homecoming.

This is the bigger picture into which the history of the Japanese YWCA fits. As Japanese

immigrants streamed into San Francisco in the early 1900s, they were rigorously segregated out

of white facilities. The YWCA board recognized that this was a problem B young Japanese-

American women needed a place to become Americanized and learn social graces in a setting

appropriate for single women. The YWCA thus established 'International Institutes', which

offered recreational activities, housing and employment bureaus, and English classes to

immigrant women.28

The white YWCA board voted to maintain its policy of segregation. On 6 February 1920,

a motion carried that 'no change be made in the former policy of admitting no Chinese, Japanese

or colored girls to the Boarding Home'.29 Perhaps to ameliorate this decision, the YWCA agreed

with the proposal to buy property on behalf of the Japanese YWCA and to hold it in trust. The

424Aoki, K., 1998, 'No Right to Own?: The Early Twentieth-Century 'Alien Land Laws' as a Prelude to Internment,' 40 Boston College Law Review 37-72, 19 Boston College Third World Law Journal, 37-72.

525Nagata, D.K., 1993, Legacy of Injustice: Exploring the Cross-Generational Impact of the Japanese Internment, New York: Plenum Press: 17. Nagata writes of families who had to sell their personal belongings and family businesses, within the span of a few days for a fraction of the object's true worth. For instance, 26-room hotels were sold for a mere $500.

626Aoki, K., 1998, 'No Right to Own?: The Early Twentieth-Century 'Alien Land Laws' as a Prelude to Internment,' Boston College Law Review, Vol XL No 1: 59, Boston College Third World Law Journal, Vol XIX No 1: 59.

727Matsuda, M.J., 1995, 'Looking to the Bottom: Critical Legal Studies and Reparations', in G. Peller, K. Crenshaw, N. Gotando, and K. Thomas (eds), Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement, New York: The New Press: 67 (first published in Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, 1987, Vol 22 No 2: 323-399) (stating that many Issei were unable to achieve the level of financial security they would have, had they not been interned during their most productive working and investing years).

828For a more detailed account of the YWCA's International Institutes, see note 56 infra.

Page 10 of 43

Japanese YWCA was organized by Issei women through Japanese Christian churches in San

Francisco, and, after a series of overtures, the white YWCA directors carried this motion in

February of 1921:

The Japanese people have $2000 pledged and they wish to authorize the Board of the trustees to offer not more tha[n] $6500 for the property and to hold it in trust for exclusive use of the trustees be authorized to investigate the house and lot. With a view to purchase of it for the permanent use of the Japanese branch of the San Francisco YWCA.30

A resolution added in July 1921 confirmed the Japanese YWCA's control over the

building:

If this property is sold or any income derived from it other than Japanese YWCA uses, the funds shall be applied to Christian work for Japanese women and girls in San Francisco after consultation with the Japanese YWCA Board or their successors. No decision is to be made about the uses of this property without consultation with the Japanese YWCA Board.31

Several years later, in 1934, the San Francisco YWCA reiterated this understanding in a

resolution:

That the building be continued to be used for purposes of the Japanese YWCA and if at some future time any change in the use of the building should be considered, such change would be submitted to the Japanese Board of Directors and its approval be secured before the change should be considered to be in effect.32

A new building had been built for the Japanese YWCA and the property's growing

value prompted reiteration of the arrangement. Julia Morgan, famed architect of the

Hearst Castle, donated her services to design a unique Japanese-influenced building,

suitable for Japanese cultural activities. The Hearst family and others donated Japanese

artifacts. Morgan, who herself had once depended on the Y's boarding facilities for single

929Minutes from the meeting of the Board of Directors of the San Francisco YWCA, 6 February 1920.

030Minutes from the meeting of the Board of Directors of the San Francisco YWCA, 4 February 1921.

131Minutes from the meeting of the Board of Directors of the San Francisco YWCA, 8 July 1921.

232Minutes from the meeting of the Board of Directors of the San Francisco YWCA, 23 March 1934.

Page 11 of 43

working women, did not usually work without pay; she had built other YWCA buildings

for a fee. Her interest in Japanese architecture and her concern for the Japanese YWCA

may have prompted this rare donation by a pre-eminent architect of the day.33

For its part, the Japanese YWCA board treated the building as their permanent

property, running a host of programs that emphasized domesticity and Japanese culture

within a broader perspective of assimilation. Flower arranging classes took place

alongside civics classes; hat making was offered, as well as swimming. In its 20-year

retrospective in 1932, the Japanese YWCA proclaimed, 'This building of ours belongs not

only to us but also to the Japanese community in general. It is our sincere desire to make

it even more useful . . . '. @ 3 4

The Japanese YWCA's own retrospective and minutes refer repeatedly to 'our'

building, which 'we purchased'; to its many fund-raising activities to purchase and build;

and finally, to the triumph of paying off the note. The loan to complete the purchase and

supplement the cash raised by the Japanese YWCA was taken by the San Francisco

YWCA, and is the basis of the claim that the Japanese did not pay for the entire purchase.

The evidence indicates, however, that the Japanese made the loan payments. The white

YWCA's minutes from July 1921 state, 'It is further recommend [sic] that a Note be given

by this Board of Directors to the International Institute Treasurer for this [loan] amount...

It is recommended that the repayment of this by the Japanese Centre in installments of

forty dollars a month be accepted'.35 The Japanese YWCA retrospective confirms this

view, reporting 'in January of 1931 we completed the payments for the full amount of the

purchase'.36 The Japanese YWCA buzzed with activity in the pre-war years. Kabuki

productions, 'American' cooking classes, knitting and embroidery programs continued.

33Born in San Francisco in 1872, Julia Morgan graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with an engineering degree before she traveled to Paris, where she struggled successfully to become the first woman accepted in to the architecture section of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Morgan went on to become the first female architect in California, where her career flourished during the architectural boom that followed the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Her commissions included houses, churches, clubs, banks, schools, hospitals, and stores. Placzek, A., (1982), Macmillan Encyclopedia of Architects, Vol. 3, London: The Free Press; Wadsworth, G., 1990, Julia Morgan, Architect of Dreams, Lerner Publications Company; Boutelle, S.H., 1995, Julia Morgan, Architect, Abbeville Press.

434YWCA of San Francisco B 20 Year Retrospective, 5 November 1932.

Page 12 of 43

This picture of wholesome innocence belied the social and political environment of

virulent anti-Japanese sentiment that surrounded the Japanese YWCA.

Anti-Japanese propaganda built relentlessly. Japan's victory in the Russo-Japanese

war, and the uncertain international calm after World War I heightened an incessant fear

of Japan and the Japanese.37 Legal action, both litigation and legislation, resulted in the

entrenchment of several anti-Japanese positions, including segregation of public

education; denial of voting, jury, and citizenship rights; and the Alien Land Laws. As

early as 1905, the San Francisco school board had voted to remove Japanese students

from white schools so that 'our children should not be placed in any position where their

youthful impressions may be affected by association with pupils of the Mongolian race'.37

Anti-Japanese legal actions were accompanied by a propaganda machine that referred to

Japanese in the vilest terms; vermin, filth, disease, evil, and treachery were the

predominant themes, with violence against the Japanese Americans explicitly urged in the

media and in street corner invective.38 As World War II approached, the feeling of

inevitability of a conflict with Japan exacerbated these tensions.

The Japanese YWCA's efforts to offer courses in 'English and American Law', and

to promote 'the Americanization movement among the Japanese in the United States and

the wave of friendship between Japan and the United States', as declared in its

retrospective, takes on the color of poignant desperation in this context.39

It soon became clear that the women of the Japanese YWCA had failed in their

efforts to disarm racial hatred through Christian Americanization. Pearl Harbor was

bombed, and Japanese Americans became the immediate scapegoat. Homes and shops

535Minutes from the meeting of the Board of Directors of the San Francisco YWCA, 8 July 1921.

636YWCA of San Francisco B 20 Year Retrospective, 5 November 1932.

737Daniels, R., 1993, Concentration Camps: North America. Japanese in the United States and Canada During WWII. Malabar, Florida: Krieger Publishing Co., 12.

7

838Matsuda, M., 1999, 'McCarthyism, The Internment and the Contradictions of Power', 40 Boston College Law Review 18, 19 Boston College Third World Law Journal, 18.

939YWCA of San Francisco B 20 Year Retrospective, 5 November 1932.

Page 13 of 43

were vandalized, Japanese Americans were physically attacked, daily editorials argued for

incarceration and worse for the Japanese.40 Solid citizens like Earl Warren added to the

propaganda machine. It was Warren who made the 'no evidence is evidence' argument,

stating that the absence of known fifth column activity among Japanese Americans was all

the more reason to believe that Japanese Americans are dangerously treacherous.41

We now know that the government's own intelligence operations revealed no

national security threat from the Japanese Americans.42 Government records to this effect

were the basis of the Coram Nobis cases setting aside the convictions of the Japanese

Americans who chose to be arrested in order to challenge the legality of the internment.43

Historians and Constitutional law experts are largely in agreement that the internment was

wrong on the facts and illegal under the law. This has long been clear to Japanese

Americans, who knew of their own family's loyalty to the United States. Thousands of

Japanese Americans were welcomed as combat soldiers in spite of being declared a threat

to national security. No security proceeding was required before my own father enlisted,

and his unit B the 100th infantry battalion B suffered the most casualties per person of

any American unit in the war. Other Japanese Americans were recruited directly from

behind barbed wire to serve in the most sensitive intelligence operations of the war effort.

The Nisei veterans of the Military Intelligence Service were responsible for saving

countless lives because of their ability to translate Japanese directives, to direct

propaganda in the Japanese language to Japanese troops, and to carry out daring espionage

and sabotage behind enemy lines in the Pacific theater.44

040Smith, P., 1995, Democracy on Trial: The Japanese American Evacuation and Relocation in World War II, New York: Simon & Schuster: 159, 59. Smith tells the story of many Issei who disposed of all possessions having anything to do with Japan so their loyalty to the United States would not be questioned. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Japanese Americans destroyed or buried photographs, awards, and other irreplaceable items in an effort to avoid accusations of disloyalty or even violence. Other Japanese Americans 'passed' for Chinese to avoid harassment. Smith recounts the story of a Japanese-American student at Berkeley, who carried a Chinese Student Club card with the name 'Shar Lee'. When he was stopped by the police, he simply showed them the card and they left him alone, apologizing for taking him for a Japanese.

141Cho, S., 1998, 'Race for Redemption: Earl Warren, Internment, and Brown v. Board of Education' Boston College Law Review, Vol XL No 1: 107, Boston College Third World Law Journal, Vol XIX No 1: 107.

Page 14 of 43

In addition to the clear contradiction of welcoming the presumably disloyal Japanese

Americans in the war effort, the clearest contemporaneous evidence of the absence of

military necessity was the fact that the Japanese Americans in Hawaii were not

incarcerated. Under Hawaii's plantation economy, the Japanese Americans were not an

economic threat to whites. Rather, their labor enriched major agricultural conglomerates.

Original plans to incarcerate the Japanese Americans from the highly vulnerable and

strategic Hawaiian islands were abandoned in the interest of preserving the economic

interests of elites.45 In short, even the most casual observer would see significant evidence

that the U.S. government did not believe its own justification for the internment.

Nonetheless, the official view persisted: Japanese Americans, unlike German Americans

or Italian Americans, posed an inherent security risk.

Lives and livelihoods, neighborhoods and dreams were destroyed based on this

presumed military necessity. The Japanese YWCA was lost in this swirl of history. Mrs.

Yamoto who taught Tea Ceremony; Mrs. Uyeda, Recording Secretary; Miss Harada of the

242Irons, P., 1989, Justice Delayed: The Record of the Japanese Internment Cases, Middleton, Conn: Wesleyan University Press; Grodzins, M., 1949, Americans Betrayed: Politics and the Japanese Evacuation, Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 300 (citing government documents that acknowledged that there were no known instances of sabatoge or espionage by resident Japanese from the beginning of the war through the evacuation).

343Writ of Error Coram Nobis is a procedural device that allows persons convicted of a crime to challenge the conviction after a sentence has been served. Petitioners must bring before the court matters of fact which, if known at time judgement was rendered, would have prevented its rendition. Minami, D., 1991, 'Coram Nobis and Redress', in R. Daniels, S.C. Taylor, and H.H.L. Kitano (eds) Japanese Americans from Relocation to Redress, Seattle: University of Washington Press: 200. In the Coram Nobis cases, Judge Marilyn Patel vacated the prior convictions of Fred Korematsu and Minoru Yasui under Executive Order 9066 because the records showed that arguments to the Supreme Court justifying the executive order and internment 'were based upon . . . unsubstantiated facts, distortions and representations of at least one military commander, whose views were seriously infected by racism'. Korematsu v. United States, 584 F. Supp. 1406 (N.D. Cal. 1984).

44Crost, L., 1994, Honor By Fire: Japanese Americans at War in Europe and the Pacific, Novato, California: Presidio Press, 118, 123. Because of the valuable activities of Nisei soldiers, United States Brig. Gen. Frank D. Merrill ordered the other men of his special unit to protect the Nisei linguist-soldiers with their lives. Acts of sabotage and espionage performed by Nisei linguist-soldiers, including crawling toward Japanese lines in order to overhear commands, tapping phone lines, and interpreting found Japanese battle plans or diaries. These activities allowed the rest of the unit to anticipate and successfully meet assaults launched by the Japanese Army.

545Grodzins, M., 1949, Americans Betrayed: Politics and the Japanese Evacuation, Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 298-300. Grodzins writes that the decision not to intern the Japanese Americans living in Hawaii provides strong evidence that the internment on the mainland was not due to the professed 'military safety' concerns. First, Japanese Americans in Hawaii made up a much larger percentage of the population than they did on the West Coast (37% and 1%, respectively). Additionally, Hawaii's dependence on Japanese-American labor and transportation difficulties deterred the internment of Japanese Americans in Hawaii.

Page 15 of 43

Dormitory Department; Mrs. Fujita of the Character Building Department B all of these

women stuffed a few dresses, pots, and pans into old suitcases, and were herded off to the

horse stalls, the deserts, the cold places where they sat out the war and worried over sons

and brothers and fathers who more often than not came back from Italy and France

wounded, if they came back at all. Most of the women on the Japanese YWCA roll call

never returned to Japantown. The once-thriving community was all but destroyed, and

most of the former residents were unable to return.

The San Francisco YWCA continued to operate the building, leasing it out for

significant periods of time. It tried, according to the present YWCA board, to offer

assistance to the Japanese YWCA members as they were interned, but the YWCA claims

it was ordered by the United States government to cease contact and assistance.

Flash forward: Japantown is still Japantown, San Francisco. It is no longer a

residential community, but it has gradually regained its status as a center of Japanese-

American community life. Most Japanese Americans now are in the Sansei/Yonsei46

generations, with most of the youngest members sharing Japanese ancestry with some

other part of the rich American racial tapestry. Most Japanese Americans these days are

not marrying other Japanese Americans, but they still come to Japantown for a bowl of

ramen, three yards of yukata fabric, seed packets for Japanese vegetables, and community

activities. The Japanese YWCA building is once again a place to learn Japanese culture

alongside American culture.

Japantown is also an activist place. The revitalization of Japanese-American

community life in San Francisco is both historicized and politicized by its makers.

Japanese language pre schools, churches, ikebana and taiko classes, and community

centers carry the influence of the 1960's civil rights and Black Power movements, as well

as the Asian-American movement that grew out of the 1960s- and 1970s-style activism.

The consciousness of Japanese-American culture in today's Japantown is part of an ethnic

pride developed in direct opposition to American racism. Japanese Americans learned to

say 'we are proud of who we are, we have a right to be here as who we are', from the

646Third and fourth generation Japanese Americans.

Page 16 of 43

Black Power movement. Even for older Japanese Americans, the ikebana classes

represent a new, peaceful pride in being Japanese. Those who remember the internment

first hand and who lived long enough to see the Redress Movement, can now own their

identity in ways that were denied to them in earlier years.

The Redress Movement was a turning point for the Japanese Americans. The

movement comprises a group of organizations and individuals who, starting in the 1970s,

began strategizing around the idea of receiving an apology and reparations from the

United States government for the wartime internment.

They weren't supposed to win. Every consultant and observer of the political scene

stated unequivocally at the outset that the Redress Movement represented an impossible

dream. The average American was just not ready to accept the idea that an ethnic group

was entitled to reparations because of a past act of racism. In ideological terms, there were

dozens of reasons why redress was unacceptable, ranging from 'I didn't do it, therefore it

is unfair to use my tax dollars to pay them', to 'I was a prisoner of war in the Philippines -

why should I care about the Japanese?'47 The inability to distinguish Japanese Americans

from Japanese nationals was a recurring problem for the Redress Movement. Wherever

the Japanese-American community raised the issue of redress, it faced bitterness from

those who remembered Japan's atrocities during World War II.48 When the Smithsonian

Institution established an exhibit on the history of the internment and Redress Movement,

it received more virulent and obscenity-laced hate mail than ever in the museum's history.49

As part of the Redress process, Congress held hearings across the nation, and the

747Matsuda, M.J., 1995, 'Looking to the Bottom: The Contestation and Coalition' in G. Peller, K. Crenshaw, N. Gotanda, and K. Thomas (eds), Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement, New York: The New Press, 70.

848Public reaction against the Redress Movement included editorials and letters to the editor asserting that 'since Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor the now rich Japanese government should make any payments that were due'. Daniels, R., 1991, Redress Achieved, 1983-1990, in R. Daniels, S.C. Taylor, and H.H.L. Kitano (eds) Japanese Americans from Relocation to Redress, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 219-220.

949The exhibit, 'A More Perfect Union: Japanese-Americans and the U.S. Constitution', opened at the National Museum of American History on October 1, 1987 and is still on display.

Page 17 of 43

silent, stoic Nisei came forward, one by one, with their stories. They told of loved ones

denied medical care, violent responses of military guards when confused elderly wandered

too close to the barbed wire, the feeling of facing machine gun towers when the guns are

directed toward you, life in the horse stall, the indignity of gang latrines without

partitions, the family social structure disrupted by mess hall dining and too many people

squeezed into too small rooms. They spoke of the details and images of humiliation,

boredom, fear, hopelessness, and most significantly, pain. The Nisei, raised never to show

public pain, testified through choked sobs. They described how it felt for a teenager in

love with American pop culture to suddenly become the enemy and to leave home,

schools, piano lessons, sports teams, dreams of going to college behind; how it felt to sit

on the front lines in Italy and France, hearing the dying around you, knowing your parents

were locked up at Manzanar; how it felt to watch the Issei suffer as they left crops

unharvested and bills unpaid; the look on a father's face when a lifetime's work was lost

overnight. We were citizens, they said. We recited the pledge of allegiance in camp, and

wanted so much to believe the words. We were lied about. There was no need, no reason.

One by one, ordinary citizens took the podium to make these statements. It was the first

American accounting for a racist act of the past, the first time the state offered to listen to

each and every citizen who wanted to describe their loss in violation of the Constitutional

principle of equality. And the most amazing result of the pages and pages of personal

testimony was that Congress heard. Over virulent opposition, the Redress Bill passed,

granting each survivor of the internment a formal apology and monetary reparation of

$20,000. Significantly, a conservative president, known for his promises of less

government spending, signed the Redress bill into law.50

Redress success was achieved by the grassroots organizing of the Japanese-

American community. Every locality participated, supporting the combined efforts of

litigation, lobbying, and publicity. From the start, public education was the goal. The

process of standing up for human rights and letting the American people know of the

internment was more important than winning in any given state arena. Church groups,

050Restitution for World War II Internment of Japanese Americans and Aleuts, 50 U.S. Code 1989 (August 10, 1988), signed by President Ronald Reagan.

Page 18 of 43

students, professional associations, and allies in the civil rights movement were called

upon to spread the word. Japanese-American members of Congress, including World War

II veterans who carried war wounds proudly, brought their moral authority to bear.51 As I

have written elsewhere, the Cold War no doubt played a part.52 As America sought to

criticize human rights violations in socialist countries, it was hard pressed to ignore its

own recent history of putting citizens behind barbed wire without rights of habeas

corpus.53

This story, of Japanese Americans moving Congress and the courts to rectify past

wrongs, is an unusual footnote to the civil rights movement. So much of our national

failure to redress racial injustice comes from a refusal to look at the historical record and

to admit present responsibility for continuing effects of that record. Complaints of racial

disadvantage are met with impatience or denial: it's not that bad, get over it.54 Despite the

demographic reality of inordinate racial privilege in this county, the popular belief that

minorities receive special advantages over beleaguered white males - 'reverse

discrimination' - persists.55

The Japanese Americans learned that there is room for a different story. Their

private knowledge of racial degradation could become public knowledge, forcing a

progressive response from the state. Given this experience, the stonewalling response of

the YWCA in the 1830 Sutter Street dispute was both unexpected and infuriating from the

perspective of the community.

151Notably, upon introduction the House bill was assigned the symbolic number H.R. 442, for the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the heroic Nisei unit of WWII. Daniels, R., 'Redress Achieved, 1983-1990', in R. Daniels, S.C. Taylor, and H.H.L. Kitano (eds) Japanese Americans from Relocation to Redress, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 221.

252Matsuda, M.J., 1998, 'McCarthyism, the Internment and the Contradictions of Power', Boston College Law Review, Vol XL No 1: 9, Boston College Third World Law Journal, Vol XIX No 1: 9.

353Writs of Habeus Corpus are legal mechanisms designed primarily to challenge unlawful imprisonment.

454Posner, R.A., 1997, 'Beyond All Reason: The Radical Assault on Truth in American Law; book reviews', The New Republic, No 15 Vol 217: 40. Posner attempts to dismiss the academic merit of the work of critical race theorists by calling them 'whiners'.

55Dreyfuss, J. and Lawrence, C.R., 1979, The Bakke Case: The Politics of Inequality, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: 143.

Page 19 of 43

3. Who Me? Couldn't Be!

The YWCA of San Francisco, circa 1920, was an ally of the Women's Christian

Temperance Union. It was one of the places where women, through Christian good works,

were permitted entry into the public sphere. For a woman of intelligence, energy,

Christian compassion, and the drive to care for more than hearth and home, organizations

like the YWCA provided a legitimate reason for leaving the confines of their own parlors.

Helping immigrants was a noble gesture in a period of increasing American xenophobia,

and while the YWCA could not transcend its times by rejecting segregation, it did reject

the tide of anti-immigrant hostility that engulfed much of the nation in the 1920s. The

YWCA took the middle road: through helping immigrant women lead lives of Christian

decency, the YWCA women chose assimilation over racial hatred.56 In this spirit, the

white YWCA sponsored the Japanese YWCA's purchase and construction of the Sutter

Street building. Also consistent with the times was the appreciation of the higher forms of

Japanese culture. Japonaisism was an international trend, and Japanese arts, architecture,

printmaking, and ikebana were thought to represent a refinement and naturalism much

admired among sophisticated Europeans and Americans. Julia Morgan and her wealthy

patrons, such as the Hearst family, were familiar with Japanese art. Do-gooderism and an

appreciation of Japanese culture as somehow less coarse than other immigrant culture may

have influenced the purchase and support of the Japanese YWCA, and the donations of

Japanese artwork that followed the construction. The result, a decidedly foreign-looking

building constructed during a period of antiforeign nationalism, was a kind paradox in an

anxious time.

The YWCA was operating within the paternalistic model of charity work of the

time. It did not break out of that mold by integrating its existing facilities, or by

promoting an independent Japanese-centered organization without ties to the YWCA. 656By the mid-1920s, the YWCA operated 55 International Institutes in immigrant neighborhoods. The Institutes were service-oriented agencies designed to promote assimilation as well as nationalist pride, primarily through classes in both English and the immigrant's 'mother tongue'. The San Francisco International Institute described itself as 'an agency whose purpose in every activity is to promote interests and understanding of the nationality communities of San Francisco, to work for the conservation of the aesthetic values in their culture, to cooperate with them in their efforts to become a part of American life'. Bremer, E., 1923, The International Institute: A Re-Analysis of Our Foundations, quoting San Francisco International Institute Annual Reports, 1928-1934.

Page 20 of 43

Self-determination and cultural nationalism were not concepts that would have occurred

to the YWCA women. In short, the YWCA could be seen as both resisting race-based

xenophobia and reinforcing it. It resisted xenophobia by admiring Japanese culture and

sponsoring development of the Japanese YWCA. It reinforced xenophobia by maintaining

segregation and the role of paternalistic, or maternalistic as the case may be, patron.

Nationwide, the YWCA segregated its facilities, despite its stated mission to 'work

actively to eliminate discrimination against the Negro in both our Association and the

community'.57 Anna Arnold Hedgeman, a Black YWCA worker in the 1920s, described

her experience with the Y's segregation as the 'sugar-coated segregation pattern of social

work and housing in the North'.58 Unlike the white facilities, the 'Negro' branches did not

have a gymnasium, swimming pool, cafeteria, or an adequate staff, and it was thus clearly

understood that separate meant inferior:

I found that . . . even as a professional worker, I could not eat in the

cafeteria of the Central Association. The young people I supervised could

not use the swimming pool or the gymnasium in the Central building . . . I

was expected to build a fellowship of women and girls committed to the

development of a Christian community, yet there were no tools of the spirit

in the relationships between Negro and white youth.59

When Ms. Hedgeman moved to New Jersey in 1938, she encountered a similarly

disturbing pattern of 'separate but unequal' segregation at the YWCA. The Central

YWCA of Brooklyn enjoyed a large well-equipped building, while the Negro Club was in

an unattractive, poorly maintained clubroom-residence operation in a former brownstone,

with only four blocks separating the two. The stark disparity reminded her 'of the big

houses of Southern white folks and the shacks of Southern Negroes'.60 The national

pattern of neo-plantation treatment of Blacks puts the treatment of the Japanese YWCA

757Bell, J. and Wilkins, H., 1944, Interracial Practices in Community YWCAs: A Study Under the Auspices of the Commission to Gather Interracial Experience as Requested by the Sixteenth National Convention of the YWCAs of the USA, New York: National Board YWCA.

858Lerner, G. (ed), 1972, Black Women in White America: A Documentary History: 479.

959Lerner, G. (ed), 1972, Black Women in White America: A Documentary History: 491.

Page 21 of 43

within a context of unequal partnership and patent inability to transcend the racism of the

broader society. This was the YWCA of the 1920s and 1930s. The aspiration of

Christian fellowship could not shake loose this legacy, and when the Japanese-American

community faced its biggest crisis the YWCA was a timid supporter.

When the internment occurred, and the Japanese YWCA as an organization was

destroyed, the white YWCA watched helplessly. The YWCA claims it made efforts to

assist Japanese YWCA members with their departure, but overtures for visits and

continued assistance were ended, the YWCA says today, because the government did not

allow it. No formal protests or other offers of aid were made by the YWCA, and the

record shows a long silence in response to the sudden incarceration of Japanese YWCA

members, along with the silence of nearly every other civil rights and charitable

organization, and most of the American left. The list of those who spoke out against the

internment is short, and well remembered by the Japanese-American community. It

includes but a few Quakers and local ACLU members.

Within the context of the times, it is not surprising that the women of the San

Francisco YWCA, given their ideological and class backgrounds, were unable to condemn

the internment publicly or actively assist the departed Japanese Americans. It is

anachronistic to expect more. This does not diminish the magnitude of the lost

opportunity. The San Francisco YWCA had firsthand knowledge of the assimilationist

aspirations of the Japanese YWCA members, of their desire to build a life in the United

States, of their investment in a future for their children in the United States, of their

diligence and trustworthiness. The YWCA was in a position to offer testimony that the

good Christian ladies of the Japanese YWCA were no threat to national security, and it

was in a position to offer material and logistical support to the families who were forced

overnight to leave behind everything they had - including the Japanese YWCA. This lost

opportunity leaves room for one to wish that someone in the San Francisco YWCA

showed transcendent courage. No one did, and the Japanese-American community lost the

Japanese YWCA for decades.

The current YWCA once again is in a relationship with the Japanese-American

060Lerner, G. (ed), 1972, Black Women in White America: A Documentary History: 493.

Page 22 of 43

community, both as landlord and legal adversary. It has rented the facility to nonprofit

Japantown community groups, including Nihonmachi Little Friends preschool, at

reasonable rent, for several years. Until the recent dispute, this relationship was one of a

friendly landlord. It was not a full partnership, and as later events would reveal, the

landlord did not really know the tenant.

The YWCA's recent relationship with the Japanese-American community is

marked by an apparent lack of knowledge about the aspirations and attitudes of the

community. This lack of knowledge stands in contradiction to the YWCA's modern

identity as a multicultural organization, but it is not surprising given the general absence

of knowledge of Asian-American culture and history in mainstream American institutions.

The YWCA, both locally and nationally, had gone through the crucible of the civil

rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The choice faced by service organizations like

the YWCA was to stand on the sidelines of social change or to embrace it. The early,

quiet resistance to xenophobia that had marked the 1920's YWCA was replaced by

aggressive side-taking: we are an anti racist organization.61 The national YWCA,

challenged by board members like Dorothy Height, a formidable icon of the African-

American women's movement, placed the issue of race upon the national YWCA agenda.

After predictable conflict, an integrated YWCA with an explicit priority of promoting

racial justice emerged.

While the San Francisco YWCA is run by women of relative privilege, it has, in

recent years, committed a substantial portion of its programming to the needs of

disadvantaged women and girls. It has integrated its board and executive positions with

some women of color. In the meantime, the social context of San Francisco and California

has changed. The city, like the state, is increasingly multicultural and is seen as a

bellwether of America's demographic and cultural future.

By the time the Japanese YWCA dispute arose, the San Francisco/Marin YWCA

had come to think of itself as ready on the issue of race. Unlike many of the charity-

oriented women's organizations that remain from earlier times (the Junior League comes

to mind) the YWCA had taken on an affirmative feminist, anti racist identity. This self-

161 'Our mission is to empower women and girls and to eliminate racism'. YWCA Home Page, www.ywca.org.

Page 23 of 43

identity masked failure at deep integration of the perspective of subordinated groups. The

racial integration of the board, for example, was not the equivalent of forging bonds with

grassroots community organizations of color, nor did it change the predominance of

majoritarian/white attitudes and assumptions. Providing services to disadvantaged girls

was not the same as promoting community control and self-determination in

disadvantaged minority communities, nor did it require taking the perspective of those

communities seriously in setting policy. Members of minority and disadvantaged

communities did not run the YWCA - they were served by the YWCA. In this sense, the

stance of the 1920s was not completely buried.

The YWCA of San Francisco/Marin had not integrated the Japanese-American

community into its ranks, and from the start of the Japanese YWCA dispute, it was clear

that the positions and perspectives of the Japanese-American community were deeply

mysterious to the leadership of the San Francisco YWCA. Many of the YWCA's pronouncements express hurt, shock, and dismay at being seen as the bad guys in the eyes

of the Japanese-American community, as though the YWCA's explicit anti-racist agenda

entitled it to an assumption of goodwill in any dispute with people of color. This view

failed to recognize that many people of color see the YWCA as a white organization, and

based on life experience choose not to assume the goodwill of white organizations,

regardless of organizational expressions of generous intent.

Similarly, the YWCA grossly miscalculated the strength of sentiment and

strategies of resistance the threatened sale of the YWCA would evoke. In failing to

consult the community from the start, and in minimizing the seriousness of the claims

when negotiations were finally opened, the YWCA found itself in an increasingly

defensive posture, marked by significant strategic errors that further enraged the

community. For example, in its motion for summary judgment in the Soko Bukai lawsuit,

the YWCA attempted to characterize the Soko Bukai as a small group of elites who did

not represent the community and were from a well-off group that was seeking a valuable

building it did not need. This kind of language is immediately heard by the Asian-

American community as part of the model minority myth, a myth regularly used to deny

political power to Asian Americans. The YWCA, not having learned the Asian-American

Page 24 of 43

perspective, was unable to predict this. Nor did it understand that the Soko Bukai, and the

lawyers representing the Soko Bukai, were widely respected in both the Japanese-

American community and the broader civil rights community.62 Years of coalition work

had earned this respect. The YWCA had not accumulated correspondent credibility, and

did not understand that it was operating from a key political disadvantage.

Don Tamaki, Karen Kai, and Bob Rusky, representing the Soko Bukai on a pro

bono basis, were longtime members of the San Francisco civil rights movement. They

were known both as skilled advocates, and as individuals of deep integrity. Their choice

to take on the case was reason enough for many community groups to support the Soko

Bukai position, for these lawyers had a reputation: they would not take on a high profile

case like this one if it was weak on the merits, for that would do more harm than good for

the cause of civil rights. These lawyers had received numerous awards and widespread

recognition, including portrayals in documentary films and studies by university students,

for their work on the Coram Nobis redress cases. They had established a national network

of supporters, who would quickly understand the racial and historical implications of the

Japanese YWCA dispute. These advocates also understood how to use the courts, the

media, and government entities in a multifaceted advocacy strategy. The case was never

just about the legal rules to the civil rights lawyers.

Neither the YWCA lawyers nor the YWCA leadership seemed to understand that

they were in a political battle with energized and experienced community activists. Their

initial response was simple and legalistic: we have title, therefore we can dispose of the

property as we choose.

This perspective was evident in several missteps. By February of 1999,

negotiations between the YWCA and the community had broken down, and the case

proceeded in the courts. The Japanese-American community was planning a series of 'Day

of Remembrance' events to commemorate the internment. Following the Redress

262As evidence of this support, the Japanese American Citizens League, one of the oldest, largest, and most respected Japanese-American organizations, resolved to: 1) support transferring the property to the Soko Bukai; 2) petition the National YWCA to assist in the resolution of the lawsuit in favor of the Soko Bukai; and 3) encourage JACL chapters to support the Soko Bukai Legal Defense Fund. JACL Resolution: 'Japanese Community Lawsuit Against San Francisco YWCA', adopted January 24, 1998. The JACL has 24,500 members and 112 chapters in 25 states and Washington, DC.

Page 25 of 43

Movement, the Day of Remembrance had become a way to mark the anniversary of the

internment through ceremonies that were part somber memorial, part invigorating

expression of community pride. A vast array of groups - from churches, to historical

societies, to Boy Scouts, to theater groups - typically participated. A community-wide

memorial service and artistic celebration was planned in Japantown, and Asian Improv,

the arts group that organized the event, applied for community arts funding from the city

of San Francisco.

The theme of the proposed Day of Remembrance ceremony would be 'unfinished

business', picking up the widely discussed notion that Redress checks were not the end of

a movement, because the need to struggle for social justice is unending.63 Key unfinished

business for Japanese Americans in 1999 included reparations for Japanese Latin

Americans, who were interned under U.S. government orders by U.S. ally nations in Latin

America,64 and the Japanese YWCA case. While the organizers made no content

recommendations to the participating artists, the chosen theme invited political

commentary. Numerous artists, performers, and academics (including this author) agreed

to participate in the ceremony.

The YWCA was outraged, and sent a letter to the city demanding revocation of

city art funds for a partisan performance. The letter alleged misuse of public funds for

advocacy: 'We urge you to protect fairness, due process, and community harmony by

preventing this clear and unfortunate misuse of public funds. Please help ensure that the

Day of Remembrance fully represents the true San Francisco spirit of community, dignity,

and justice'.65 The letter further diminished the significance of the event by alleging that

the commemoration was 'actually geared around a protest against the YWCA' and was an

attempt to garner publicity for the Soko Bukai lawsuit.66

This letter is an example of failing to assess the view of the community and the

political reality of the dispute. The community had obtained the arts funding because the

363 Lawrence, C., 1993, 'Beyond Redress: Reclaiming the Meaning of Affirmative Action', Amerasia Journal, Vol 19 No 1: 1-6.

464Saito, N.T., 1998, 'Justice Held Hostage: U.S. Disregard for International Law in the World War II Internment of Japanese Peruvians - A Case Study', Boston College Law Review, Vol XL No 1: 281-290, Boston College Third World Law Journal, Vol XIX No 1: 281-290.

Page 26 of 43

organizers were well-known for quality, community-based arts programs. Perhaps more

importantly, the Asian-American community was a force in local politics. The

politicization of performance was a welcome part of the San Francisco arts scene, and

indeed the distinction between art and politics was exactly the line that gifted artists in

San Francisco were admired for traversing. Asian Improv was known as an organization

that could draw a large crowd at community art events, use funds efficiently, and promote

multicultural artistry. To call their work inappropriate advocacy was not only an insult to

Japanese Americans, but a miscomprehension of the broader multicultural and highly

politicized San Francisco arts scene.

Further, to suggest that the individual artists, performers, poets, and academics

who participated were somehow required to take an anti-YWCA position demeaned those

individuals, who were known to the community as independent thinkers whose talent was

not amenable to spoon-feeding of a party line. Before the Board of Supervisors, activist

Karen Kai testified in response to the YWCA letter: 'When I look at a letter like this I'm

saddened that an organization that calls itself a civil rights organization seeks to censor a

community. They denigrated us, they sought to erase our history, and now they attack our

own Day of Remembrance'.67

Asking the Board of Supervisors to shut down an Asian-American event was not

savvy politics in a city where Asian-American voters are taken seriously. While the

Japanese-American community is relatively small, the Redress issue was owned by a

broader pan-Asian coalition. Indeed, the birth of the Asian-American coalition in U.S.

history is marked in San Francisco by three struggles: the ethnic studies strike at San

Francisco State, the International Hotel anti-eviction movement, and the Redress

Movement.68 Most Asian-American activists in the bay area, whether Chinese, Japanese,

Filipino, Korean or other Asian, had either participated in all three struggles, or were

565San Francisco/Marin YWCA Executive Director Carol Newkirk, 16 February 1999, letter to San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

66San Francisco/Marin YWCA Executive Director Carol Newkirk, 16 February 1999, letter to San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

767Taguma, K.J., 19 February 1999, 'YWCA Letter to Supervisors Under the Gun', Nichi Bei Times.

Page 27 of 43

familiar through study and exposure to a strong tradition that forges Asian-American

political identity in San Francisco around those struggles. Not to know this was not to

know San Francisco's Asian-American community. Attacking the Day of Remembrance

was the equivalent of attacking the Redress Movement, which was the equivalent of

attacking Asian Americans. Members of the Board of Supervisors responded to the

YWCA's overture with hostility. Supervisor Michael Yaki called it, 'insensitive, ignorant,

and completely inappropriate to the mission of the YWCA. All this is, pure and simple, is

an attack...insensitivity to the highest degree'. Supervisor Mable Teng echoed Yaki's sentiments, calling the letter 'very troubling and distasteful'.69

The performance went on as scheduled, with city funding, and with broad support

from city politicians who made their token appearances at the events. The mayor himself

was introduced at a banquet the night before, which honored the Coram Nobis legal team

- including the Soko Bukai attorneys. The Day of Remembrance event filled a large

theater and opened with school children in kimono who took the stage to sing folksongs.

Next, rap, spoken word, and performance artists brought a youthful feel to the

performance, and academic/lawyer types made broader social commentary. The ceremony

culminated in a solemn candlelighting, with representatives from various youth activist

groups lighting one candle for each internment camp, while the name of the camp and a

pledge to honor the memory of those interned, was recited. Finally, the flag-carrying Boy

Scouts led the crowd of hundreds on a candlelight procession to the Japanese YWCA

building.

Meanwhile, the YWCA board was hosting a reception at the building. Stung by

the widespread distribution of the YWCA's letter condemning the Day of Remembrance

and the political backlash this engendered, the YWCA attempted to repair the damage by

wrapping the building in a huge banner that read 'The YWCA honors the Day of

868For more information on these pivotal events, see 'Salute to the 60s and 70s: Legacy of the San Francisco State Strike', Amerasia Journal, Vol. 15, No. 1(1989), Los Angeles: Asian American Studies Center, University of California; Choy, C., 1983, 'The Fall of the I-Hotel', video, San Francisco: National Asian-American Telecommunications Association; 'The Redress Movement', in R. Daniels, S.C. Taylor, and H.H.L. Kitano (eds) Japanese Americans from Relocation to Redress, Seattle: University of Washington Press.

969Taguma, K.J., 19 February 1999, 'YWCA Letter to Supervisors Under the Gun' Nichi Bei Times, San Francisco: 1.

Page 28 of 43

Remembrance'. The YWCA also sponsored a by-invitation-only reception at the facility in

commemoration of the Day of Remembrance, scheduled to conflict with the community

event. This was a puzzling move. First the YWCA had attempted to block Japantown's chosen means of commemorating the internment, then the Y decided to sponsor its own

commemoration without including the Japanese-American community. For Japanese

Americans, this added insult to injury. 'They're blatantly insensitive', said community

organizer Richard Wada. 'What they're knowingly doing . . . is rubbing salt into the open

wound of the community'.70 While the YWCA reception continued inside, the candlelight

procession headed for the doors of the Japanese YWCA.

Marchers were greeted with the sonorous call of the taiko drum. Lawyer-activist

Karen Kai, dressed in traditional taiko street garb, wielded the drumsticks ceremoniously,

while four generations of Japanese Americans, from babes in arms to frail elderly,

surrounded the Japanese YWCA building. Inside, the Y board sipped their sodas sadly,

while outside community leaders gave rousing speeches demanding the return of the

building to the community. San Francisco Supervisor Michael Yaki embodied the mood

of the protestors when he said, 'This building is a symbol of our community. It is a

symbol of a community that we used to have here, before we were sent to camps. . . And

we will continue to fight for this building every day, until it is firmly committed and

remains in the hands of the Japanese American community of San Francisco'.71

The community was left feeling energized and exultant. The YWCA board was

left feeling besieged. The YWCA had only recently begun to use the building for its own

executive offices - probably in an effort to add a physical support for the claim that the

building belonged to the YWCA. The board now sat in its building, surrounded by

hundreds who claimed it was their building, while the drums pounded and television news

cameras swarmed.

Contrary to the YWCA's allegation that the Soko Bukai was a non-representative

group that did not speak for the Japanese-American community, it was becoming clear 070Taguma, K., 26 February 1999, 'Community Demonstrates Anger at Japantown YWCA Building', Nichi Bei Times, San Francisco: 1.

171Taguma, K., 26 February 1999, 'Community Demonstrates Anger at Japantown YWCA Building', Nichi Bei Times, San Francisco: 1.

Page 29 of 43

that large numbers of Japanese Americans were prepared to join the cause and to rattle

cages if necessary. Newspaper editorials favorable to the Soko Bukai position appeared.

The San Francisco Examiner, for example, wrote:

It's one thing to hire combative lawyers to win a property law case on

technicalities that don't take into account a horrid history of racism and

segregation. It's quite another to emerge unwounded from the muddy battlefield of

public opinion...The YWCA, after considering the effect of this dispute on future

fund-raising, should graciously return the property title to the churches that built it

65 years ago. .72

Television news coverage, while careful to show 'both sides', featured moving footage of

the internment and disruption of the Japanese-American community. National newsmagazines,

such as Ms., made inquiries about the case.73 The community was waging a public relations

campaign framed in terms of moral truths, and the YWCA's lawyers continued to treat the

dispute as one over legal title. Perhaps recognizing that they were outgunned on the publicity

front, the YWCA became increasingly reticent about its positions, turning inquiries over to

lawyers and public relations consultants.

In April of 1999, Soko Bukai succeeded in getting the California State Assembly and

Senate to pass unanimously a resolution condemning the Alien Land Laws, and declaring a state

policy to enforce trusts created out of the Alien Land Laws. The state was clearly taking the side

of the Soko Bukai in the law suit, and admitting state complicity with past racism. The YWCA

was unprepared for this legislative action, and responded with an outraged campaign to rescind

the resolution, which was passed, in the YWCA's view, without hearing both sides of the story.74

When the rescission campaign proved unsuccessful, the YWCA adopted a different

strategy and dismissed the importance of the resolution: 'We are told nobody reads those things

anyway', YWCA consultant Darolyn Davis told Ms. Magazine.75 'It's like [declaring] National

Dairy Week', added YWCA board vice president Bonnie Hough.76

272' 'A Question of Trust', 30 October 1997, San Francisco Examiner: A-20.

373Felner, J., 1999, 'Unlikely Foes Face Off', Ms., Vol IX No 5: 26-30.

474YWCA of San Francisco and Marin, 'Dear Fellow Non-Profit Letter', May 3, 1999.

Page 30 of 43

The community strategy of treating the case as a political fight was an affront to the

YWCA. Unlike the YWCA, the Japanese-American community had lobbied and worked at the

state legislative level for years and knew how to move a resolution through quickly. Again, this

was the legacy of the Redress Movement, completely unknown to the YWCA. The YWCA

interpreted the community's success in obtaining a resolution as an example of sneaky, below-

the-belt tactics.

For its part, the YWCA has a long list of arguments for its position in the Japanese

YWCA case, which fall generally under three categories. First, are the legalistic arguments that

the YWCA has clear title and the trust is nonexistent or unenforceable. Included here are what

lawyers call 'standing' arguments - that any harm in the loss of the YWCA was done to an

organization, the Japanese YWCA, which no longer exists, therefore there is no victim entitled to

enforce any trust. The Soko Bukai, in this view, is a pretender to the Japanese YWCA legacy

belatedly trying to cash in on a tenuous connection to the original organization. In addition, the

YWCA disputes the facts, claiming that the Issei did not provide the bulk of the funds used to

purchase the building.

Second, are the 'who me?' arguments. Because the YWCA is an anti racist, good works

organization, charges of racism against it are misplaced. Board President Linda Hills stated the

allegation 'is especially unfortunate given the YWCA's distinguished record of service and

commitment to peace, justice, and dignity for all people'.77 The real racism, the YWCA believes,

was historical, grounded in the Alien Land Laws and the internment, which the YWCA did not

cause. The various community groups, lawyers, politicians, writers, journalists, and street

agitators who have latched onto the Japanese YWCA case have completely failed to see that the

true carrier of the social justice legacy here is the San Francisco YWCA - a multiracial

organization that is beholden to no one community group. The San Francisco YWCA cites a long

track record on racial justice issues, and points out that there would have been no Japanese

YWCA building to fight about in the first place if the San Francisco YWCA had not, even in the

1920s, bucked the tide of racial hatred. The YWCA claims that it is being unfairly punished for

'an ugly chapter in U.S. history in which it played the savior, not scoundrel'.78

575Felner, J., August/September 1999, 'Unlikely Foes Face Off', Ms., 27.

676Felner, J., August/September 1999, 'Unlikely Foes Face Off', Ms., 27.

Page 31 of 43

Third, and related, are utilitarian arguments. The YWCA does important work on behalf

of many people, therefore it should keep unfettered title to the building because that will benefit

the most people. An implicit and sometimes explicit claim made in conjunction with this is that

Japanese Americans are the least needy group and therefore have the weakest claim to the

building.

Miscellaneous additional ad hominem arguments challenge Soko Bukai as a male-

dominated organization of questionable credibility, and allege that the motives and tactics of the

Japanese-American community have been assaultive and dishonest toward a longstanding ally.

The YWCA believes these positions, with genuine passion. Indeed, if there was not a

sincere belief in the righteousness of its position, this case would have settled long ago, because

the community representatives have offered significant sums of money to buy the building from

the YWCA, at close to the original asking price.

Once the charge of racism was on the table, however, settlement negotiations stalled, and

the YWCA became more defensive and less conciliatory in its public statements. Why do

allegations of racism have this effect, and how are we to judge the racial justice track record of

organizations like the YWCA? Anyone who has worked extensively in community groups has

seen good coalitions break down around issues of race. This kind of tension is so familiar, that

experienced activists like Bernice Johnson Reagon have said, 'If it feels good, it isn't coalition'.79

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION IN CIVIL SOCIETY: YES YOU! (COULDN'T BE!) THEN WHO?

The children's chant 'who me, couldn't be', was what came to mind when I listened to the

strenuous statements of innocence delivered by the YWCA: We are the YWCA - it hurts when

you call us racist. We couldn't be, given all we do and all we stand for. For critical race theorists,

the response to the chant 'who me?' is always 'yes, you'. We accept the basic premise that

American culture was forged in racism. One cannot be part of this culture without absorbing

racist ideas, assumptions, perspectives, and gaps in knowledge. This applies to all people, of all

77 'About the 1830 Sutter Lawsuit', YWCA of San Francisco, Marin and San Mateo Newsletter: 5-6

878Felner, J., August/September 1999, 'Unlikely Foes Face Off', Ms., 29

979Reagon, B.J., 1983, 'Coalition Politics: Turning the Century', in B. Smith (ed), Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology, New York: Kitchen Table Women of Color Press: 354.

Page 32 of 43

races, in all walks of life, for we are social animals, and the racism in the culture is passed along

socially. We have had slavery longer than we have not had it. We have had segregation longer

than we have not had it. We have had the myth of the yellow peril for as long as we have had

Asian Americans, and most Americans do not know that we have had Asians in America for a

period longer than we have not had them. Indeed, the United States could well have become a

majority Asian nation if not for racist immigration policies of the nineteenth and twentieth

centuries.80 Racism is deeply a part of who we are. It is no accident that the game including the

plaintive cry 'who me?' met derisively with the reply 'yes, you!' was played enthusiastically by

Black children in colonized settings.81 Yes, you - denial is everywhere, but we see it and we

know you do, too. This un-right thing, this hidden thing, whether what you have taken is a

forbidden sweet, a stucco building in Japantown, or a human life -- if you took it, you know. A

vigorous denial repeated with confidence might help one forget what one knows, but this is hard

for human beings, those social animals, dependent as they are on the views of others in forming

views of themselves. This is why it hurts when the other children cry out 'Yes, you'. This is why

the next step in the game requires the accused child to point the finger to another in the circle.

Affirmative action can have either a deep or a shallow meaning.82 The shallow meaning is

that diversity is good, and we should allow many different kinds of people into the institutions

that govern our lives, as long as the newcomers are not so different that they alter the

fundamental rules of the game, including notions of standards, merit, truth, and objectivity.

The deep meaning of affirmative action is redistributive and transformative. It

acknowledges that there are systemic practices that devalue certain people and their cultures, and

that ending that devaluation requires changing business as usual - not just allowing a few tokens

to enter elite institutions, but welcoming entire communities of the formerly excluded and

allowing them to share in the shaping of new institutions. It means digging deep to understand

080Hing, B.O., 1993, Making and Remaking Asian America Through Immigration Policy 1850-1990, Stanford, California, Stanford University Press.

181Lomax, A., Elder, J.D. and Hawes, B.L., 1997, Brown Girl in the Ring, New York: Pantheon Books: 138. The Cookie Jar game originated in the United States and spread to the British Isles and the Caribbean.

282Lawrence, C.R. and Matsuda, M.J., 1997, We Won't Go Back: Making the Case for Affirmative Action, Boston Houghton Mifflin Company: 27.

Page 33 of 43

why some people have had power and some people have been denied it, and knowing that we will

not end current inequality without committing to radical change in how we operate. It means

welcoming the perspective, ideas, experience, and history of subordinated peoples, not just their

bodies. Their minds and their world views are what we need to fulfill the true promise of

affirmative action: the growth and change that comes from interaction with difference and

confrontation of old dogma. In the case of the universities, this means changing what we teach,

whom we choose to teach it, and whom we choose to admit.

How could the YWCA have avoided its widening conflict with the Japanese-American

community? If it had practiced deep affirmative action, it would have forged relationships with

the Japanese-American community long before it attempted to sell a building out from under it.

This would have meant not only having Japanese Americans on the board and in leadership

positions, which the YWCA did not have, but also seeking out those members of the Japanese-

American community most identified with Japanese-American social justice activism. Rather

than choosing 'people like us' who happen to be Japanese American, the goal is to choose people

whose knowledge and commitment to social justice is respected within the Japanese-American

community. From the YWCA's actions, it is clear that no one like this participated in any

decision making at the YWCA. Similarly, in welcoming a few Asian Americans to participate in

YWCA policy making, the YWCA failed to seek out anyone with ties to the pan-Asian civil

rights coalition. The attitudes, practices, beliefs, and strategies of that coalition were thus a

mystery to the YWCA, and the YWCA was stunned by both the level of feeling and the tactics

chosen by its adversaries.

In addition, the YWCA could have done serious consciousness-raising about race. Anyone

claiming to do anti-racist work in America has to understand that professions of innocence are not

a good first response to charges of racism, because they reveal a white supremacist point of view.

The presumption that all acts are racially neutral unless proven otherwise is the perspective of the

dominant racial group. The opposite assumption is held by members of racially subordinated

groups. Thus when African Americans are stopped by the police for 'suspicious driving', they

presume a racist motivation. Whites do not typically make this presumption, and thus when

allegations of racism are directed against them, they feel deep, personal affront. If they have

talked honestly with people of color, they understand that the widespread presumption of racism

Page 34 of 43

exists among people of color, and they might not take this accusation so personally. It is a

statement about how the world works, not an accusation of individual evil. The defensive

response of 'I am not racist!' translates to 'I don't believe racism is common and deeply ingrained

in social practices, therefore when you call me racist you are calling me an evil outsider to

humanity and I can no longer remain in a conversation with you'. People of color who have raised

issues of racism are used to this response, and when they hear it they often take it as a signal that

further conversation is indeed fruitless.

Through difficult coalition work and consciousness-raising, activists have learned that the

first response to an allegation of racism (or class privilege, or homophobia, or sexism) best not be

denial if learning, growth, and community are the goal. An experienced community organizer

would respond to such an allegation with an invitation for further dialogue: tell me more about

why you feel that way. The YWCA's first response of denial and personalized outrage at the

allegations were signals that the YWCA had not engaged in sustained intercultural work in San

Francisco, a community in which layers of acknowledged difference and subordination inevitably

affect the work of nonprofits.

Until institutions of civil society are prepared to do this kind of work, the many forms of

subordination that pervade our lives will reproduce themselves in civil society. A heterosexual,

white, Christian, male world view will dominate. The federal glass ceiling report showed that the

predominance of white men in positions of power and leadership is replicated in business,

government, media, education and civic organizations.83 This dominance is a statistical reality,

and civil society is not exempt from that reality.

In the case of the Japanese YWCA, the Japanese-American community initially had a

better shot in the courts, the legislature, and the media than it did in the boardroom of a civil

society organization. The ultimate outcome is unknown, as the Japanese YWCA dispute

continues at this writing. In the meantime, from the perspective of the Japanese-American

community, it is too soon to embrace civil society as the promised moderating influence on abuse

of state power. Until deep affirmative action is a normative principle within civil society, the

Japanese-American community, and other racially subordinated communities, will have to assess

383Federal Glass Ceiling Commission, Good For Business: Making Full Use of the Nation's Human Capital, March 1995 (Bureau of National Affairs).

Page 35 of 43

each civil society entity according to the ends in sight. If racial justice is the end, there are times

to use the state and times to resist the state. And so it also goes for civil society. For its part, if the

YWCA is correct in its assessment that it was unjustly accused, it is still useful for the YWCA to

ask why the accusations had such resonance in both state and community fora, and what the

YWCA could have done differently, past and present, to make common cause with Asian-

American civil rights organizations.

This case study suggests that civil society organizations truly committed to anti racism

should:

1) Practice deep affirmative action at all levels of organizational structure;

2) Learn the history and world view of subordinated groups through coalition work and

consciousness raising

3) Follow critical anti subordination precepts in programming, operations, and community

interactions, including the precept that racism is pervasive, structural, social, often

unconscious, and presumptively operational in all aspects of American life;

4) Never let lawyers make policy or dictate political choices;

5) Question internally the role of racial privilege in distributing present advantage;

6) Be prepared for hard feelings, miscommunication, villainization, and intense emotion because

race is unfinished business;

7) Learn graciousness in receiving another's pain;

8) Recognize that listening is the first step in forging community; and

9) Withhold judgment, defensiveness, and denial C even when unfairly accused.

The forbearance suggested here is required by broader historical truths. The YWCA is a

public- spirited and noble organization. It has reasoned arguments on its side. This does not

obviate the need for forbearance. The history of American racism is a reality that the YWCA did

not create, but must inevitably own.

I was told as a child that the ceiling tiles in my public school classroom were designed to

absorb sound, and I took this to mean that everything that was said in the room became embedded

in the tiles. I believed this for a long time, and wondered what I would hear if I could pull a tile

down. Five generations of Japanese Americans have now laughed, talked, sung, and danced in the

Page 36 of 43

building called the Japanese YWCA. If the building is sold and the walls felled in the raging

development some hope to jam through Japantown in the coming years, what voices will rise

silently from the dust? Maybe Mrs. Yamato speaking earnestly about the British parliament; Miss

Inouye advising how to keep a soufflé from falling; the sound of koto, shakuhachi, taiko, the

stylized yowling of kabuki actors; the voices of children, singing 'Chi chi pa pa' in Japanese, then

counting to ten in Swahili; the bullhorn voices of speakers at protests; the quiet voices of teachers

at naptime; the teasing voices of teens from the nearby projects. There is life embedded in the

walls and tiles that no law or title search recognizes. There are voices that a community hears,

and that an owner, at present, does not. This is a challenge for organizations of civil society: how

will you know what you do not hear, how will you change so you hear it?

Page 37 of 43

Endnotes:

Page 38 of 43