Cherry Kinoshita, 1923-2008: Selfless activist won apology to Japanese-Americans

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Cherry Kinoshita shunned the spotlight for her tireless work on behalf of Japanese-Americans who lost liberty and property during World War II. She deflected credit to others, even as they called her the catalyst behind righting a wrong in the nation's history.

Kinoshita died Tuesday in her native Seattle, two weeks shy of the 20th anniversary of the bill signed by President Reagan that offered an apology and payments to Japanese-Americans uprooted and held for years in internment camps. She was 84.

Kinoshita had been on kidney dialysis for eight years, and her health was too frail for her to attend this month's national conference of the Japanese American Citizens League, known as the JACL.

Even so, she characteristically sought to have others acknowledged at the conference for their efforts in the reparations campaign.

"She just seemed to be driven by this inner desire to make things right," said Karen Yoshitomi, the Seattle-based regional director of the JACL's Northwest district. "It wasn't just for herself or her family, though that was important. She had a tremendous sense of community and justice. That's what made her as tenacious as she was."

In 2004, Kinoshita received a Jefferson Award, a national honor given to "ordinary people who do extraordinary things." Former Congressman and Gov. Mike Lowry nominated her for her leadership locally and nationally in making the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 a reality.

Born to Japanese immigrants, Kinoshita was a Lincoln High School graduate and barely 18 when the Japanese military bombed Pearl Harbor. Her family moved from their Green Lake-area home to an internment camp in Minidoka, Idaho, one of 10 remote camps in the U.S. that held more than 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry.

She met her future husband, Masao, at Minidoka and married him in 1948. The couple settled in Seattle in 1950.

"We only had the $25 the government gave us when we left camp," Kinoshita once said. "We were really down to nothing. It wasn't a matter of seeking justice then. We were scrambling to survive."

Things changed by the 1970s, when Kinoshita got involved in a grass-roots effort birthed in Seattle to gain an apology and reparations. Lowry sponsored the original bill in Congress in 1979. The legislation took four tries to pass.

The surviving 80,000 internees each received $20,000, which Kinoshita called a "symbolic gesture" for several years of lost freedom, property and income. What meant more, she said, was an apology.

"Many in the (Japanese-American) community felt it was better to leave these things in the past. They thought it might stir up animosity," said Kinoshita's only child, Kyle, a Shoreline resident and an administrator in the Marysville School District.

But his mom felt that the redress movement was "the right thing to do," he said. "This spoke to the nature of the country – that there were certain ideals, that we had to live up them, and had to acknowledge when mistakes were made."

In the JACL, Kinoshita served as president of the Seattle chapter, vice governor for the Northwest district and as a vice president on the national board.

"She should be remembered as a very tireless worker for social justice," said Floyd Mori, national executive director of the Japanese American Citizens League.

While waiting for Congress to act in the 1980s, Kinoshita's work led the Legislature to apologize and remunerate 35 state employees who lost their jobs because of their race in 1942 and 26 Seattle Public Schools employees who were forced to resign the same year.

At about the same time, she enrolled at the University of Washington and earned a bachelor's degree in sociology at age 60.

Kinoshita's husband died in 2006. She is survived by her son; her daughter-in-law, Susan; and her granddaughter, Katie.

The family will hold a small private service.

Remembrances may be made to the Seattle chapter of the JACL, the Nisei Veterans Committee and Keiro, a local health care provider serving Japanese-Americans.