New Amnesty Official Recalls Her Years in Internment

In 1942, Mitsuye Yamada was yanked out of her high school in Seattle and, with her mother and three brothers, sent on a train guarded by soldiers to an internment camp in Idaho.

The 17-year-old aspiring writer spent most of World War II behind barbed wire, watched by armed guards because she was Japanese-American.

This summer, about 40 years after her release, Yamada, now an Irvine resident, was elected to the board of directors of Amnesty International USA. The 200,000-member organization, an affiliate of the multinational Amnesty International headquartered in London, works to free people throughout the world who are imprisoned because of their race or political or religious beliefs.

“In 1942, when Japanese-Americans were evacuated and put in concentration camps, most people didn’t see anything wrong with it,” Yamada said at Cypress College, where she is an English professor. “People just thought that because the government wanted it done, it was fine. They didn’t realize that chipping away at the human rights of a minority endangered those of the majority.”

Yamada, 64, was elected to a two-year term on Amnesty International’s 24-member board of directors at the national convention in June in San Francisco. She is the first Asian-American woman to serve on the policy-making board, according to Amnesty International spokeswoman Jacqui Hunt.

“Amnesty International is now trying to make itself more multicultural,” Yamada said, noting that the organization has few minority members. “People of color are reluctant to join groups promoting human rights, peace or nuclear disarmament because they’re afraid that they will be accused of being unpatriotic.

“If a white person in this country joins a group like this, they are given credit for believing in an ideal, whether it be peace or freeing prisoners of conscience. But when people of color favor these causes, they are accused of having another agenda--that they want to undermine the government or want Russia to take over the country.”

Yamada said she plans to give speeches and write articles to attract minorities. “What we have to do is to convince people of color that their cause is Amnesty’s cause.”

A member of Amnesty International for about 20 years, Yamada joined the Irvine chapter shortly after it was formed in 1977. She is one of only three original members still active in the chapter.

“A lot of people in Amnesty come and go because the work is so demanding and depressing, but Mitsuye is a consistent, dedicated worker,” said Chris Baron, a chapter co-founder.

“You’re writing letters all the time trying to free people who are prisoners of conscience because of their politics, religion or beliefs,” said Baron, 46, a high school teacher from Irvine. “You never get responses, and you never know if the letters have even arrived.”

Each chapter is assigned two political prisoners whom it seeks to release through letter-writing campaigns. The 30-member Irvine chapter has been amazingly successful, said Jack Rendler, assistant director of Amnesty’s regional office in Los Angeles, with eight of its political prisoners having been released. The latest release came last spring when Nikolai Bobarykin, leader of a Pentecostal congregation in the Soviet Union, was freed after more than six years in prison. The Irvine chapter had campaigned for his release for two years.

“This is not to say that chapter involvement is the only pressure that is brought on behalf of prisoners,” Rendler said. “But we do feel that this kind of pressure does make a difference.”

Concern about human rights has shaped other areas of Yamada’s personal and professional life. She is a member of the California State Department of Education Advisory Committee on Human Rights and Genocide, the Irvine Committee on Human Rights and the National Council on Japanese American Redress.

She also has written two books of poetry. Her poems often deal with her experiences as a World War II internee or with the problems faced by minorities and women in society.

In 1982, she and Nellie Wong, a San Francisco poet, were the subjects of the public television documentary, “Mitsuye and Nellie, Asian American Poets,” that told of their artistic efforts to capture the emotions of those who have grappled with racism and sexism.

Over the years Yamada has been a member of various women’s groups. Vivian Hall, Orange County women’s rights activist who has known Yamada a dozen years, said: “I taught women’s studies and literature for years at Westminster High and used her poetry in my classes. She is one of the most talented poets writing today in the U.S.”

‘Exceptional Human Being

Hall, 64, an Irvine neighbor of Yamada, continued: “Mitsuye is an exceptional human being. She combines so many things: the women’s movement, working for peace, creative writing, terrific teaching--and she has a large family with four children and many relatives. I don’t know how she does all those things and looks so healthy.

“Her whole life has been dedicated to justice and equal rights for all people. She especially feels strongly about people who are imprisoned because of her own experience. But she is not a bitter person. Whatever anger she felt, and feels, has been directed into activities to help others who are suffering, or into her poetry.”

Yamada has four children ages 25 to 35. She lives in Turtle Rock with her husband, Yoshikazu Yamada, 73, a retired research chemist.

During an interview, Yamada received a telephone call from a friend inviting her to attend a meeting that night of the Orange County chapter of NOW to work on a campaign against the nomination of Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“I need another issue like I need a hole in the head,” Yamada said afterward. “But with (Bork’s) record on human rights, I’ve just got to get involved. . . . Somehow, I will find the time to do all these things I’ve got to do.”