The oldest and largest U.S. Asian American civil rights group is also the most controversial.
August 29, 1930: The first Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) National Convention was held in Seattle, Washington.
The JACL was founded during a period when Japanese immigrants and their American-born children faced entrenched racism, exclusion laws, and violence. Its leaders believed that Japanese Americans could win acceptance in the U.S. by proving their loyalty and assimilation.
By 1930, JACL had become a national organization, formally committed to advancing civil rights — but always within the boundaries of proving loyalty to the United States.
In its early years, JACL pushed for legal reforms and won key victories. In 1931, Congress amended the Cable Act, which had stripped citizenship from women who married men ineligible for naturalization, such as Japanese immigrants. In 1935, the Nye-Lea Act secured citizenship rights for Asian American WWI veterans.
When WWII broke out, JACL faced its greatest test. The organization’s leaders, including Mike Masaoka, made the controversial decision to publicly support compliance with mass removal and incarceration.
The logic was that cooperation would demonstrate loyalty and protect the community in the long run. But many saw this as betrayal. Critics labeled JACL leaders inu — dogs, or collaborators — because they discouraged open resistance and sometimes informed on community members.
It is difficult to say exactly how the Japanese Americans would have turned out better or worse if they resisted harder against the incarceration. Nonetheless, this wartime stance has cast a long shadow, creating wounds that still linger in the community today.
tn the postwar years, JACL pivoted toward rebuilding and broader civil rights advocacy. In 1948, it helped pass the Evacuation Claims Act to reimburse property losses from incarceration — an early step toward redress. In 1949, it lobbied for Issei naturalization, finally giving first-generation Japanese immigrants the right to become U.S. citizens. JACL also worked to repeal California’s Alien Land Law, which had barred immigrants from owning property.
By the 1960s, JACL was backing the Civil Rights Act and fighting housing and employment discrimination.
In the 1970s and 1980s, JACL became the institutional backbone of the redress movement. Leaders like John Tateishi spearheaded lobbying efforts that culminated in the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 — a formal apology and reparations for Japanese Americans.
Today, JACL remains the oldest and largest Asian American civil rights organization. It has championed causes from immigrant rights to LGBTQ+ equality to reparations for slavery.
But its legacy is complicated. The Hawaii chapter wasn’t established until 1980, reflecting the organization’s mainland roots and its historical exclusions. And it took more than five decades for JACL to formally apologize to the WWII draft resisters it had condemned — an apology finally delivered in 2002.
The story of JACL is not one of simple heroes or villains. It is a story of difficult choices made in impossible times.
The road to civil liberties has been a bumpy ride. Yet, nobody can deny what JACL has accomplished — or the debates it continues to spark about the meaning of loyalty, survival, and justice in America.