James Y. Sakamoto

Activist and journalist

  • Pronunciation: yoh-shee-NOH-ree sah-kah-MOH-toh
  • Born: 1903
  • Birthplace: Seattle, Washington
  • Died: December 3, 1955
  • Place of death: Seattle, Washington

A journalist and proponent of cooperation between Japanese and non-Japanese Americans, Sakamoto edited the first English-language newspaper for the Japanese community in the United States, the Japanese American Courier. He also helped found the Japanese American Citizens League and served as president of the organization from 1936 to 1938.

Areas of achievement: Activism, journalism

Early Life

James Yoshinori Sakamoto was born in Seattle, Washington, to Osamu and Tsuchi Sakamoto, Japanese immigrants who had settled in Washington late in the nineteenth century. Sakamoto attended Franklin High School, where he excelled at sports, particularly football, baseball, and boxing. In 1921, he cofounded the Seattle Progressive Citizens League, a forerunner of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), which he helped to found in 1929. During the 1920s, Sakamoto took college courses, worked as an English editor for a Japanese newspaper, and also began a career in professional boxing. Injuries sustained while boxing left him nearly blind, and he returned to Seattle in 1927. In 1928, he married Misao Nishitani.

Life’s Work

Sakamoto began publishing the Japanese American Courier in Seattle in 1928, at times writing editorials for the paper under the pen name Jay Esse. The newspaper, the first in the United States to be written entirely in English for a Japanese audience, encouraged nisei, or second-generation Japanese Americans, to become fully Americanized. In addition to disseminating news and other information, the Courier sponsored sports teams as a form of community outreach. Though the newspaper was never a profitable venture, particularly during the Great Depression, it continued to be published until 1942. In 1936, Sakamoto also became the second president of the JACL, a position he held until 1938.

Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Japanese Americans living on the West Coast of the United States, Sakamoto among them, were relocated to internment camps. In February of 1942, Sakamoto appeared before the Tolan Commission to protest this relocation; however, he agreed to cooperate with the government, and the JACL worked to ease the transition for the Japanese American community. While at an assembly center in Puyallup, Washington, Sakamoto was appointed chief supervisor of the internees there. Sakamoto and his family were later sent to the Minidoka camp in Idaho and remained there until 1945. After the end of World War II, Sakamoto returned to Seattle, where he lived and worked until his death.

Significance

Through his efforts as a journalist and activist, Sakamoto worked to break down racial barriers and build connections between Japanese Americans and other groups. Due in part to the continued efforts of the JACL, in 1988, President Ronald Reagan authorized the payment of financial compensation to Japanese Americans interned during World War II and issued a formal apology for the event.

Bibliography

Hosokawa, Bill. JACL in Quest of Justice: The History of the Japanese American Citizens League. New York: Morrow, 1982. Print. Chronicles the history of the JACL, paying special attention to its attempts at obtaining redress for those interned during World War II.

---. Nisei: The Quiet Americans. Rev. ed. Niwot: UP of Colorado, 2002. Print. Highlights contributions of second-generation Japanese Americans such as Sakamoto to the development of the Western United States and details their experiences in the internment camps.

Ichioka, Yuji. “A Study in Dualism: James Yoshinori Sakamoto and the Japanese American Courier, 1928–1942.” Before Internment: Essays in Prewar Japanese American History. Ed. Gordon H. Chang and Eiichiro Azuma. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2006. Print. Includes a brief biography of Sakamoto, along with a discussion of the dual emphasis of the Japanese American Courier on both Americanism and cooperation between cultures.