An American-born child of Japanese parents, Masoka, now in his 70s, is a Nisei, and, hence, he shared the trauma of Nisei herded into detention camps when anti-Japanese hysteria overtook the U.S. in the wake of Pearl Harbor. His autobiography, written with Hosokawa, author of JACL in Quest of Justice, is absorbing and valuable for its depiction of his role as spokesman in Washington for the JACL (Japanese American Citizens' League) throughout World War II and virtually up to the present. Masaoka, who grew up in Utah, was a university student in Salt Lake City when Pearl Harbor led to the shameful treatment of the Nisei. His intense reaction, he writes, grew out of a deep patriotic conviction that America was betraying its democratic principlesand here his story most dramatically describes how he led the struggle culminating in a Nisei combat unit fighting the Nazis in Italy in 1944, himself seeing action. Masaoka is now a Washington lobbyist, and his efforts on behalf of the JACL to drive racism out of U.S. immigration laws are widely acknowledged.
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