I would be happy to discuss any corrections you might have for the above post. There is always a certain degree of speculation when trying to reconstruct the past–this occurs because historians only do the best they can with the sources they have available to them. Please let me know where you think I went wrong, and thank you for visiting the blog. I think your uncle is an important historical figure and will probably always be a person whose legacy is up for discussion. I am trying to understand Masaoka in as unbiased a way as I can.

Didn’t know if you had seen it — wanted to call it to your attention.

I am a MA candidate in American Studies of University of Hawaii. I am going to write a thesis about Masaoka. But I am having a hard time to clarify the influence of the Mormon on Masaoka’s Americanization. I believe that you can give me some useful suggestions about it. Will you contact me at akirah@hawaii.edu or akiraaloha@aol.com. Thank you very much.

Akira

Masaoka first presents the title of Moses as coming from a term that his critics have used to disparage his complicity during the internment. He says that they accuse him of willfully leading his people into the camps. He rhetorically shifts the meaning of the term to highlight his own accomplishments–especially his lobbying efforts to grant Japanese immigrants citizenship and to overturn racial restriction on immigration.

I haven’t seen anyone else reference Masaoka as “Moses” so I think that its use by critics might really be a straw man–though he has come under great criticism. The most recent criticism occurred when Japanese Americans debated whether his words should be included on a national monument to Japanese American soldiers during WWII.

The book is fascinating in one sense because Masaoka is quite aware of the historiography revolving around his legacy. They Call Me Moses at one level is Masaoka’s engagement with historical criticisms using the authority of first-hand experience as his greatest weapon against revision.

As far as Mormon identity, I think Masaoka definitely felt a connection to the Mormon people. For him to claim Mormon identity in 1987 in an exercise of self-reflection proves to me that he still felt some kind of connection to the Mormons in Utah.That being said, I cannot find much evidence of activity in the church in his more mature life. After the war, Masaoka became a powerful Washington lobbyist–first working for the JACL and later for international Japanese companies. The only reference to later Mormonism that he makes within his autobiography is when he uses it as an excuse not to drink alcohol at Washington receptions.The only obviously LDS material in his papers at the U of U is an old MIA manual–that doesn’t mean he didn’t have any, it just means either he or the archivist didn’t find those materials important, or they are filed in some strange part of the collection.

Both of Masaoka’s adopted children died young and under mysterious circumstances, but he never talks about the role that Mormonism played in their lives either. My impression is that he was never very active in the church after he grew up which would correlate with his very limited mention of the church in his adult life. I really don’t have any evidence for this conclusion accept for a lack of documentation in his writings. If someone knows more, please let me know. Most of the people that remembered him, remembered him for his political and humanitarian work and not his religious fervor. It may be that Mormonism allowed him one conduit for expressing American identity, and that its utility diminished after the war, but I don’t know if I am cynical enough to believe that. Many other Japanese Americans remained very faithful to the church. In fact they had a Japanese language unit in Salt Lake City for a long time.Jessie Embry has written some on those congregations.

Nevertheless, Masaoka found his Mormon identity to be such an important point that he named one of his chapters “Moses in Mormonland.” I think his life presents a powerful example of the persistence of Mormon identity even if activity drifts away. He died in 1991 in Washington D.C. and was buried near his extended family in a California cemetery.

I actually think that someday I would like to do some work on Masaoka’s later life–especially his connections with Japanese corporations.