By Randall Yip, Executive Editor

The Takeaways

• Conflict within JACL leadership: An open letter supporting an Arizona bill to mandate Asian American Studies, signed by five former presidents of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), has caused friction with current leadership, which refuses to support the bill due to the sponsors’ positions against diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI), and transgender rights.
• Concerns over historical accuracy and allyship: JACL Executive Director David Inoue and Arizona chapter leaders fear the curriculum could be politically manipulated or sanitized, with no clear development process and exclusion of key historical contexts like Japanese American incarceration during WWII.
• Pushback and misrepresentation: The letter was organized by Floyd Mori and submitted by the group Make Us Visible. It misidentified Jeffrey Moy as the current JACL president, further deepening tensions. While the national JACL isn’t actively opposing the bill, the Arizona chapter has taken a firm stand against it.

The Details

The executive director of the Japanese American Citizen League is speaking out about an open letter signed by five past presidents that puts the two sides at odds.

The letter published in AsAmNews last week supports a bill mandating the teaching of Asian American Studies, a bill that the national organization refuses to support because of positions its sponsors have taken against diversity, equity and inclusion and transgender rights.

“I just can’t see how we can be advocating for Asian American education when many of these same legislators are also pushing to further marginalize the transgender community and are speaking out very actively against diversity, equity, and inclusion,” said David Inoue, executive director of JACL to AsAmNews.

While the national organization refuses to support the bill, it is not actively opposing it. That mantle has been taken by the Arizona chapter of JACL.

“They don’t indicate how the curriculum would be developed, and we do very much fear under the current climate that it would be like a whitewash history of Asian Americans,” said Donna Cheung, the civil rights committee chair and past president of the Arizona chapter.

Chapter president Bill Staples Jr. pointed to the recent Trump-inspired deletion of any mention of the 442nd Infantry Battalion from the U.S. Army website only to be reinstated following a backlash.

Staples says any mention of the incarceration of Japanese Americans during that same period remains omitted.

“So now it’s just about the Japanese American unit. There’s no context on why it was an all-Japanese American unit,” said Staples.

The open letter was submitted to AsAmNews on behalf of the 5 past president by Make Us Visible, a national organization committed to lobbying for the teaching of Asian American Studies in k-12.

The letter was signed by

• Floyd S. Mori, National President 2000-2004
• Kenneth Inouye, National President 2004-2006
• David Kawamoto, National President 2010-2012
• Gary Mayeda, National President 2016-2018
• Jeffrey Moy, National President 2018-2022

The letter incorrectly listed Moy as the current president. Inoue says Larry Oda succeeded Moy as president in May 2022 and has been president ever since. Oda did not sign the letter and tells AsAmNews he does not support the bill

The letter was organized by Mori who assisted in writing the letter and currently serves as an adviser to Make Us Visible. He said he does not know how or why Moy was listed incorrectly as the current JACL president in the letter submitted to AsAmNews. What’s important to him is that Asian Americans are included in the teaching of American history.

“This is not a new issue for me,” said Mori to AsAmNews. “I’ve been involved with the issue of Asian studies or Asian history being included in curriculums throughout the country.”

He dismisses concerns that the bill will lead to an incorrect or incomplete telling of Asian American history.

“Why do we judge before anything has happened,” Mori asked.

“As a leader, when I have young people, I always tell them to find friends and people that they can work with on the other side of the political aisle because there comes a time that something positive will happen with people working together rather than fighting with one another,” he said.

Inoue remains unmoved.

“That is not true allyship if they are choosing to support the Asian American community, but at the same time, attacking other communities through other policy,” Inoue said about the bill’s authors.

SB1301 recently passed the Arizona State Senate 17-12 and the House Education Committee 7-4.

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