George Yuzawa

A LIFE: GEORGE YUZAWA, 1915-2011

George Yuzawa's social activism was rooted in a shameful chapter in U.S. history.

Months after Japan's bombing of Pearl Harbor, Mr. Yuzawa and his wife, Kimiko  both Nisei, or American-born offspring of Japanese immigrants  were sent to a Colorado internment camp, along with their families. They were among the 120,000 West Coast residents of Japanese descent, the majority born in the United States, incarcerated in World War II by order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The Yuzawas lost their Los Angeles home and the flower business that George, who was named after George Washington, ran with his father.

"I was born in this country, an American citizen, educated here with a thriving business," the longtime Dumont resident told The Record in 1981.

"I never thought about being evacuated & never. Then, suddenly, we were prisoners.

"We were put in these wooden structures with tar paper on the roof. My wife and I had a space maybe 8 feet wide and 20 feet long, which we curtained off with blankets. & And the latrines would run over and flood the camp all the time. The stench and the sickness.&"

Mr. Yuzawa's ticket out of the Amache Japanese Internment Camp came in September 1943 with the promise of a job at a New York flower shop. Once settled, he arranged for his wife and their families to join him. At 29, he volunteered to join the Army  an act showing he was a "true American," his daughter, Pat Yuzawa-Rubin said. He was with a military intelligence unit stationed in Tokyo.

After his discharge in 1946, Mr. Yuzawa rebuilt his life. He operated an import and export business before resuming his former livelihood as proprietor of a shop his father had started, Park Central Florist on Manhattan's Upper West Side. The Yuzawas started a family and, in the late '50s, settled in suburban Dumont.

Mr. Yuzawa became involved in causes combating racial discrimination against Asians. He helped lead the successful 1971-72 backlash against Kenzocq, a Japanese-born designer of French fashions, who printed the derogatory word "JAP" on clothing labels. Soon after, he targeted the International Ladies Garment Workers Union over a "Buy American" campaign that included subway posters asking, "Has your job been exported to Japan yet?"

Those efforts prompted Mr. Yuzawa and other Nisei to organize Asian Americans for Fair Media, which monitored print and broadcast media for racial slurs and negative Asian stereotypes.

No time to be bitter

Revisiting the difficult time his family spent in Amache, Mr. Yuzawa helped organize federal hearings that paved the way for the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which granted $20,000 to every living Japanese-American interned during the war. Mr. Yuzawa received his reparations check with a letter of apology signed by President Bill Clinton.cq

Gary Moriwaki, president of the Japanese American Association of New York, a community service group in which Mr. Yuzawa was long active, said Mr. Yuzawa was a "walking history book."

"His generation went through amazing ups and downs, but George persevered, and I never saw him bitter," Moriwaki said.

"My father was a man of peace," Yuzawa-Rubin said. "You could imagine how angry he could have been, but he wasn't. That wasn't his thing, and that's why people loved him."

Mr. Yuzawa spent a good part of his retirement helping elderly Japanese in New York.

"Here he was, 90 years old, delivering food to the elderly," Moriwaki said. "I'd say, 'George, what are you doing?' And he'd say, 'I'm helping old people!' He inspired others to be like him."

For years, Mr. Yuzawa enjoyed downhill skiing, and he swore by what he called the "three G's"  gingko, garlic and ginseng supplements. Those habits and his serene nature saw him into his 97th year.

George Yuzawa died Oct. 8.

E-mail: levin@northjersey.com