A leader in the national redress movement for Japanese Americans and one of the first women to hold a leadership position in the JACL has died at the age of 94, reports Philly.com.
Grace Uyehara served as national director of the Legislative Education Committee, the Japanese American Citizen’s League’s lobbying arm. She was a retired social worker from the Philadelphia area.
“She just kind of thought it was something to be done, and she did it,” her son Paul Uyehara said. “She was little, and feisty, and smart in everything.”
Late last year she received the Standing Up for Justice Award from Asian Americans United (AAU), a Philadelphia advocacy group.
“She was not a standard public figure,” said Ed Nakawatase of AAU. “She didn’t run for office, didn’t lead marches. She was a very effective person, very focused, and very much to the point in terms of pushing on how to get the [redress] legislation through.”
She spent the World War II years a prisoner at the camp in Rohwer, Ark. She died Sunday in the hospital.
