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Karl Gozo Yoneda ( ja, 米田 剛三, July 15, 1906 – May 8, 1999) was a Japanese American activist,
union
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organizer, World War II veteran and author. He played a substantial role in the founding of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) is a labor union which primarily represents dock workers on the West Coast of the United States, Hawaii, and in British Columbia, Canada. The union was established in 1937 after the 1934 West ...
.
Early life
Born in Glendale, California in 1906 toJapanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
immigrants, Hideo and Kazu. In 1913, Yoneda's father, now diagnosed with tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, i ...
, took the family to Japan to live in their native village just outside Hiroshima. His father died two years later, leaving his mother to raise him and his two sisters.
After World War I, Yoneda went to high school in Hiroshima. When he was 15, he organized a strike among the delivery boys of the powerful ''Chugoku Shimbun'' newspaper. The company had increased the delivery routes without increasing pay.
Such experiences led Yoneda to progressive ideas. He began reading the works of anarchists and socialists such as Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
, Engels
Friedrich Engels ( ,"Engels"
''
Karl G. Yoneda papers
1868-1969. .03 cubic foot. At th
Labor Archives of Washington , University of Washington Libraries Special Collections
{{DEFAULTSORT:Yoneda, Karl American military personnel of Japanese descent United States Army personnel of World War II Japanese-American civil rights activists Japanese-American internees American male journalists American journalists of Asian descent American writers of Japanese descent People from Glendale, California 1906 births 1999 deaths Members of the Communist Party USA Trade unionists from California International Longshore and Warehouse Union people 20th-century American writers Journalists from California 20th-century American journalists
''
Kropotkin
Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin (; russian: link=no, Пётр Алексе́евич Кропо́ткин ; 9 December 1842 – 8 February 1921) was a Russian anarchist, socialist, revolutionary, historian, scientist, philosopher, and activist ...
, Bakunin
Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin (; 1814–1876) was a Russian revolutionary anarchist, socialist and founder of collectivist anarchism. He is considered among the most influential figures of anarchism and a major founder of the revolutionary s ...
, and the blind anarchist poet Vasili Eroshenko, whom he hitch-hiked to meet in Beijing when he was 16 years old. He stayed with Eroshenko two months and went back to Japan. There, he participated in workers strikes and began publishing a journal for poor farmers, ''Tsuchi''. For that, he was beaten and thrown into jail.
Activist life in the U.S.
In 1926, Yoneda returned to the U.S. rather than be drafted into the imperial army. On entering the U.S., though he was an American citizen carrying his birth certificate, he was detained at the Immigration Detention House on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay for two months. He changed his name to Karl to honor Karl Marx and worked as a dish washer and window washer in Los Angeles for $5 a day. He became involved with the Communist Party and the Los Angeles Japanese Workers Association. About that period, he wrote:I was a young dreamer back then, you know, the utopian type. The Plaza was my very first experience with mass demonstrations. It was easy to go over there because you felt like you were with your own kind of people—no dressed-up people there, nobody was wearing neckties.When Japan invaded China in 1929, he returned to Japan to protest against the invasion. Marching with the most militant groups, he narrowly escaped being arrested and returned to the U.S. At a march in Los Angeles in 1931, the police "Red Squad" severely beat him and threw him in a jail cell. The chief called Elaine Black Yoneda, whom the police called the "Red Angel" for her work in helping strikers, rushed over, bailed him out, and took him to a hospital, saving his life. The couple soon fell in love. They could not get married, however, because of California's Anti-miscegenation laws. They borrowed money for a ticket to Seattle, where they were married in 1935. They participated in the largest demonstrations in the city's history. In 1933, after he spoke out against the tactics of the Red Squad before the L.A. City Council, the squad caught him in an elevator and gave him the worst beating of his life. During his three-month recovery, Elaine went to San Francisco to work for the International Labor Defense group. He was offered the job of editing the Japanese Communist publication ''Rodo Shimbun'' and moved to San Francisco to take it. In May, 1934, they helped organize and participate in a longshoremen's strike in San Francisco. The bosses and police, determined to stop the strike, opened fire on the strikers, killing two and wounding several others. In 1938, Karl went to Washington State to help organize Alaska cannery workers.
World War II and after
In 1942, Karl, Elaine, and son Tom were unjustly incarcerated atManzanar
Manzanar is the site of one of ten American concentration camps, where more than 120,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated during World War II from March 1942 to November 1945. Although it had over 10,000 inmates at its peak, it was one ...
following the signing of Executive Order 9066. Karl registered for the draft and joined the army in November. He served in the United States Military Intelligence Service
The Military Intelligence Service ( ja, アメリカ陸軍情報部, ''America Rikugun Jōhōbu'') was a World War II U.S. military unit consisting of two branches, the Japanese American unit (described here) and the German-Austrian unit based ...
as a Japanese language specialist in China, Burma and India. He served valiantly and was decorated several times.
After the war, Elaine and Karl continued to work throughout their lives for the unions and anti-war efforts. His mother had survived the atom bomb. In 1960, they visited her on the occasion of attending a peace conference in Tokyo.
After he retired in 1972, he continued to organize and work for human rights. He lectured, wrote articles and an autobiography,. and kept his membership in the Communist Party. His wife died in 1988, and he died on May 8, 1999.
See also
* Japanese resistance to the Empire of Japan (1937–1945) *Koji Ariyoshi
(1914–1976) was a Nisei labor activist and a Sergeant in the United States Army during the Second World War.
Early life
Ariyoshi was born in Hawaii in 1914 to Japanese immigrant parents. Ariyoshi grew up helping his family make a living on a ...
* Elaine Black Yoneda
References
External links
Karl G. Yoneda papers
1868-1969. .03 cubic foot. At th
Labor Archives of Washington , University of Washington Libraries Special Collections
{{DEFAULTSORT:Yoneda, Karl American military personnel of Japanese descent United States Army personnel of World War II Japanese-American civil rights activists Japanese-American internees American male journalists American journalists of Asian descent American writers of Japanese descent People from Glendale, California 1906 births 1999 deaths Members of the Communist Party USA Trade unionists from California International Longshore and Warehouse Union people 20th-century American writers Journalists from California 20th-century American journalists