Campaign for Justice: Redress NOW for Japanese Latin Americans! (CFJ) is a grassroots community advocacy and educational organization established to secure proper redress for the Japanese Latin Americans who endured war crimes and crimes against humanity under the U.S. WWII Latin American rendition program.

Campaign for Justice was founded in 1996 as a collaborative effort by former Japanese Latin American internees and their families; organizations including the Japanese Peruvian Oral History Project, Nikkei for Civil Rights & Redress (formerly known as the National Coalition for Redress & Reparations) and American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California; and individuals in the U.S. and other countries.

Campaign for Justice has three primary goals:

  • First, we seek to secure proper redress for former Japanese Latin American internees.
  • Second, we want this hidden history to be widely known to prevent such reoccurrence, so we work to educate the public about the wartime and redress experiences of the Japanese Latin American internees.
  • Third, we want a world free of such civil and human rights violations perpetrated under the WWII Latin American rendition program, so we work in solidarity with other social justice struggles to draw lessons from our histories and apply them to the challenges we face today.

We are a group of people who believe in justice and righting wrongs.  We believe that grievous crimes against humanity committed by government must be acknowledged and indemnified.  Receiving proper apology and redress is imperative, as public acknowledgement and accountability of such egregious governmental abuse should act as a deterrent to future recurrence.

We believe it was wrong for the U.S. government to abduct civilians of Japanese ancestry from their homes in Latin America, forcibly deport them to the United States, and imprison them in Department of Justice internment camps for the purpose of hostage exchange.  The U.S. government’s human rights violations were done with such secrecy, that few people know about this dark chapter of WWII history.  Most people are appalled when first learning of these events and want to know what they can do to help right these wrongs.

We invite you to join us in our endeavor.