Jack Kaichiro Yasutake Papers

Jack Kaichiro Yasutake was born in Japan and emigrated to the United States in 1908. In 1918, Yasutake graduated from Stanford University and went back to Japan to find a suitable wife. He returned to the U.S. with his wife, Hide, and obtained a job as an interpreter for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service Bureau in Seattle, Washington.
Shortly after Pearl Harbor was attacked on December 7, 1941, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) detained Yasutake and held him in a Department of Justice Camp. His family, initially left in the dark regarding his whereabouts, was soon sent to the Minidoka Relocation Center when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed United States Executive Order 9066. This order led to the forced removal of individuals of Japanese descent from designated “military zones” located mostly along the West Coast.
Yasutake was held in several different Department of Justice camps until his family requested that his transfer to the detention facility in Crystal City, Texas so that he could live with his wife and youngest child. At that point, his oldest children had been released from internment so that they could continue their education. After several months of lobbying, Yasutake was reunited with his family in 1944. In July of 1944, Yasutake and his family members were released from internment and found work in a domestic setting.
In 1948, Jack was named Executive Director of the Chicago Resettlers Committee, now called the Japanese American Service Committee (JASC). In 1953, Yasutake became a naturalized United States citizen. Just a few weeks later, he passed away suddenly of brain hemorrhage at 62 years of age.

Source: Yasutake, Jack Kaichiro