On this day, 3 July 1942, Japanese-American longshoreman and union activist Karl Yoneda was photographed in the Manzanar concentration camp in California by Dorothea Lange.
Yoneda was born in the US in 1906, and was sent to Japan for schooling, where he became politically active as a child, participating in a school students’ strike and a newspaper boys’ strike in 1921.
He then hitchhiked to Beijing searching for a Russian anarchist, Vasily Eroshenko, whose writings he had read, and stayed with him for two months. Upon his return to Japan, instead of going back to school, he began work, and got involved in the workers’ movement, taking part in strikes.
In order to avoid being drafted into the Japanese army, Yoneda returned to the US. There he joined the Communist Party (CP) in 1927, and got involved in organising agricultural workers, and supporting migrant workers and Black civil rights struggles. He also organised protests against Japanese imperialism and fascism, and against Japan’s invasion of China.
However, despite his track record of opposition to capitalist Japan, he was suspended from the CP, along with all other members of Japanese descent, after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Yoneda criticised the move as "racist" and "anti-working class", but rather than protest, he attempted to join the US military. This was rejected, and instead he was interned with other Japanese Americans in a concentration camp.
Yoneda was later allowed to join the US Military Information Service, after which he was sent to Myanmar, tasked with creating propaganda encouraging Japanese soldiers to surrender.
After the war, Yoneda resumed his activism with the CP, and pushed for the party to overturn its exclusion of Japanese members. He also returned to work on the docks, as a member of the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union.after his retirement, he continued to be active in the workers' movement, joining picket lines and protests until his death in 1999.
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/14646/karl-yoneda-photographed
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