One of Worland’s war babies, knighted by Japan for his role in securing reparations for Japanese American families interned during World War II, has died.

Grant Ujifusa, 82, died Nov. 6 at his retirement community hospital of pulmonary fibrosis. Ujifusa was an active member of the Worland High School class of 1960 and participated in a recent oral history project, Worland’s War Babies.

He played a behind-the-scenes role in getting then-President Ronald Reagan to reverse his veto of legislation that would provide both an apology and $20,000 to every survivor of America’s WWII internment camps. World War for people of Japanese descent.

The people sent to the camps lost everything during World War II. They were uprooted from their homes and sent to Japanese internment camps across the country, such as Heart Mountain in Wyoming.

Growing up, Ujifusa knew about the camps and the fate of those placed there earned him a special place in his heart.

The story of Ujifusa’s role in changing Reagan’s mind is not a story that has been widely told in Wyoming, but it is something Ujifusa was very proud of, said his eldest son, Steven Ujifusa.

“Dad had a really good understanding of the political process and how it worked,” Steven told Cowboy State Daily on Monday. “And it was both through the Almanac of American Politics and his work as a book editor that gave him access to politics and understanding how it could be done.”

The almanac was the first publication to record the votes of every congressman and senator in every congressional district in 1972. Doing this work over the years gave Grant a special route to lawmakers across America. Everyone knew the almanac.

In fact, it was so popular that people gave it their own nickname: the Bible of American politics.

The almanac “gave me access to whoever I wanted in Washington,” Ujifusa said in 2022, during his term. oral history interview for The War Babies of Worland project.

Uphill battle

Japanese Americans had lobbied for redress for Japanese Americans forced into internment camps during World War II beginning in 1976, without much success. Ujifusa knew from the moment he was asked to get involved that he faced a huge uphill battle.

“The odds seemed very high, but I was there to win,” he said. “I think one of the shortcomings of Japanese culture is its tendency to place too much importance on what other people might think, and so (the culture) is very reluctant to take risks.”

But Ujifusa learned all about the mentality of wanting to win when he played on the football field at Worland High as a star quarterback, leading the Warriors to a championship victory in 1959. He later credited his football coaches for taught him to have a winning attitude in life, and he applied these lessons to this new battlefield, achieving redress for his countrymen.

“Most Japanese Americans lived on the West Coast. Much of the activity was on the West Coast, but it required the support of 218 House members – a majority in this body – from across the country,” Ujifusa said. “And we initially thought that 60 senators – a filibuster-proof majority – from across the country could achieve this. »

Until then, Ujifusa had always been politically neutral when writing his almanac. But he was there to win, and he didn’t hesitate to wave the tacit threat of a bad review of his now-popular Bible of American politics over the heads of the congressmen and senators he hoped to persuade. to vote for reparation.

Winning their votes ultimately was not the biggest obstacle that reparations for Japanese Americans faced. The biggest obstacle was Reagan, who had vowed for two years to veto the bill if it ever reached his desk.

I changed Reagan’s mind

Ujifusa had heard a story about Reagan that he thought could play a key role in changing the president’s mind. The story involved Kaz Masuda, a soldier with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team who was killed in action on the banks of the Arno River in Italy. The 442^sdwas a segregated unit composed primarily of Japanese American soldiers.

After the war, Masuda was to receive the Distinguished Service Cross.

“He had told his sister that if anything happened to him, he wanted to be buried in his hometown cemetery in Fountain Valley, California,” Ujifusa recalled in his oral history for War Babies of Worland. “When his sister made a trip from an internment camp to Fountain Valley to make arrangements for her brother, the city fathers said, ‘We don’t bury Japanese in our cemetery.'”

When famous U.S. Army General Joseph Warren “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell heard what the city fathers had said, he confronted them and made them back down.

“The general said he was going to have two ceremonies, one at the Hollywood Bowl and one at the Masuda farm, which somehow remained in the hands of their family. He talked a lot about this presentation of the Distinguished Service Cross. And one of the people invited to make remarks at the ceremony at the farm was a 26-year-old movie star named Ronald Reagan.

Reagan had some very powerful words to say during the ceremony.

“The blood that seeped into the sand is one color,” he said. “America is unique in the world, the only country not based on race, but on a certain way, an ideal. Not despite, but thanks to our polyglot origin, we had all the strength in the world. It’s the American way.

“Mr. and Mrs. Masuda, just like one member of the American family speaking to another member, I want to say for what your son Kazuo has done – thank you.

Ujifusa believed that reminding Reagan of these words was the key to changing the president’s mind on reparation and getting his signature.

“We asked Kay’s sister to write a letter to the president about her speech at the ceremony at the farm honoring Kaz, and I wrote a letter saying that the reparation was supported by the middle-class Japanese Americans and by veterans of the 442,” Grant said. “Coincidentally, I was working on a book at the time with Tom Kean, the Republican governor of New Jersey. Tom personally lobbied Reagan when Reagan came to campaign for Republican state legislators in the fall of 1987.”

Kean ensured that both letters, as well as the one he had written himself, reached Reagan.

“And Reagan’s response: ‘I remember that ceremony at the farm, and I’m changing my mind about it and ignoring Ed Meese.'” Grant recalled. “And so we got a signature after two or three years of public opposition from the Reagan administration. It was a profound experience for me, even more memorable I must say than winning the state championship at Douglas in 1959.”

Worland stayed at home

Steven Ujifusa, who heard the story many times growing up, said Worland was always a place his father cherished and attributed to his success in life.

“There was a wonderful community there,” he said. “His family had deep roots there. He was always proud to be from Wyoming.

Playing quarterback for Worland High was one of Grant’s biggest highlights during that time, and something he never forgot. In fact, one of his classmates tells a story about this jacket and how Grant made a special trip inside to get the jacket to wear when a classmate visited.

The jacket wasn’t the only memento of Worland that Ujifusa kept throughout his long life.

“He always had his Worland Warriors blanket and even when he was very sick, he always wore it on the couch while he rested,” Steven said. “I think there was just this real feeling of home from there.”

Steven remembers that his family continued to receive the Worland newspaper while he was growing up, even though they had moved to New York.

“Our family has always felt rooted there,” he said. “Even though we are here in New York, Worland remains the center of the universe for us. (My father) will always be a Worland boy, as well as being a New Yorker and a Harvard man. These (Worland eras) were the formative years of his life.

Growing up in Worland taught him “the importance of family and community,” his son added. “So there’s a family plot there, and we’re going to bury his ashes there.”

Grant finally returns home to Worland, a place he has always loved.

Renee Jean can be reached at [email protected].