The Japanese American community lost one of its giants on November 12, 2010, when William Hohri, the lead plaintiff in Hohri v. United States, the class action lawsuit filed by the National Coalition for Japanese American Redress (NCJAR), passed away at the age of 83.
Hohri, who was one of the 11,070 Americans of Japanese ancestry who were unjustly imprisoned at Manzanar during World War II, was a driving force behind NCJAR’s lawsuit that sought $27 billion in damages from the United States Government for injuries suffered as a result of the forced relocation and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.
The Manzanar Committee joins the rest of our community in mourning the loss of one of its leaders, and expresses its deepest sympathies to his wife, Yuriko, and his family.
For more, our good friend Martha Nakagawa wrote a comprehensive story/obituary for the Rafu Shimpo, which we urge you to read: Hohri, 83; Lead Plaintiff in Internees’ Lawsuit Against Government.
The Manzanar National Historic Site also has Hohri’s story of his life at Manzanar documented in their “ID Booklet” series, which features over sixty individual biographies, most written by the former prisoners or their families.
Click here to Download Hohri’s ID Booklet (requires Adobe Reader software).
The Manzanar Committee’s Official web site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. You may copy, distribute and/or transmit any story or audio content published on this site under the terms of this license, but only if proper attribution is indicated. The full name of the author and a link back to the original article on this site are required. Photographs, graphic images, and other content not specified are subject to additional restrictions. Additional information is available at: Manzanar Committee Official web site – Licensing and Copyright Information.
Manzanar Committee Comment Policies
Manzanar Committee 