One of Worland’s war babies, knighted by Japan for his role in helping procure reparations for Japanese American families interned during World War II, has died.
Grant Ujifusa, 82, died Nov. 6 in the hospital of his retirement community of pulmonary fibrosis. Ujifusa was an active member of the Worland High School Class of 1960, and was a participant in a recent oral history project, The War Babies of Worland.
He played a behind-the-scenes role in getting then-President Ronald Reagan to reverse course on vetoing legislation that would provide both an apology and $20,000 to each survivor of World War II-era American internment camps for people of Japanese heritage.
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, like the one at Heart Mountain, Wyoming.
Growing up, Ujifusa was familiar with the camps and the plight of those put there earned a special place in his heart.
The story of Ujifusa’s role in changing Reagan’s mind isn’t one that’s been widely told in Wyoming, but is something that Ujifusa was very proud of, said his eldest son, Steven Ujifusa.
“Dad had an extremely fine understanding of the political process and how it worked,” Steven told Cowboy State Daily on Monday. “And it was both through the ‘Almanac for American Politics’ and also his work as a book editor that got him political access to understand how this could be done.”
The almanac was the first publication to record the voting records of every congressman and senator in every congressional district back in 1972. Doing that work over the years gave Grant an inside track with legislators across America. Everyone knew of the almanac.
In fact, it was so immensely popular, people had their own nickname for it — the Bible of American Politics.
The almanac “gave me access to anybody I wanted in Washington,” Ujifusa said in 2022, during his oral history interview for The War Babies of Worland project.
Uphill Battle
Japanese Americans had been lobbying for redress for Japanese Americans forced into internment camps during World War II starting in 1976, without much success. Ujifusa knew from the moment he was tapped to become involved that he faced an enormous uphill battle.
“The odds looked very long, but I was in it to win,” he said. “One of the deficiencies, I think, of Japanese culture is a tendency to place too much emphasis on what others might think, and (the culture) is therefore very risk averse.”
But Ujifusa learned all about the in-it-to-win-it mentality when he was playing on the football field of Worland High as the star quarterback, leading the Warriors to a championship victory in 1959. He later credited his football coaches for teaching him all about having a winning attitude in life, and he applied those lessons in this new field of battle, winning redress for his compatriots.
“Most Japanese Americans lived on the West Coast. A lot of the activity was on the West Coast, but you needed the support of 218 members of the House — a majority in that body — from all over the country,” Ujifusa said. “And we initially thought 60 senators — a filibuster-proof majority — from all over the country could make it happen.”
Up until then, Ujifusa had always been politically neutral when he went about compiling his almanac. But he was in this one to win, and he was not above holding the unspoken threat of a bad review in his by-now popular Bible of American Politics over the heads of congressmen and senators who he hoped to persuade to vote for redress.
Gaining their votes ultimately wasn’t the biggest hurdle that reparations for Japanese Americans faced. The biggest obstacle was Reagan, who had for two years vowed to veto the bill if it ever landed on his desk.
Changed Reagan’s Mind
Ujifusa had heard a story about Reagan that he believed could be key in changing the president’s mind. The story involved Kaz Masuda, a soldier in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team who was killed in action on the banks of the Arno River in Italy. The 442ndwas a segregated unit mostly made up of Japanese American soldiers.
After the war, Masuda was to be awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.
“He had said to 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 the War Babies of Worland. “When his sister made a trip from an internment camp to Fountain Valley to make arrangements for her bother, the town fathers said, ‘We don’t bury Japs in our cemetery.’”
When famous American Army Gen. Joseph Warren “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell heard what the town fathers had said, he confronted them and got them to 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 stayed in their family’s hands. He made a very big deal of this presentation of the Distinguished Service Cross. And one of the persons invited to make remarks at the farmhouse ceremony was a 26-year-old movie star named Ronald Reagan.”
Reagan had some very powerful words to say during the ceremony.
“The blood that has soaked into the sand is all one color,” he said. “America stands unique in the world, the only country not founded on race, but on a way, an ideal. Not in spite of, but because of our polyglot background, we have had all the strength in the world. That is the American way.
“Mr. and Mrs. Masuda, just as one member of the family of Americans speaking to another member, I want to say for what your son Kazuo did — thank you.”
Ujifusa believed reminding Reagan of these words was the key to changing the president’s mind about redress and getting his signature.
“We got Kay’s sister to write a letter to the president about his speaking at the farmhouse ceremony for Kaz, and I wrote a letter saying redress was supported by middle-class Japanese Americans and by veterans of the 442,” Grant said. “By utter coincidence, I was then working on a book with Tom Kean, the Republican governor of New Jersey. Tom lobbied Reagan personally when Reagan came up to campaign for Republican state legislators in the fall of 1987.”
Kean ensured that both letters, as well as one he wrote himself, got to Reagan.
“And Reagan’s response: ‘I remember that ceremony at the farmhouse, and I’m changing my mind on this and overruling 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 have to say than winning the state championship in Douglas in 1959.”
Worland Remained Home
Steven Ujifusa, who has heard the story many times growing up, said Worland was always a place his father treasured and that he credited for his success in life.
“He had 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 from that time, and something he never forgot. In fact, one of his classmates tells a story about that jacket and how Grant made a special trip back inside to get the jacket to wear during a classmate’s visit.
The jacket wasn’t the only Worland memorabilia Ujifusa kept throughout his long life.
“He always had his Worland Warriors blanket that even when he was very sick, he was always wearing it on the couch as he was resting,” Steven said. “I think there was just this real sense of home from there.”
Steven remembers that his family continued to get the Worland newspaper as he was growing up, even though they had moved to New York.
“Our family always felt rooted there,” he said. “Even though we’re here in New York, Worland is still the center of the universe for us. (My father) will always be a Worland boy, in addition to being a New Yorker and a Harvard man. Those (Worland days) 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.”
At long last, Grant is coming home to Worland, a place he has eternally loved.
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
