Togo Tanaka

Togo W. Tanaka (January 7, 1916 – May 21, 2009) was an American newspaper journalist and editor who reported on the difficult conditions in the Manzanar internment camp, where he was one of 110,000 Japanese Americans who had been relocated after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

Tanaka was born on January 7, 1916, in Portland, Oregon, the fifth of his Issei parents' six children. He grew up in Los Angeles, where his parents operated a vegetable market, and graduated there from Hollywood High School at age 16. He enrolled at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he wrote for the Daily Bruin and a local Japanese-language newspaper, graduating in 1936 with a bachelor's degree in political science.

He was hired by the Japanese American newspaper Rafu Shimpo while he was still in college, where he edited the paper's English language content, writing editorials encouraging Nisei, those born in the United States to Japanese immigrant parents, to be loyal Americans. During this time, he also joined the Japanese American Citizens League, taking a position at the national level in charge of publicity. In an October 1941 trip to Washington, D.C. arranged by the newspaper's publisher, H. T. Komai, Tanaka tried to ensure that the paper would be able to continue publishing in the event that hostilities broke out with Japan, meeting with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Attorney General Francis Biddle. However, his presence was met with suspicion from War Department officials, who interrogated him and challenged his allegiance to his home country.

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