Michi Weglyn

Activist, fashion designer, writer

• Born: November 29, 1926
• Place of Birth: Stockton, California
• Died: April 25, 1999
• Place of Death: New York City, New York

In Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps (1976), Michi Weglyn provided an accurate history of the Japanese American internment and contributed to the movement for government reparations. Weglyn also had a successful career as a costume designer.

Birth name: Michi Nishiura

Areas of achievement: Activism, fashion

Early Life

Michi Nishiura Weglyn was born in Stockton, California, on November 29, 1926. Her parents, Tomojiro Nishiura and Misao Yuwasa Nishiura, were Japanese immigrants. She had one younger sister, Tomi. The family lived in Brentwood, California, and earned their living as tenant farmers raising fruits and vegetables. On December 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and life in the United States became very difficult for Japanese immigrants, including the Nishiuras. In 1942, Weglyn and her family were relocated from their home to an internment camp. They were taken to Arizona, first to the Turlock Assembly Center and then to the Gila River Relocation Center, where they lived for the next three years. At the camp, her parents did menial work; Weglyn and her sister went to school at Butte High School. Weglyn did well both academically and in her extracurricular activities.

As a result of the establishment of the National Japanese American Student Relocation Council (NJASRC) in May 1942, Weglyn was able to leave the internment camp and attend college. In 1944, she received a scholarship to Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, where she majored in biology. The following year she was forced to leave school when she was diagnosed with tuberculosis. After a period of treatment, she continued her education but did not return to Mount Holyoke. While a student at the college, she had designed a stage set and discovered that her real interest was in design, not biology. In 1947, she took classes at Barnard College in New York City, and then in 1948, she studied at the Fashion Academy of New York. In 1949, she was again treated for tuberculosis.

During her time as a student in New York City, she lived at the International House, a graduate student residential community for students from other countries. There she met Walter Matthys Weglyn (Weglein). Walter Weglyn had escaped from Nazi Germany to Holland as a child through the Kindertransport program, which saved many Jewish children by moving them through Holland out of Nazi-occupied Europe. After the war, he had moved to the United States, where he worked for a branch of a Dutch perfume company. On March 5, 1950, they were married.

Life’s Work

In 1952, Weglyn was hired to design costumes for an ice show presented on stage at New York’s Roxy Theatre. This job led to more opportunities in costume designing, including for additional ice shows at the theater and shows at nightclubs such as the famed Copacabana. In 1954, she broke into designing for television shows with a job as designer for the Kraft Television Theatre. From 1954 to 1956, she worked as a costume designer for various television programs, including actress and singer Dinah Shore’s variety show. In 1957, she accepted a costume designer position with The Perry Como Show, one of the biggest variety shows of its time. She held this position until the show moved to Los Angeles in 1966. In 1964, she had already entered another area of costume design with her own company, Michi Associates, Ltd., which manufactured and rented costumes.

By the early 1960s, Weglyn had become interested in researching and bringing to public attention the plight of Japanese Americans interned during World War II. Her husband, who as a German Jew had suffered from extreme ethnic discrimination during World War II, was instrumental in helping her with her research and in encouraging her to pursue her project. After seven years of intense research in the holdings of the New York Public Library, the Franklin Roosevelt Library, and the National Archives, Weglyn wrote Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America’sConcentration Camps, published in 1976.

The book was praised by members of Congress and the military, educators, journalists, and others for its well-documented account of the government program that deprived Japanese Americans of their rights as citizens. While researching her book, Weglyn met Edison Uno, president of the Japanese American Citizens League, and became a staunch activist for the redress movement—a push for a formal government apology and financial reparations for the internment episode. Up until her death in 1999, she continued to work for redress, which was granted starting in 1988. In 2009, she was honored with a celebration at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, where the Michi and Walter Weglyn Endowed Chair of Multicultural Studies was established in 1999. Her story has continued to be told by other authors and scholars of the internment program.

Significance

Michi Nishiura Weglyn played a significant role in American life both as a costume designer and as an author and activist. Her costume designs artistically enhanced performances on both stage and screen. Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps was and continues to be praised for its well-documented account of the Japanese internment program and as a significant contribution to US historiography. Her dedication to researching and presenting an accurate factual account of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II played a key role in achieving redress for Japanese Americans. Michi Weglyn’s book and her work for redress have made a significant contribution to the Japanese American community both in reparations awarded to those interned and as an affirmation of Japanese Americans as citizens who suffered racial discrimination and internment at the hands of their own government.

Bibliography

Mochizuki, Ken. Michi Challenges History: From Farm Girl to Costume Designer to Relentless Seeker of the Truth: The Life of Michi Nishiura Weglyn. W. W. Norton & Company, 2023.

Murray, Alice Yang. Historical Memories of the Japanese American Internment and the Struggle for Redress. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2008. Print.

---. What Did the Internment of Japanese Americans Mean? Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2000. Print.

Tateishi, John. Redress: The Inside Story of the Successful Campaign for Japanese American Reparations. Heyday, 2020.

Weglyn, Michi. Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps. 1976. Seattle: U of Washington P, 2003. Print.

Yamato, Sharon. "Michi Nishiura Weglyn." Densho Encyclopedia, 15 Dec. 2023, encyclopedia.densho.org/Michi‗Nishiura‗Weglyn. Accessed 21 Aug. 2024.