Ralph Lazo

Ralph Lazo
Ralph Lazo in a group photo at Manzanar
Born	(1924-11-03)November 3, 1924
Died
Nationality	American
Alma mater	UCLA, Cal State Northridge
Occupation	Teacher, Soldier

Ralph Lazo (November 3, 1924 – January 1, 1992) was the only known non-spouse, non-Japanese American who voluntarily relocated to a World War II Japanese American internment camp. His experience was the subject of the 2004 narrative short film Stand Up for Justice: The Ralph Lazo Story.

Biography

Ralph Lazo, born in 1924 in Los Angeles, was of Mexican American and Irish American descent. As a Belmont High School student at age 17, he learned that his Japanese American friends and neighbors were being forcibly removed as part of the Japanese American Internment and incarcerated at Manzanar. Lazo was so outraged that he joined friends on a train that took hundreds to Manzanar in May 1942. Manzanar officials never asked him about his ancestry.

"Internment was immoral," Lazo told the Los Angeles Times. "It was wrong, and I couldn't accept it." "These people hadn't done anything that I hadn't done except to go to Japanese language school."

In 1944, Lazo was elected president of his class at Manzanar High School. He remained at Manzanar until August of that year, when he was inducted into the US Army. He served as a Staff Sergeant in the South Pacific until 1946, helping liberate the Philippines. Lazo was awarded the Bronze Star for heroism in combat. The film, Stand Up for Justice: The Ralph Lazo Story, documents his life story, particularly his stand against the incarceration.

After the war, Lazo returned to Los Angeles, where he graduated from UCLA and earned a master’s degree from Cal State Northridge. Lazo spent his career teaching, mentoring disabled students and encouraging Hispanics to attend college and vote. Lazo also helped raise funds for a class-action lawsuit to win reparations for Japanese-Americans interned during the war, which resulted in the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. This act offered an apology to interned Japanese Americans on behalf of the U.S. government and stated that the internment was based on “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.”

Lazo died in 1992 from liver cancer.