Edison Uno

Who was Edison Uno?

Edison Uno was a Japanese American civil rights advocate, best known for opposing laws used to implement the mass detention of Japanese Americans during World War II and for his role in the early stages of the movement for redress after the war.

Uno was born in 1929 in Los Angeles, California. In 1942, Uno was interned with his parents and siblings at the Granada War Relocation Center in Colorado. Not long after, he was transferred to the Crystal City Internment Camp in Texas, where he remained for the duration of World War II.

Following the war, Uno graduated from Los Angeles State College with a degree in political science. He later became involved in academia, teaching at the University of California, San Francisco, and various civil rights issues. Uno was active in grand jury reform, as well as in such civil rights issues as the Wendy Yoshimura Defense Fund, Title II Repeal, Redress for Evacuation, and the Japanese American Citizens League, and worked on Farewell to Manzanar television program. Uno died of a heart attack in 1976. UCSF, where Uno helped create one of the country's first Ethnic Studies programs, established the Edison T.