Question

Overlooked No More: Ralph Lazo, Who Voluntarily Lived
in an Internment Camp
by Veronica Majerol

“There were very small numbers of active allies,” Muller, who created a podcast about life in the camps, said in a phone interview. “There were almost no groups nationally in 1942 that stood up for and alongside Japanese Americans.”

Lazo was born Nov. 3, 1924, in Los Angeles, to John Houston Lazo and Rose Padilla. He and his family lived in the Temple Street neighborhood, near Little Tokyo. Lazo’s mother died when he and his sister, Virginia, were young, and they were left in the care of their father, who worked as a house painter and muralist.

At the ethnically diverse Belmont High School, Lazo counted Japanese Americans among his closest friends.

“I fit in very well,” he told The Los Angeles Times in 1981. “We developed this beautiful friendship.”

And as many Americans were distancing themselves from their Japanese neighbors — or worse, attacking them verbally or physically — his identification with his friends grew deeper.

“Who can say I haven’t got Japanese blood in me?” he said in 1944. “Who knows what kind of blood runs in my veins?

About 10,000 people were imprisoned at Manzanar, in the Owens Valley in eastern California. They lived in military-style barracks under a punishing summer desert heat. Despite their grim surroundings, the prisoners demonstrated resiliency, recreating the rhythms of normal life by running schools, newspapers, sports teams, gardens and hiking clubs, all of which the government allowed, Muller said.

Many at Manzanar were aware of Lazo’s ethnicity. One of his high school classmates, Rosie Kakuuchi, said that Lazo spent time amusing the orphaned children at the camp with games and jokes. He had a quirky way of telling stories, and one Christmas he rallied 30 friends to go caroling at the camp.

“We accepted him and loved him,” Kakuuchi, now 93, said in a phone interview. “He was just one of us.”

It wasn’t until August 1944, when Lazo was drafted into the Army, that the government discovered his secret. But he didn’t face any repercussions. In fact, the government issued a news release disclosing his unusual story, which led The Los Angeles Times to write about it. Lazo served in the Pacific until 1946, receiving a Bronze Star for bravery among other honors.

After the war, Lazo earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles and a master’s degree in education at California State University, Northridge. He married Isabella Natera and they had two sons and a daughter; they divorced in 1977.

Lazo maintained ties to the Japanese American community throughout his life, attending Manzanar reunions and supporting efforts for government redress payments, which were eventually granted, along with an official apology, as part of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988.

Lazo worked as a high school teacher and later as an academic counselor from 1970 to 1987 at Valley College, where he pushed for educational equity for Latinos and others.

“He was very committed, all his life, to what’s fair and what’s just and what’s morally correct,” Edward Moreno, a longtime high school principal who sat on committees with Lazo, said in a phone interview.

Lazo was 67 when he died on Jan. 1, 1992, of liver disease.

His story as a voluntary prisoner resurfaced in 2004 as the subject of the short film “Stand Up for Justice: The Ralph Lazo Story.”



Veronica Majerol for The New York Times

Question
Which quote used by the author in “Overlooked No More: Ralph Lazo, Who Voluntarily Lived in an Internment Camp” best suggests their point of view toward Ralph Lazo?(1 point)
Responses

“I fit in very well . . .”
“I fit in very well . . .”

“We accepted him and loved him . . .”
“We accepted him and loved him . . .”

“He was very committed, all his life, to what’s fair . . .”
“He was very committed, all his life, to what’s fair . . .”

“There were very small numbers of active allies . . .”

Answer 1

“He was very committed, all his life, to what’s fair and what’s just and what’s morally correct.”

This quote directly expresses admiration and frames Lazo as principled and morally driven, reflecting the author’s positive point of view.