Mike Masaru Masaoka (, October 15, 1915 – June 26, 1991) was a Japanese-American lobbyist, author, and spokesman. He worked with the Japanese American Citizens League for over 30 years. He was a key player in encouraging cooperation of the JACL with Japanese American internment during World War II, but also fought for rights of Japanese-Americans during and after the war. Early life Masaoka was born in Fresno, California. The family moved to Salt Lake City where Masaoka legally changed his first name to "Mike" and became a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He became a champion debater and graduated in 1937 from the University of Utah in economics and political science. Japanese American Citizens League At the age of 25, Masaoka was named National Secretary and Field Executive of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) which was strictly a mainland organization with no connection to Hawaii just before the outbreak of World War II. During Fair Employment Practice Committee (FEPC) hearings held in October 1941, Masaoka testified on employment discrimination faced by Japanese Americans in the defense industry, leading to pledges from various organizations to eliminate anti-Japanese bias. Masaoka was a key player in JACL's decision to cooperate with the Japanese American internment during the war, seeing that resistance would be counterproductive and increase the tension between the Nisei and the FDR Administration. In his position as a national spokesman, he urged cooperation and opposed legal challenges to the government and advised the government on how to run the camps (thus to reduce friction between the internees and their captors). He also advocated the segregation of so‑called "troublemakers," though the War Relocation Authority cast the net more broadly than Masaoka had anticipated. The government used him as their liaison with the entire Japanese American population in the camps, although he himself was never imprisoned in a camp. As a result of his stance, Masaoka was widely denounced within the Japanese American community as a sellout and collaborator. Masaoka was involved in leading the call for the formation of a military unit from the mainland; however, different dynamics occurred in Hawaii which provided all of the men in the 100th Battalion in June 1942 and 2,686 men out of the 10,000 who answered the call in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team to join the 1,500 from the mainland. He later served as publicist for the