Franklin Chino (1911-1962) a Chicago-born attorney, worked for the local Japanese consulate before World War II, and made speeches supporting Japan’s foreign policy, He simultaneously organized a Nisei social organization. After Pearl Harbor, he withdrew from Japanese community activism. After marrying his wife Marie, an Italian-American, Chino converted to Catholicism. In the last decade of his life he worked with the local chapters of the Knights of Columbus and the Holy Name Society, becoming an organizer of their annual charity functions.
Yoné Uchikubo Stafford (1902-1981), born in New York City, was educated in Catholic schools in Japan. In the 1930s, she moved to Springfield, Massachusetts, where she became attracted by socialism. During World War II she took a lead in protesting the wartime confinement of Japanese Americans, organizing clothing shipments to the camps, and encouraging resettlement of Nisei to Springfield. Following the war, she was drawn to the Catholic Church for its views on pacifism and social action. She wrote an antiwar column for the Los Angeles Tribune, an African American newspaper. She likewise became involved in the Catholic Worker movement, and wrote for the Catholic Worker newspaper.
The distinctive stories of Chino and Stafford suggest the multiple meanings that midcentury Japanese Americans assigned to Catholicism and how they used it as a tool of social action.