During the 29 months of Gerald R. Ford's presidency, I was the national executive director of the Japanese American Citizens League, and had an excellent working relationship with the Ford administration and with President Ford personally.

President Ford made two major decisions that are significant to the history of Americans of Japanese ancestry, as well as our nation.

These two events are the repeal of Executive Order 9066, and the presidential pardon of Iva Toguri, known as "Tokyo Rose."

These two actions taken by Ford are seminal events in the history of Japanese-Americans. He set the tone and the baseline for the ultimate enactment of the commission to investigate the concentration camp experience of AJAs during World War II, which, in turn, led to the Civil Liberties Act. This was the formal apology by the United States government to Americans of Japanese ancestry for the government's actions in World War II, which included monetary redress to AJAs who were incarcerated.

While the pardon of Richard Nixon still haunts the Ford presidential legacy, there is near unanimous agreement that President Ford's pardon of Iva Toguri — on the last day of his presidency — was the right and decent thing to do.

Toguri was unjustly convicted of treason against the United States after the end of World War II. She was a broadcaster for Radio Tokyo, and was one of several women who became known generically as "Tokyo Rose" by the U.S. servicemen in the Pacific who listened to American music and wartime propaganda.

Cleared of any wrongdoing by the FBI and the U.S. military after the surrender of Japan, Toguri became the target of a hysterical campaign led by conservative commentator Walter Winchell. The furor generated by Winchell's broadcasts led to the U.S. Justice Department's indictment of Toguri and her conviction for treason.

She served six years of a 10-year sentence (four years off for good behavior), and always maintained her innocence and wanted nothing else but to have her beloved American citizenship and her right to vote restored.

In the mid-1970s, a national campaign was initiated by the JACL and many grassroots organizations to gather public support for a presidential pardon for Toguri. During this campaign, the CBS program "60 Minutes" produced an investigative story on the "Tokyo Rose Treason Myth", and broadcast new material that proved she was unjustly convicted.

For example, members of the jury who convicted Toguri came forward to confess that she should have never been convicted, and that public outrage had forced them to convict her of treason. Grassroots organizations led by Nisei veterans organizations, the JACL and its network of local chapters, AsianAmerican organizations nationwide, and more than 25 daily newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Washington Post, petitioned the only person in America who could pardon Toguri.

That person was President Ford.

As an AJA who had a front-row seat for both the repeal of Executive Order 9066 and the pardon of Iva Toguri, I have great admiration and aloha for President Ford. Both cases were gracious acts of decency made by a good and noble president. He didn't have to pardon Toguri; in fact, no one would have faulted him for not pardoning her, given the criticism he took for the Nixon pardon early in his presidency.

He also didn't have to repeal Executive Order 9066, and he took some heat from the right wing of his party for doing so. But he did both because he understood that America can redeem itself from its mistakes.

David Ushio is president of Pacific Technologies and a past member of The Advertiser's Community Editorial Board. He wrote this commentary for The Advertiser.