In-Person Day of Remembrance Returns to Little Tokyo

The late Jim Matsuoka is feted as
JANM hosts again after Covid-19-imposed interruption.

By P.C. Staff

As noted in her opening remarks, Japanese American National Museum Chief Development Officer Kelli-Ann Nakayama reminded the overflowing crowd that the Feb. 18 gathering to mark the Feb. 19, 1942, issuance of Executive Order 9066 was the first time since February 2020 that the JANM site in Little Tokyo served again as the venue for an in-person Day of Remembrance event (see Pacific Citizen, Feb. 21, 2020).

That last DOR occurred right before the March 2020 lockdown that came about because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Nakayama also noted that the 2023 DOR, the theme for which was “Uniting Our Voices: Making Democracy Work for All,” was missing a pair of stalwart community members: Norman Y. Mineta, who died in May 2022, and Jim Matsuoka — to whom this DOR was dedicated — who died in October 2022.

“This is our first Day of Remembrance without our friend, extraordinary leader and JANM board of trustees chairman, the late Hon. Norman Y. Mineta. All of us here valued Secretary Mineta for his steadfast support and wealth of contributions to the advancement of equality, justice and liberty for all. He was a beacon of inspiration and support for JANM,” Nakayama said.

She then memorialized Matsuoka. “He fought for equality, fairness and justice for all people,” Nakayama said, adding that he “always spoke out about injustice against the community” and “educated the general public.”

Nakayama then introduced the next speaker, DOR Committee Co-Chair and Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress member Richard Katsuda.

“It’s so great to be back at the Japanese American National Museum, where we can sit side-by-side and feel the warmth of the Japanese American community. We have to remember what happened to our community during World War II. We remember all of those former incarcerees who are no longer with us,” he told the audience. Katsuda then introduced DOR Committee members Nancy Takayama, president of the San Fernando JACL chapter, and Glen Kitayama to read the camp roll call.

Boy Scouts from Troops 292, 361, 379 and 738, as well as Girl Scouts from Troop 1521 carried banners representing the 10 War Relocation Authority camps and escorted surviving former incarcerees (or descendants of survivors) representing those held in the camps to an area in the front of the stage. The number of residents that each camp held was included as each person’s name and the camp they represented was read aloud.

They were:

• Fay Tozawa, Camp Amache, Colo. (7,318)
• Carrie Morita, Gila River, Ariz. (13,348)
• Hal Keimi, Heart Mountain, Wyo. (10,767)
• Kanji Sahara, Jerome, Ark. (8,497)
• Pat Sakamoto, Manzanar, Calif. (10,046)
• Jun Arai, Minidoka, Idaho (9,397)
• Kay Oda, Poston, Ariz. (17,814)
• June Berk, Rohwer, Ark. (8,475)
• Mas Yamashita, Topaz, Utah (8,130)
• Richard Murakami, Tule Lake, Calif. (18,789)

Also noted in the roll call were Japanese Americans who fought for the U.S. in WWII by serving with the 100th Battalion/442nd Regimental Combat Team and the Military Intelligence Service, with Ed Nakamura representing.

This was followed by the reading of the sites of the Justice Department-operated camps and citizen isolation centers that held 5,500 Japanese Americans across the continental United States and the then-territory of Hawaii.

Kitayama then asked those able to stand for a moment of remembrance for those ethnic Japanese who were incarcerated in those camps, as well as those who lived outside the exclusion zones but were nevertheless affected by the xenophobia of the time.

“We also pay tribute to the thousands of Japanese Latin Americans* and German and Italian Americans who were incarcerated by the U.S. government,” he added.

Following the procession ceremony, Takayama introduced Nishita Vaddella, a senior at Gretchen A. Whitney High School in Cerritos, Calif., and winner of the Tuna Canyon Detention Center Marc Stirdivant Scholarship for Justice, who read her prize-winning essay to the audience via video.

Alluding to how sailors of yesteryear used the North Star for guidance, Vaddella likewise said one’s community can also serve as a North Star — but then asked, “What happens when our community is struck by tragedy and injustice? Do we remain lost forever?”

She answered her question: 
“The Tuna Canyon Detention Station has chosen to remember, to educate and to enable. Once the site for unjust crimes that could have been erased from history, it is now a North Star for thousands of individuals who choose not to remain lost any longer.”

Next in the program, Katsuda introduced a dialogue between Manjusha P. Kulkarni and Traci Ishigo. Kulkarni serves as executive director of AAPI Equity Alliance, formerly Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council (A3PCON).

In March 2020, she co-founded Stop AAPI Hate, an aggregator of hate incidents against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders that arose with the spread of the coronavirus.

Ishigo, meantime, serves as director of Programs and Healing Justice at Vigilant Love, described by Katsuda as a “solidarity-based grassroots organization that works to protect the safety and justice of communities impacted by structural Islamophobia and white supremacist violence.”

Asked how she “came into this work,” Kulkarni, the offspring of South Asian immigrants, recalled an incident in high school while living in Montgomery, Ala., with echoes of the experiences of mainland Japanese Americans during WWII.

“When I was in AP American history in 11th grade, my teacher asked the class, ‘If India were at war with the United States, should Manju be incarcerated?’ And 24 out of 25 kids in the class, many of whom were my friends, voted to incarcerate me.” The one friend who did not vote that was African American.

“And let me say, even though this was my favorite teacher, a very kind woman, she actually told that story to defend the incarceration, not to challenge it,” Kulkarni added.

Later, her path would take her to work for the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund, the ACLU, the South Asian Network and, most recently, at AAPI Equity Alliance.

Related to Kulkarni’s experience, Ishigo later in the conversation said, “When you think about what happened to our community and the ways that Japanese Americans were characterized as national security threats and as dangerous, we have to think about how is it that we can really . . . build relationships with many communities and get to really know the real stories of what is impacting various communities.”

The conversation was followed by a musical interlude featuring Hiroshima kotoist June Kuramoto live playing “Thousand Cranes” to a recorded track as a tribute to Matsuoka, which was followed by a video in memoriam tribute, conducted by Jan Tokumaru, to community members of note who died recently.

Following that, Tokumaru reiterated how this particular DOR was dedicated to the late Matsuoka. A video of Matsuoka speaking at the 2019 pilgrimage to Manzanar, where he had been incarcerated, and at one of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians hearings, gave several speakers the opportunity to gather onstage and take turns to talk about Matsuoka’s life, achievements and memorable quotations and quips.

Another Hiroshima member, band founder Dan Kuramoto, followed with another musical interlude, performing “Amazing Grace” on the flute.

The closing statement was given by L.A. DOR committee co-chair Matthew Weisbly, the JACL’s Education and Communications coordinator. Reflecting on how 2023 marks 81 years since Executive Order 9066 and the 35th anniversary of the signing of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, he remarked that redress was “an achievement that could not have been accomplished were not for the support of so many communities who stood with us — a united voice saying that this was a wrong that must be righted.”

“Yet, 80 years after Executive Order 9066 and 35 years after the signing of the Civil Liberties Act, we find so many issues that still must be addressed across our country, many of which we’ve already discussed here today,” Weisbly added, referring to societal problems such as gun violence, anti-Asian violence, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.

Striking a hopeful note as a “descendant of Chinese immigrants who suffered under the Chinese Exclusion Act, a former incarceree incarcerated at Gila River, Ariz., and Tule Lake, Calif., and European Jews who were murdered during the Holocaust,” Weisbly nevertheless said that “there is not only hope for our future, but action that we can take today.”

To view the recording of the 2023 Day of Remembrance event at JANM, visit tinyurl.com/457cr2mb.

*To view the recording of the Gardena Valley Japanese Cultural Institute’s Day of Remembrance event, which focused on Japanese Latin Americans, visit tinyurl.com/3ntyjhfd.