41st Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage Set For April 24, 2009 – Printable Flyer Available

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UPDATED February 26, 2010: Preliminary details announced. Printable flyer available for download.

Participants pay their respects to those who passed away at Manzanar during World War II at the traditional Interfaith service during the 40th Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage on April 25, 2009.
Photo: Gann Matsuda

LOS ANGELES — The 41st Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage, sponsored by the Los Angeles-based Manzanar Committee, is scheduled for 12:00 PM PDT on Saturday, April 24, 2010, at the Manzanar National Historic Site, located on US Highway 395 in California’s Owens Valley, between the towns of Lone Pine and Independence, approximately 230 miles north of Los Angeles.

Each year, hundreds of students, teachers, community members, clergy and former internees attend the Pilgrimage. Planning is underway for the afternoon event as well as for the Manzanar At Dusk program, scheduled for 5:00 PM that same evening. Read the rest of this entry »

Tule Lake Pilgrimage, July 2-5, 2010 – Register Now! Spaces Going Fast

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 4, 2010

Contact: Barbara Takei
(916) 392-5432
btakei -at- pobox.com

To download a printable flyer about
the 2010 Tule Lake Pilgrimage,
click on the image above.

The Tule Lake Committee announced that registration forms for the 2010 Tule Lake Pilgrimage are available at http://www.tulelake.org. The pilgrimage will take place over the 4th of July weekend, beginning Friday, July 2 through Monday, July 5, 2009.

The 18th pilgrimage will continue the focus on the young adults who were segregated at Tule Lake, especially the “no-nos” and those who renounced their U.S. citizenship while incarcerated at Tule Lake.

Over the past several Tule Lake pilgrimages, the Tule Lake Committee has welcomed the stories of Tule Lake’s dissidents, hoping to learn more about the life experiences that were marginalized and eliminated from the post-war Japanese American narrative.

Tule Lake has been stigmatized as the concentration camp for “troublemakers” and “bad” and “disloyal” people, a carryover of the government’s loyal/disloyal paradigm forced on Japanese Americans. This stigma contributed to the stories of protest at Tule Lake being buried, and helped promote a “model minority” stereotype of Japanese Americans that has been used to undermine other minority groups’ demands for equitable and just treatment.

“Stories about legitimate and courageous acts of grass roots civil disobedience were shunned in favor of stories that enhanced an image of Japanese American loyalty and cooperation,” said Hiroshi Shimizu, who chairs the pilgrimage committee. “Unfortunately, too many Japanese Americans have accepted and internalized the propaganda that labeled Japanese Americans as disloyal if they refused to give unqualified “yes” answers to the loyalty questions.”

“Tragically, the Nisei who refused to cooperate with the government’s incarceration program were stigmatized as disloyal, and silenced—by their own people.” Read the rest of this entry »

San Jose State University To Honor Former Japanese American Students

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Like other California State University and California Community College campuses, San Jose State University is searching for their former Japanese American students who were forced to leave the University due to their imprisonment in American concentration camps during World War II so they (or surviving family members) can be awarded an honorary degree from the University. Read the rest of this entry »

California State University Searches For Former Japanese American Students

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The following is a press release from the California State University system.


LONG BEACH, CA — Do you know of a Japanese American student who was removed from a California State University campus in 1941-42 and incarcerated in a camp?

Six California State University campuses are searching for 250 Japanese American students who were forcibly removed from CSU campuses during World War II and relocated to prison camps, interrupting their academic careers.

The CSU campuses plan to award these Nisei students Special Honorary Bachelor of Humane Letters degrees as part of the CSU’s Nisei Honorary Degree Project. The CSU project is a result of Assembly Member Warren Furutani’s bill, Assembly Bill 37, which called upon the CSU, University of California and the community colleges to award the degrees. Read the rest of this entry »

SDSU: A Wonderful Gesture

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The following story originally appeared in the March 2010 edition of the San Diego State University Alumni E-Newsletter. It is reprinted here with permission. Original story: A Wonderful Gesture.


by Tobin Vaughn, Editor

SDSU: Former Student to Receive Honorary Degree

Carl Yoshimine (highlighted) shown in the 1942 Del Sudoeste Yearbook at San Diego State College, now San Diego State University.

Monday, December 8, 1941 was a day Carl Yoshimine has never forgotten. It isn’t so much the details he recalls as the strange feeling he couldn’t seem to shake.

“Emotionally, it was awkward,” he remembers.

The day before, he had been as shocked as everyone by news that the Japanese navy had attacked Pearl Harbor. This was the first day of classes since the attack and much of the country was still coming to grips with the stunning developments that would plunge America into World War II. When he arrived on campus from his family’s home in Ocean Beach, the first semester freshman encountered a subdued student body. Read the rest of this entry »

Words Can Lie Or Clarify Criticizes Euphemistic Language Used To Describe WWII Camps Used To Imprison Japanese Americans

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Aiko Herzig Yoshinaga
Photo: Discover Nikkei

Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga, was seventeen years old when she was imprisoned at Manzanar and later, at Jerome and Rohwer, Arkansas.

After camp, she became a community and political activist, but is best-known for poring over tons of documents in the National Archives, discovering evidence that the United States Government perjured itself before the United States Supreme Court in the 1944 cases Korematsu v. United States, Hirabayashi v. United States, and Yasui v. United States which challenged the constitutionality of the imprisonment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Read the rest of this entry »

Community And History Are Dominant Themes of Authors’ Works at March 6 JAHSSC Authors/Artists Faire

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The following is press release from the Japanese American Historical Society of Southern California.


Two recurring themes of “Community” and “History” typify authors’ works at the Japanese American Historical Society of Southern California’s Saturday, March 6, JAHSSC Authors/Artists Faire at the Katy Geissert Civic Center Library, 3301 Torrance Bl., Torrance, California, 90503, from 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM. Read the rest of this entry »

UCLA Seeks Japanese American Students Whose Education Was Interrupted During World War II

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The following is a press release from the UCLA Newsroom. Original story: UCLA Seeks Japanese American Students Whose Education Was Interrupted during World War II.


By Claudia Luther, UCLA Newsroom
February 17, 2010

To download a printable flyer detailing UCLA’s honorary degree program, click on the image above.

UCLA is searching for Japanese American students from the early 1940s who were forced to interrupt their education at UCLA when federal orders sent Japanese Americans to internment camps during World War II. This historic wrong will be righted on May 15, when UCLA bestows honorary degrees on these students.

Some of the former students, most now in their 80s and 90s, are expected to attend the ceremony, and family members will receive diplomas on behalf of others who are unable to attend. Still others will receive diplomas by mail. Many former students are deceased.

Approximately 700 University of California students were affected by the World War II directive, more than 200 of whom attended UCLA. The UC Board of Regents voted last July to suspend its moratorium on honorary degrees in order to recognize the students forced from UC classrooms. Read the rest of this entry »

UCLA: A Wrong Finally Made Right

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The following is a story from UCLA Today, UCLA’s faculty and staff newsletter. It is reprinted here with permission. Original story: A Wrong Finally Made Right.


by Wendy Soderburg, UCLA Today
February 12, 2010

Bob Naka
Photo: Harvard University

When Bob Naka was a UCLA student in the early 1940s, there was a campus bridge that led from the parking area toward the Physics Building.

“There was a deep ravine under that bridge,” he recalled. “It’s since been covered over, but you can still drive over it. People probably wonder, how come this road has sides to it?”

That is the UCLA that Naka, 86, remembers. The Concord, Massachusetts resident hasn’t been back to campus since the 1950s, just after the events of World War II wrenched him from a comfortable student’s life to that of an inmate at the Manzanar Relocation Center. Now, nearly 60 years later, Naka is returning to UCLA to receive an honorary degree in place of the one he was never allowed to complete.

He’ll be joined by approximately 50 fellow Japanese American students (or their family members) who were forced to leave UCLA in 1942 and sent to internment camps throughout the United States. They will be the special guests at an honorary degree ceremony to take place on Saturday, May 15, in Schoenberg Hall. Read the rest of this entry »

SDSU: A Matter Of Restitution

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On January 19, San Diego State University’s NewsCenter published a story about their efforts to award honorary degrees to their former Japanese American students who were forced to leave SDSU due to their imprisonment in American concentration camps during World War II. Read the rest of this entry »