Author, Scholar Dr. Mitchell Maki To Keynote 43rd Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage, April 28, 2012

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PILGRIMAGE: Bus transportation still available from Los Angeles, but seats are going fast.

LOS ANGELES — Mitchell T. Maki, Ph.D. will be the keynote speaker at the 43rd Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage, sponsored by the Los Angeles-based Manzanar Committee, scheduled for noon PDT on Saturday, April 28, 2012, 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, over 1,000 people from diverse backgrounds, including students, teachers, community members, clergy and former incarcerees attend the Pilgrimage, which commemorates the unjust imprisonment of over 110,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry in ten American concentration camps located in the most desolate, isolated regions of the United States. Manzanar was the first of these camps to be established.

This year’s Pilgrimage will commemorate the 70th anniversary of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s signing of Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, authorizing the mass roundup and unjust incarceration of West Coast Japanese Americans during World War II. The event will also commemorate the 20th anniversary of the establishment of the Manzanar National Historic Site, which was authorized by legislation signed by President George H.W. Bush on March 3, 1992. Read more of this post