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, 2010.
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.
To download a printable flyer about
the 2010 Tule Lake Pilgrimage,
click on the image above.
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 more of this post
Deporting “Troublemakers” Redux
January 25, 2012 1 Comment
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Barbara Takei (left), shown here with Manzanar Committee member Joyce Okazaki (center), and Mako Nakagawa (right), during the
2011 Manzanar At Dusk program on April 28, 2011, at
Lone Pine High School in Lone Pine, California.
Photo: James To
Time of Remembrance observances are coming up in another few weeks, a good time to do something to assure, “never again.”
This year, in the context of the National Defense Authorization Act that provides for indefinite military detention of the accused, we need to be more vigilant than ever, especially with two companion pieces of legislation introduced this session of Congress. The two bills, S. 1698 and HR 3166, resurrect the spectre of the little-known government denationalization and deportation program that the Department of Justice used to strip nearly 6,000 Americans of their U.S. citizenship while they were imprisoned at the Tule Lake concentration camp during World War II. Read more of this post
Filed under News, Commentary Tagged with Japanese American, Japanese American Internment, civil rights, Tule Lake, Barbara Takei, Tule Lake Committee, racism, discrimination, Japanese American Incarceration, National Defense Authorization Act