The Official Blog of the Los Angeles-based Manzanar Committee, sponsor of the annual Manzanar Pilgrimage since 1969
May 20, 2010 1 Comment
The following is a press release from the National Park Service.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The National Park Service (NPS) has awarded 23 grants totaling: $2.9 million to help preserve and interpret historic locations where Japanese Americans were detained during World War II. Read more of this post
March 12, 2010 1 Comment
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.
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
March 4, 2010 12 Comments
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.
Aiko Herzig Yoshinaga
Photo: Discover Nikkei
Recently, she wrote a paper on the use of euphemistic language to describe these camps. Indeed, the US Government officially called them “relocation centers” during World War II. To this day, the debate rages on regarding what they should be called. Read more of this post
April 28, 2009 7 Comments
The following is from the Tule Lake Committee.
It has been 67 years since the U.S. government unjustly incarcerated 110,000 men, women and children of Japanese ancestry in ten War Relocation Authority camps, implementing a policy of exclusion and detention mandated by Executive Order 9066.
Tule Lake became the largest and most controversial WRA camp when, in 1943, it was converted into a high-security Segregation Center to imprison 12,000 Japanese Americans deemed “disloyal” to the United States. The allegation of disloyalty was based on two deeply flawed questions—#27 questioned willingness to serve in the U.S. military forces and #28 questioned disavowal of loyalty to the Japanese emperor—that were used to divide persons of Japanese ancestry into categories of “loyal” and “disloyal.” Those who refused to give the mandatory “yes” answers to both questions were classified as disloyal and segregated at Tule Lake. Read more of this post
December 17, 2008
On December 5, President George W. Bush signed a proclamation that created the World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument, which will include the former Tule Lake Segregation Center and the Tule Lake CCC camp.
Some of the over 110,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry who were imprisoned by the United States Government during World War II were incarcerated at both locations Read more of this post
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More From Okazaki On Use of “Concentration Camp;” Refutes Rafu Shimpo Columnist George Yoshinaga
September 14, 2010 8 Comments
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On September 8, 2010, Rafu Shimpo columnist George Yoshinaga once again railed against the use of concentration camp to describe the camps that Americans of Japanese ancestry and their immigrant parents were imprisoned in during World War II.
In Yoshinaga’s column, “Horse’s Mouth: Raku, A Japanese Restaurant” (Yoshinaga’s comments were also included in a separate column, “Horse’s Mouth: The Richest Countries In The World,” September 14, 2010), he claimed that the ten camps were not concentration camps because, “those who wanted to leave camp had no problem, contrary to her statements.”
Joyce Okazaki (second from right) during a meeting with
Manzanar National Historic Site staff, April 26, 2009.
Photo: Gann Matsuda
Filed under Commentary Tagged with Manzanar Committee, Manzanar, concentration camp, internment, Joyce Okazaki, Rafu Shimpo, Japanese American Internment, civil rights, Tule Lake, Heart Mountain, Roger Daniels, racism, Michi Weglyn, Aiko Herzig Yoshinaga, concentration camps, George Yoshinaga, discriminiation, Karen Ishizuka, Years of Infamy