Solemn monument to Japanese American WWII detainees lists more than 125,000 names

LOS ANGELES — Samantha Sumiko Pinedo and her grandparents enter a dimly lit room at the Japanese American National Museum and approach a huge book spread open to reveal columns of names. Pinedo hopes the list also includes her great-grandparents, who were held in Japanese-American prison camps during World War II.

“For many people it feels like so long ago because it was World War II. But I grew up with my Bompa (great-grandfather), who was in the internment camps,” says Pinedo.

A docent at the Los Angeles museum gently flips to the center of the book – called the Ireichō – and locates Kaneo Sakatani in the center of a page. This was Pinedo’s great-grandfather, and his family can now honor him.

On February 19, 1942, following Imperial Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States’ entry into World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 authorizing the incarceration of people of Japanese descent who were considered potentially were considered dangerous.

From the extreme heat of Arizona’s Gila River center to the bitter winters of Heart Mountain, Wyoming, Japanese Americans were forced into hastily built barracks, without insulation or privacy, and surrounded by barbed wire. They shared bathrooms and dining rooms, and families of up to eight people were squeezed into rooms measuring 20 by 25 feet. Armed American soldiers in watchtowers made sure no one tried to flee.

About two-thirds of the detainees were U.S. citizens.

When the 75 detention facilities on U.S. soil were closed in 1946, the government published Final Accountability Rosters listing the name, gender, date of birth, and marital status of Japanese Americans held in the 10 largest facilities. There was no clear consensus on who or how many were being held nationwide.

Duncan Ryūken Williams, the director of the Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture at the University of Southern California, knew that these grids were incomplete and riddled with errors, so he and a team of researchers took on the Herculean task of identify prisoners. and honor them with a three-part monument called “Irei: National Monument to Japanese-American Incarceration of World War II.”

“We wanted to restore that moment in American history by remembering that this is a group of people, Japanese Americans, who were targeted by the government. As long as you had one drop of Japanese blood in you, the government said you didn’t belong,” Williams said.

The Irei Project was inspired by stone Buddhist monuments called Ireitōs that were built by prisoners at camps in Manzanar, California, and Amache, Colorado, to commemorate and comfort the spirits of deceased internees.

The first part of the Irei Monument is the Ireichō, the sacred book containing 125,284 verified names of Japanese-American prisoners.

“We felt like we had to give all these people back dignity, personality and individuality,” Williams said. “The best way we thought we could do that was to give them their name back.”

The second element, the Ireizō, is a website launching on Monday, Remembrance Day, that allows visitors to search for additional information about detainees. Ireihi is the final part: a collection of light installations at places of confinement and the Japanese American National Museum.

Williams and his team spent more than three years reaching out to camp survivors and their family members, correcting misspelled names and data errors and filling in the gaps. They analyzed data in the National Archives on detainee transfers, as well as Enemy Aliens ID cards and folders created by detainees.

“We’re pretty confident we’re at least 99% accurate with that list,” Williams said.

The team recorded each name in order of age, from the oldest person to enter the camps to the last baby born there.

Williams, a Buddhist priest, invited leaders of various religions, Native American tribes, and social justice groups to attend a ceremony introducing the Ireichō to the museum.

Crowds of people gathered in the Little Tokyo district to watch camp survivors and descendants of prisoners stream into the museum one by one, holding wooden pillars called sobata bearing the names of each of the camps. At the end of the procession, the enormous, heavy book of names was carried in by several faith leaders. Williams read Buddhist scriptures and led chants to honor the prisoners.

These sobata now line the walls of the serene enclosure where the Ireichō will reside until December 1. Each sobata bears the name – in English and Japanese – of the camp it represents. A pot with soil from the location mentioned hangs from each pole.

Visitors are encouraged to search the Ireichō for their loved ones and leave a mark under their name with a Japanese stamp called a hanko.

The first people to stamp it were some of the last surviving camp prisoners.

So far, 40,000 visitors have made their mark. For Williams, that interaction is essential.

“Honouring each person by placing a stamp in the book means changing the monument every day,” Williams said.

Sharon Matsuura, who visited the Ireichō to commemorate her parents and husband imprisoned at Camp Amache, says the monument can play an important role in raising awareness, especially for young people who may not know about this harsh chapter in the American story.

“It was a very shameful part of history that the young men and women were good enough to fight and die for the country, but they had to live in terrible conditions and camps,” Matsuura said. “We want people to realize that these things happened. .”

Many survivors remain silent about what they experienced and don’t want to relive it, Matsuura says.

Pinedo watches as her grandmother, Bernice Yoshi Pinedo, carefully stamps a blue dot under her father’s name. The family steps back in silence and takes in the moment, yellow light casting shadows from the pots of soil on the walls.

Kaneo Sakatani was only fourteen when he was held captive in Tule Lake, in far northern California.

“It’s sad,” says Bernice. “But I am very proud that my parents’ names were in there.”