For those familiar with my writing on pilgrimages, it may come as a surprise that I had never visited Manzanar until this past March. The opportunity finally presented itself when I had back-to-back work engagements in LA and SF two weekends in a row with a few days to kill in between.

This statement was read aloud during the JACL Philadelphia Chapter’s 2025 Day of Remembrance event on Wednesday, February 26. It includes my summary reflections on traveling to more than a dozen WWII Japanese American Confinement Sites and other historic locations related to the wartime incarceration and forced removal of Japanese Americans.

“America’s Last WWII Concentration Camp” is based on research compiled by Hector Estrada, a retired plumber and Crystal City native. Since 2001, Estrada has devoted his retirement years to telling the story of the camp. In a recent interview, Estrada recalls how he did not learn about the wartime history despite going to elementary school in one of the former camp buildings.

On Saturday, November 10 members of the Crystal City Pilgrimage Committee (CCPC) joined together with local residents of Crystal City to open the first permanent exhibit on the wartime incarceration in the state of Texas.

Kiyoshi Kuromiya (1943-2000) was a Sansei activist born at the Heart Mountain concentration camp during World War II. As a follow-up to the recent Pacific Citizen article offering a behind-the-scenes look at the new biopic documentary being produced on his life, this article will offer a brief summary of Kuromiya’s many accomplishments as an activist who devoted his life to multiple causes including civil rights, gay rights, and the antiwar movement.

Over the past year and a half, I have been working with a Philadelphia-based film production team to co-produce a feature-length documentary biopic on the late HIV/AIDS activist Kiyoshi Kuromiya. The film is being developed in partnership with William Way LGBT Center, with major funding support from the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. As a mixed-race Japanese American who works across academia, film/television production, and social justice advocacy – this has been one of my most rewarding professional experiences to-date.

On Sunday, September 1, Tsuru for Solidarity hosted the Liberation Obon, a one-of-a-kind protest action at the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC) in Tacoma Washington. The action was planned and executed in partnership with longtime Shut Down NWDC movement leader La Resistencia, a grassroots organization led by undocumented immigrants working to end the detention of immigrants and stop deportations.

In June and July 2024, I had the opportunity to attend both the Jerome/Rohwer and Tule Lake Pilgrimages. Taking place just under four weeks from one another, these two events expanded my understanding of the wartime incarceration in new and different ways, based on the unique geographic features, regional cultures and historic experiences that incarcerees endured at each site.

Adding an additional layer of nuance to these trips was the fact that my family 
recently discovered that a distant cousin of my Obaachan and his wife were incarcerated at both the Jerome and later Tule Lake camps. With this renewed appreciation for the significance of these sites in the context of my own family history, I embarked on the summer pilgrimages.

On May 17, 2024, I had the opportunity to attend the ribbon-cutting ceremony for our nation’s newest national park site, the former Amache incarceration camp, which housed more than 10,000 inmates between 1942-45, located in the far outskirts of Eastern Colorado near the border of Kansas. This took place during the annual Amache pilgrimage, attended by over 350 pilgrims. In addition to a ceremony to welcome the nation’s newest national park site, the pilgrimage offers a cross-community spiritual experience.

Earlier this month President Biden welcomed Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan for an official State Visit to celebrate the continued friendship between our two countries. I had the distinct privilege of attending the accompanying State Luncheon on April 11, hosted by Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington, D.C.

Sitting in the final sold out showing of Wilma Theater’s production of The Good Person of Setzuan, listening to Filipina American hip hop artist Ruby Ibarra on the pre show playlist, it strikes me exactly how far we have come as a community. 

Two years ago, the Japan America Society began a project with support from the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage that sought to deepen relationships with and connections between Asian American and African American communities by reimagining the Japanese cultural programs at Shofuso to be more inclusive of West Philly residents. As the formal project timeline comes to an end, our work with the Parkside neighborhood is just getting started in many ways, but we wanted to take stock of what has been accomplished during these past two years.

Philadelphia is the sixth largest city in the US, but our Japanese American population numbers under 3,000. With this in mind, I have long sought the opportunity to present a public exhibition related to Japanese American history in our local region to educate Philadelphians about topics they might otherwise be unfamiliar with. This recently materialized as the new exhibit that opened on August 12, 2023 titled, Okaeri (Welcome Home): The Nisei Legacy at Shofuso.

As the Japanese American community continues to diversify through inter-ethnic and interracial marriages, this raises questions about whether a community that was once thought to be culturally homogenous will continue to practice Japanese traditions at all. If so, what do those traditions look like today, and what might they look like in the future?

What does the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans have to do with a collection of Japanese ukiyo-e prints housed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art? Quite a bit, if you were to ask the late Mary Ishimoto Watanabe, who together with her husband Warren donated a collection of nearly fifty woodcut prints from the 1850s to 1970s.

On January 31, 2023 the Berks County Residential Center (otherwise known as Berks Detention Center) has finally closed its doors.

With so many resources available it is easier than ever before to get involved in US-Japan relations. It is deeply satisfying to be involved in this work, and I encourage others within our Japanese American community to seriously consider how they might become more involved in strengthening and maintaining this critical relationship over generations to come.

Over the weekend of September 24 I had the opportunity to participate in an event held at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles that commemorated each of the individuals who experienced the Japanese American wartime incarceration. Known as Irei or the National Monument for the World War II Japanese American Incarceration, the event was the culmination of several years of arduous labor by Buddhist scholar, Duncan Ryuken Williams, who serves as Director of the Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture at University of Southern California. 

In the past nine months while working for Japan America Society of Greater Philadelphia, I have had the opportunity to ponder at great length the ways in which public programming that is meant to celebrate Japanese culture while also strengthening US-Japan relations can both cater to the specific interests of a localized audience and also retain the spirit of Japanese culture. As a result, this year’s Shofuso Cherry Blossom Festival of Philadelphia looked a great deal different from previous years, as we highlighted the overlap among Japanese and African American musical cultures.

In May 2020, PBS broadcast a groundbreaking five-part documentary series called Asian Americans that chronicled the contributions and challenges of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) throughout our nation’s history. This was a significant milestone for AAPI representation in public television and an excellent educational resource unto itself. Acknowledging the rich untold AAPI history in Philadelphia, WHYY then began work on a local series – Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders: A Philadelphia Story. 

From the initial research stage, Japanese American media scholar and historian Rob Buscher was brought into the series as a consultant. To help guide the series production team as they developed episodes with thematic correlations across time periods and communities, Rob compiled a consolidated historical timeline from various community history sources in the Greater Philadelphia region. The timeline is a good resource for general education on these subjects, and makes an excellent companion piece to the series by providing context and granular detail on specific events referenced in each episode.