As I reflect on the outpouring of tributes in light of Ozzy Osbourne’s recent passing I can’t help but marvel at the impact that his music, particularly with Black Sabbath, had on my own journey as both a musician and a person. While there were many great musical influences including early 90s Hip Hop and second-wave punk that shaped my worldview, none compare to Black Sabbath, who to this day I still consider my favorite band. In a roundabout way, Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne (with some help from dad) gave me the perspective to make the necessary changes in my life that have allowed me to become the person I am today.

Given the sparse and dispersed population of Japanese Americans on the East Coast, many community institutions familiar to West Coast JAs do not exist here. Therefore, it may come as a surprise that the Buddhist Churches of America have a small, but significant presence within the region. BCA’s combined Central & Eastern District includes three Jodo Shinshu temples on the East Coast: New York Buddhist Church in Manhattan, Seabrook Temple in Bridgeton New Jersey, and Ekoji Temple in Fairfax Station Virginia. As Obon season nears, all three are making their preparations for the annual celebration in ways that are specific to each region.

This Memorial Day weekend I had the opportunity to participate in the 2025 Jerome Rohwer Pilgrimage. Having recently attended the National Reparations Rally in Washington DC, my thoughts were centered on the historical parallels among Japanese Americans and African Americans, and our shared experiences living under institutional white supremacy. Over the three days I spent in Little Rock and Memphis, I came to further appreciate these linkages as I explored historic civil rights sites and spent time with local communities in the Delta.

During the week of May 12, several Japanese American groups traveled to Washington DC in support of Black Reparations. The focal point was a reparations rally organized by the National Reparations Network (NRN) on Saturday, May 17. This historic rally was organized with the intention of aligning the national narrative on reparations for the enslavement era and its ongoing legacies while demonstrating broad-based public support for this cause.

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.