Japanese Americans Organize a Protest Against Family Separation at the Border

CRYSTAL Urban center, Texas â€" More than than 60 people from across the United States participated in a historical pilgrimage to Texas from March 29 to April i that included a memorial service at the former Globe War Two Crystal Urban center Section of Justice campsite, a protest rally at the Dilley Detention Middle, a coming together with Texas legislatures and a visit to a sanctuary church building.

The event attracted press coverage from all over the country, every bit well as from Japan.

I immediate outcome of the pilgrimage resulted in the advert hoc Crystal City Pilgrimage Committee being invited to the San Francisco Mayor’southward Immigrant Rights Commission for a meeting.

Sometime inmates of the Crystal City Department of Justice detention site during World State of war II at a protest of present-mean solar day family unit detention centers in Dilley, Texas. Left to right: Kaz Naganuma, James Arima, Joe Ozaki, Hiroshi Shimizu, Hiroshi Fukuda and Satsuki Ina.
photograph by Martha Nakagawa

Beginnings
Satsuki Ina, a former Tule Lake and Crystal City incarceree who spearheaded what she referred to as “a small but mighty committee,” said the inspiration for this pilgrimage started nigh four years ago when she was contacted by Carl Takei, a Yonsei attorney with the ACLU whose grandparents had been imprisoned at the Tule Lake Segregation Middle.

Takei had been so bothered by what he witnessed at the Karnes County Residential Eye, that he had asked Ina to join him for a visit and requested her opinion, as a psychotherapist, of the sort of trauma the children were being exposed to.

Afterward Ina walked through the Karnes detention center, she ended: “We’ve got to take these prisons down. They’re inhumane, and they need to exist taken downwardly.”

Since then, Ina has returned a few more than times to Texas and an ad hoc Crystal City Pilgrimage Committee was formed to organize a combined memorial service at the quondam Earth War II DOJ campsite at Crystal City and to agree a peaceful protest rally at the Dilley detention center, a few miles from Crystal City, to oppose the indefinite imprisonment of families with minors and the separation of children from their parents.

Assisting the Crystal City Pilgrimage Commission was Grassroots Leadership, an Austin, Texas-based organization that works to reform immigration and criminal justice policies and works with those impacted by detention and deportation.

Bob Libal, Grassroots Leadership executive manager, felt the presence of the Japanese American community, half dozen of whom were Crystal City survivors, was “incredibly powerful, and it’southward going to exist heard by people who are within (Dilley),” he said.

According to Libal, the Dilley Detention Heart is the largest immigration detention eye in the U.Due south. with 2,400 beds for women and children.

“Children equally young as babies have been detained there as recently as the last few weeks,” said Libal. “Pregnant detainees are something we have seen recently, including pregnant girls under the age of xviii, who go along to exist detained.”

Libal added that these immigration detention centers were being run by for-profit corporations.

“This facility is operated by the world’south largest for-profit prison house corporation, which is called Corrections Corp of America (rebranded CoreCivic), that signed a billion dollar contract to operate it so the detention of immigrant families is both a moral abomination and very large business,” said Libal.

He, like those on the pilgrimage, felt that it was time to close down detention centers.

Tsuru For Solidarity
Near two weeks before the pilgrimage, Mike Ishii spearheaded a campaign to have x,000 folded cranes (tsuru) sent to the Grassroots Leadership office to be used at the protestation rally as a symbol of solidarity.

More 25,000 tsuru appeared at the Grassroots Leadership office, with many more boxes still being delivered. Every bit of the pilgrimage, more 150 boxes of tsuru had been delivered to Grassroots Leadership simply that number could top 200 boxes.

The folded cranes came from all across the U.South. and Nihon, including some from the San Quentin Land Prison house.

Kathy Kojimoto said Jun Hamamoto was responsible for the tsuru from San Quentin prison house. “Jun teaches a class at San Quentin,” said Kojimoto. “They did this during their gratuitous time or so-called rec time to make these cranes specifically for this event.”

TSURU IN SOLIDARITY â€" Joe Ozaki, a former Crystal City detainee, puts a strand of paper cranes on the Dilley detention center in solidarity

Crystal City Site Bout
Nancy Ukai, a descendant of a Topaz (Fundamental Utah) War Relocation Authorisation concentration campsite, spearheaded the program at the former Crystal City Department of Justice camp where Japanese Americans, Japanese Latin Americans, German Americans and German Costa Ricans were incarcerated during Earth War Two.

Grace Shimizu, who has been heading the Japanese Peruvian Oral History Project and Campaign for Justice for decades, gave a cursory background on Crystal City.

“We’re going to a set of camps that ordinarily people don’t actually know most in the general society, merely even inside the Japanese American community, we don’t know that much well-nigh,” she said. “And for a fourth dimension, people here were seen as having stigma, that there must’ve been something wrong with them because they were picked upward first.

“And it’s just because of hard piece of work that our customs has done to uncover our own history that we’ve begun to see the diversity of the experiences that our community went through and to see how complex the whole process was that the authorities was trying to do when it identified the people here as enemy aliens.”

During the war, the Crystal Metropolis DOJ camp imprisoned more two,200 people of Japanese ancestry from 13 Latin American countries to be used in hostage exchanges between the U.S. and Japan.

In addition, the U.South. regime sent Japanese American mothers and their children incarcerated in WRA camps to Crystal City to be reunited with their husbands/fathers, who had been detained at other DOJ camps.

On the bus ride to Crystal City, Kenya Gillespie shared a short Crystal City documentary moving-picture show he made as a graduate student at the Academy of Texas at Austin, where he now teaches. Gillespie grew upwards in Kansas with a father who is of Scottish descent and a post-war immigrant mother from Nippon.

“I had no thought that something similar this had existed in Texas,” said Gillespie. “And when I visited the Crystal Metropolis site, I thought I have to practise a documentary on this subject.”

Several Crystal City elected officials welcomed the pilgrims at Crystal Urban center, including Imelda Salinas, superintendent of the Crystal City Independent School District; Joel Barajas, Crystal Urban center Mayor Pro-Tem; and Councilwoman Michelle Ruiz.

In addressing the pilgrims, Ruiz said, “You’re office of history here so you’re a part of Crystal City.”

Roberto Velasquez, who has worked for the ISD for 42 years, led a short bout of the site, which he also does for one-time German and Costa Rican German incarcerees who visit the site.

Velasquez, the son of migrant workers, attended the segregated schoolhouse on the old Crystal Metropolis DOJ site, in the aforementioned building as those who had been incarcerated during Globe War Ii.

The school building was torn down during the 1960s, but Velasquez said that in 1982, he rummaged through some construction rubbish and found an erstwhile desk.

At dejeuner at the Sterling H. Wing Junior Loftier School, Velasquez was able to arrange students to come out on a Sabbatum to greet the pilgrims. La Bande Folklorico performed traditional Mexican dances during the meal.

Several volunteer keepers of history at Crystal Metropolis turned out to the luncheon. Amongst them was Turi Gonzales, who presented a bag of what looked like rocks to Crystal City survivors.

“These are remnants from the swimming puddle,” Gonzales said. “I knew they were important. I’ve been belongings onto them for 20 years.”
Jose Casares, the town historian, has been researching birth, death and cemetery records of the Japanese betwixt 1943 and 1947 in Zavala County where Crystal Metropolis is located.

Casares said his parents used to interact with the Crystal City incarcerees by throwing tortillas over the contend and rolling oranges through the fencing.

Fe Felix, the former librarian at the Crystal Urban center school, said when the library was closed about 10 years agone, she tried to save as many historical documents as possible simply many had been thrown out.

Others who came out to support the pilgrimage program included Francis Snavely, mother of Toni Osumi, who came out from Idaho. She felt this was part of her history as well since her showtime husband had been incarcerated at Poston (Colorado River) and the Manzanar WRA camps. She is likewise Jewish, and lost family in the Holocaust.

“So my sons have both sides of their family affected and so certainly there is an awareness,” said Snavely.

Diana Palacios turned out for the gathering in hopes of reuniting with Sumi Shimatsu, a former Crystal City detainee who regularly published the Crystal Urban center Chatter newsletter. Palacios’ relationship with former Crystal City incarcerees went back to the 1990s when she had been the city manager and helped apply for grant money for the plaques.

“One matter I hate is injustice,” said Palacios. “But I’g saddened by the condition of our state today … information technology breaks my middle to see what is happening.”

Memorial Service
The memorial service was held at the former camp swimming puddle site where ii Japanese Peruvian girls had drowned in 1944.

Kaz Naganuma, whose family had been taken abroad from Peru, said his older sisters knew and witnessed the ii Japanese Peruvian girls drowning in the pool.

“So tragic,” said Naganuma.

His family unit did not leave of Crystal City until 1947, two years after the war had ended. Since they had no friends or families in the U.Due south., Hiroshi Fukuda’s begetter, the Rev. Yoshiaki Fukuda of the Konko Church of San Francisco, sponsored the Naganuma family, and civil rights chaser Wayne Collins stopped their deportation. However, Naganuma said life after camp was worse since they had no jobs and could not speak English.

Hiroshi Fukuda’s family unit, like Naganuma’s family, were not released from Crystal Urban center until 1947. However, they were Japanese Americans, who had been living in Northern California before the war. His father had been arrested on the solar day Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, while he was presenting a sermon at the San Jose Konko Church building.

“Three FBI agents came and arrested him,” said Fukuda. “I was too young, but my older brother told me that he was sort of shocked, seeing these people arresting my father. He spent nigh of his time in what’southward known as the Justice camps instead of the War Relocation Authority camps. We were separated for three or four years and reunited at Crystal City.”

At the memorial service, Joe Ozaki’s family unit performed taiko. Nancy Ozaki Tsujimoto, Joe’s

shot and killed for doing that,” said Taniwaki.

Taniwaki felt that her childhood incarceration contributed to her politicization later in life. “For about 30 years at present, I’ve produced a radio evidence at KGNU in Boulder, Colo. and have dealt with migrants fleeing oppression from Central and South America so this is very close to my heart.”

While almost Americans view undocumented immigrants as a Latino issue, J. Kim, an undocumented immigrant of Korean descent, spoke out to say information technology afflicted Asian Americans as well.

“I’yard a DACA recipient,” said Kim. “I’chiliad undocumented but I’one thousand non afraid. I just want to say the undocumented event is not only a Latinx outcome or a blackness result. It’southward also an Asian American issue. There’southward more than a million undocumented Asian Americans in this state, and they’re always living in fright of deportation.

Kim said concluding year the National Korean American Service & Teaching Consortium started a “Citizenship for All” campaign, which would provide a pathway to citizenship to all people living in the U.S., including to undocumented immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees. Several NAKASEC members were collecting signatures for this entrada.

Karina Alvarez, head of the Laredo Immigrant Alliance, is also a DACA recipient. “I institute light in people who shared the same ideals,” said Alvarez. “We demand to fight back policies like SB 4 that terrorizes our community.”

Senate Bill 4, which passed in May 2017, is similar to Senate Bill 1070 passed in Arizona. This Texas “Show Me Your Papers” neb allows law enforcement officers to ask most the clearing status of anyone they lawfully detain, and this provision extends to college campus police. This law also allows individuals to initiate an investigation into sanctuary cities.

Sean Miura, forth with Becca Asari and Linda Morris, led the group in a human being mic exchange where they delivered a phrase and supporters repeated them, thus amplifying the voices.

Miura said he wanted to witness the detention camps in person. “We talk about these detention centers in the abstract,” said Miura. “We talk about separation of families as a concept, and I think, for a number of reasons, we choose not to basis it in reality. But these are bodily people being impacted in devastating means that are going to accept a generational touch and in that location are implications for non only for themselves but for the unabridged country and the globe.”

Just before Jenni Kuida arrived to the rally, she confirmed with her mother over the telephone that her grandparents had been reunited at Crystal Metropolis and that one of her mother’southward sisters had died there. “My mom’southward oldest sister passed away two days after they got here. She had a brain tumor but my gramps was able to meet her before she passed away.

Libal said this rally was the nearly moving he’d been involved with. “I call up it’southward incredibly of import to be drawing these connections. I’m reading a book on Crystal City and the similarities between the facility backside us and the one merely downward the route in Crystal City, are overwhelming,” said Libal. “This is the nation’south largest clearing detention heart. It has two,400 children and mothers detained hither today, including babies. This facility is a moral outrage.”

Linda Morris, from New York, does not take a Crystal City connection only her mother’southward family was imprisoned at the Jerome and Rohwer concentration camps during the state of war.

“Over the past couple of years, my mom and I have been talking more than nearly her family’south feel so any risk that I take to be involved in building a community with other Japanese Americans, who have that shared feel, is important to me,” said Morris. “Also addressing the effect that our country is currently going through with immigration is really important so that’southward why I came.”

Morris said her father is a member of the Creek tribe from Alabama. “My parents have different experiences merely there are similarities in terms of facing discrimination in this country and also forced removal.”

Stacy Kono of Berkeley, whose father was in Tule Lake, Jerome and Rohwer and whose female parent was in Tule Lake, talked about how inspiring the protest rally was. “I want to share well-nigh how proud I am to be a Japanese American, how proud I am for all of us for continuing up in this moment and sharing our stories and our family’south stories in a time when our state is engaged in man rights violations confronting people who are merely seeking to survive and escape weather that our government has contributed to.”

Holly Yasui, the daughter of Minoru Yasui, who had challenged the constitutionality of the curfew during World War Ii, sent a bilingual letter of the alphabet to the children detained at Dilley. Robin Yasui read the alphabetic character in English and Rebecca Fong read the Spanish version.

The alphabetic character to the children read in part, “We want to support you as some groups supported u.s.a., Japanese Americans, during the war when we needed it most. We want our country to live upwards to its principles of justice and democratic ethics that attracted our ancestors to this land.”

One Earth Taiko and Soh Taiko performed, and the protesters sang “De Colores,” a folk song that was commonly sung during the United Subcontract Workers’ rallies, followed by the Japanese folk song, “Kutsu Ga Naru.”

A larger pilgrimage to Crystal Metropolis is being planned for Nov.

williamstores1988.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.nichibei.org/2019/04/japanese-americans-gather-in-texas-to-protest-family-detention-at-border/

Share this post