June Aochi Berk, now 92 years outdated, remembers the trepidation and concern she felt 80 years in the past on Jan. 2, 1945. On that date, Berk and her relations had been launched by army order from the U.S. authorities detention facility in Rohwer, Arkansas, the place they’d been imprisoned for 3 years due to their Japanese heritage.
“We didn’t celebrate the end of our incarceration, because we were more concerned about our future. Since we had lost everything, we didn’t know what would become of us,” Berk recollects.
The Aochis had been among the many almost 126,000 folks of Japanese ancestry who had been forcibly faraway from their West Coast houses and held in desolate inland areas underneath Executive Order 9066, issued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on Feb. 19, 1942.
Approximately 72,000, or two-thirds, of these incarcerated had been, like Berk, American-born residents. Their immigrant mother and father had been authorized aliens, precluded by regulation from turning into naturalized residents. Roosevelt’s government order and subsequent army orders excluding them from the West Coast had been primarily based on the presumption that folks sharing the ethnic background of an enemy can be disloyal to the United States. The authorities rationalized their mass incarceration as a “military necessity,” while not having to convey costs in opposition to them individually.
In 1983 a bipartisan federal fee discovered that the federal government had no factual foundation for that justification. It concluded that the incarceration resulted from “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.”
The fee suggestions resulted within the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. Signed by President Ronald Reagan, the regulation offered surviving incarcerees with an apology for the unjustified authorities actions and token $20,000 funds. This laws and varied judicial rulings have acknowledged that the incarceration was an egregious violation of U.S. constitutional rules, a race-based denial of due course of.
A key component of this tragic and disgraceful chapter of American historical past is that no one ever saved monitor of all of the individuals who had been subjected to the federal government’s wrongful actions.
To reckon with this injustice, the Irei Project: National Monument for the WWII Japanese American Incarceration was launched in 2019. This neighborhood nonprofit undertaking was initially incubated on the University of Southern California Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture, with a aim to create the first-ever complete record of the names of each particular person incarcerated in America’s wartime internment and focus camps.
Taking the undertaking title “irei” from the Japanese phrase “to console the spirits of the dead,” the undertaking was impressed by stone Buddhist monuments that the detainees constructed whereas incarcerated in Manzanar, California, and Camp Amache, Colorado, to memorialize those that had died whereas wrongfully detained.
The phrase “approximately 120,000” incarcerees has usually been utilized by students, journalists and the Japanese American neighborhood as a result of the precise variety of these incarcerated has by no means been recognized. By creating an precise record of names, the Irei Project has sought to substantiate an correct rely and to revive dignity to every one who skilled some constitutional injustice when the U.S. authorities decreased them to faceless enemies.
With the aim of leaving nobody out, a dozen part-time researchers on the Irei staff searched data within the National Archives and within the collections of different authorities establishments. Working with Ancestry.com and FamilySearch, Irei researchers have developed modern methodologies and protocols to confirm identities, the locations of detention and, importantly, the correct spelling of names. More than 100 volunteers assembled and fact-checked the info.
As only one instance of creating certain the historic document is right, a search via National Archive microfilm data revealed that “Baby Girl Osawa” was born to a mom incarcerated within the momentary detention facility generally known as the Pomona Assembly Center. Sadly, the newborn lived just a few hours.
Leaving nobody out signifies that this toddler is now among the many almost 6,000 further those who the Irei Project has documented as amongst those that had been incarcerated. As of November 2024, the quantity is 125,761; because the analysis continues, the variety of documented incarcerees will proceed to develop.
Without any means to return to their prewar neighborhood in Hollywood, California, the Aochis went to Denver, Colorado, the place buddies supplied to assist them get again on their ft. They and the opposite incarcerees girded themselves to face prejudice and hostile therapy that had solely intensified throughout the warfare, to the purpose of terrorism.
“After the war, we just had to concentrate on restarting our lives, and we had to put the trauma of the incarceration behind us,” Berk defined.
For Berk, her fellow incarcerees and their descendants, the Irei Project offers some acknowledgment of the lack of dignity suffered by people, households and communities.
“We were taught not to complain,” remembers Berk, “and yet it’s painful now to think about the endless ways in which we were mistreated. Do you know what it is like to be forced to live in a horse stable?”
In the years following their incarceration, survivors would
usually cite how every incarcerated household was rendered anonymous when the federal government issued them a household quantity that supplanted their surname. Betty Matsuo, incarcerated at 16 and detained within the Stockton Assembly Center and Rohwer Relocation Center, advised the congressional fee, “I lost my identity. At that time, I didn’t even have a Social Security number, but the (War Relocation Authority) gave me an ID number. That was my identification. I lost my privacy and my dignity.”
For others, suppressing their anger, frustration and disgrace at being handled like a prison after they had not executed something improper impaired their well being and relationships. Mary Tsukamoto, incarcerated at 27 and detained within the Fresno Assembly Center and Jerome Relocation Center, felt powerless after the warfare as the federal government actions had been repeatedly held up as justified, although there was by no means any factual foundation for suspecting the Japanese American neighborhood of wholesale disloyalty. In 1986, she testified earlier than a congressional committee that for many years “we have lived within the shadows of this humiliating lie.” Tsukamoto thought it was essential to “gain back dignity as a people who can all dream of a (n)ation that truly upholds the promise of … (j)ustice for (a)ll.”
To see the names of those that had been incarcerated in a ceremonial guide known as the Ireich, which implies “record of consoling spirits” in Japanese, is to acknowledge their struggling. The Ireich has been on show for the previous two years on the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles.
Any member of the general public may make a reservation to position a blue dot stamp beneath the names, symbolically representing the Japanese custom of leaving stones at memorial websites. Although anybody may stamp names with none relationship to an incarceree, many surviving incarcerees have assembled their descendants and buddies collectively to stamp names of prolonged relations.
“The Ireich has become an iterative form of a monument, drawing visitors as if they are pilgrims to a sacred site,” stated Ann Burroughs, the museum’s president and CEO.
Berk was one of many first to stamp the guide, selecting to honor her mother and father, Chujiro Aochi and Kei Aochi. “My parents set such a resilient example, and by paying this tribute to them, I am able to do something positive to help overcome all of the difficult memories,” Berk defined. For the neighborhood, every stamp is a small however significant act towards repairing the indignities suffered by every incarceree and reconciling with the previous.
Plans are for the Ireich to go on a nationwide tour, with the aim of getting every title stamped at the least as soon as. Other elements of the Irei Project embrace the Ireizo, an interactive and searchable on-line archive, and the Ireihi, mild sculptures slated to be positioned at eight former World War II confinement websites beginning in 2026.
On Dec. 1, 2024, Berk gathered her 5 kids and eight grandchildren with their companions to stamp her title and to position further stamps by the names of her mother and father. She stated, “My children and grandchildren have a better understanding now of what happened to us during the war. This is a time of history we should never forget, lest our government ever takes such actions again and inflicts this painful experience upon any other person or group.”