Official Web site of the Los Angeles-based Manzanar Committee, sponsor of the annual Manzanar Pilgrimage since 1969 and the more recent Manzanar At Dusk program
February 19, 2019 marks the 77th anniversary of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s signing of Executive Order 9066, authorizing the forced removal and unjust incarceration of over 120,000 Japanese Americans in ten American concentration camps, and other confinement sites, during World War II, one of the worst violations of civil rights in our nation’s history, and... Continue Reading →
LOS ANGELES — On December 8, the Manzanar Committee, sponsors of the annual Manzanar Pilgrimage and Manzanar At Dusk events, denounced the publication of a letter to the editor in the Los Angeles Times that attempted to justify the forced removal and unjust incarceration of over 120,000 Japanese/Japanese Americans in American concentration camps and other... Continue Reading →
August 10, 2018 marks the 30th anniversary of the enactment of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 (download a PDF of the actual bill), the legislation that provided redress and reparations for the forced removal and unjust incarceration of more than 120,000 Japanese/Japanese Americans in American concentration camps, and other confinement sites, during World War... Continue Reading →
I’ve been “forced” to recall how I got started as a community activist quite a bit lately. Indeed, back in June, when NCRR (Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress; originally the National Coalition for Redress and Reparations) held their event to launch their new book about their incredible, highly impactful history, it reminded me of... Continue Reading →
LOS ANGELES — On June 25, the Manzanar Committee, sponsors of the annual Manzanar Pilgrimage since 1969 and the more recent Manzanar At Dusk program for the last 21 years, denounced the policies and actions by President Donald Trump and his administration that have either separated children of immigrants entering the United States from their... Continue Reading →
As the movement for redress and reparations for the more than 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans who were unjustly incarcerated or otherwise forcibly removed from the West Coast during World War II began to gain steam in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, different views on how to win redress emerged. Some might say that... Continue Reading →
by Erica Wei Leading up to the weekend of the Keeping Japanese American Incarceration Stories Alive trip to the Manzanar National Historic Site, I was actually very reluctant about going. I thought about dropping from participating several times. This was two weeks before final exams and it was one of the last weekends I could... Continue Reading →
Editor’s Note: Moet Kurakata and Lauren Matsumoto were participants in the Manzanar Committee’s pilot project, Keeping Japanese American Incarceration Stories Alive, which took a group of college students to the Manzanar National Historic Site for a two-day, intensive, placed-based learning experience about the unjust incarceration of Japanese and Japanese Americans in concentration camps during World... Continue Reading →
by Brian Kohaya This tryptic features Pat Sakamoto, a former Manzanar incarceree, and Lauren Matsumoto, a granddaughter of former incarcerees. In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which forced 120,000 people of Japanese descent to incarceration camps spread throughout the United States. A few months later, Pat was born. She grew up... Continue Reading →
