Activists Call for Action Following ICE Raid in Little Tokyo

A crowd estimated at over 500 attended a rally Aug. 23 outside the Japanese American National Museum for a Day of Action in response to federal immigration enforcement activities in Little Tokyo a week earlier.

On Aug. 14, during a speech by Gov. Gavin Newsom at JANM's Democracy Center, armed ICE and Border Patrol agents filled the museum's plaza and reportedly arrested two individuals. It was at that very location, outside the former Nishi Hongwanji Buddhist Temple, that Japanese Americans boarded buses to incarceration camps in 1942.

Sponsors of the rally included the Manzanar Committee, National Park Conservation Association, Go For Broke National Education Center, JANM, JACL, Little Tokyo Historical Society, Little Tokyo Service Center, Nikkei for Civil Rights & Redress, Nikkei Progressives, and Tuna Canyon Detention Station Coalition.

Some participants held up banners representing the 10 War Relocation Authority camps and other confinement sites. Aston Nagahashi of Boy Scout Troop 719 brought a replica of a camp guard tower that he created for his Eagle Scout project. Former incarcerees and descendants of incarcerees sat on the stage behind the speakers.

The NPCA organized similar events at Manzanar and other National Park Service sites that day to protest the Trump Administration's efforts to stop the national parks, the Smithsonian and other institutions from educating the public about any negative aspects of American history, such as slavery.

Dana Fujiko Heatherton of the Japanese American Confinement Site Consortium, one of the organizers of the Little Tokyo event, served as emcee.

"By trade, this is not what I do," she said. "But I have just been really pissed and angry and feeling helpless. I'm just a mom that wanted to do something and I called up everyone I knew, I emailed everyone I knew and I said, 'What do we do about this? Our history is getting erased before our eyes. We cannot let this happen. We cannot be silent while this is occurring.

"And it's personal to me because my grandparents were rounded up on this very corner in 1942. They were sent to Manzanar and Gila River along with many of our families here today ...

"We're going to have to talk about not only the atrocities happening for immigrant communities today, but our history is at threat. And when we don't remember, dangerous things happen."

The program started with a land acknowledgement by Seth Johnson of the Gabrieleno Tongva San Gabriel Band of Mission Indians.

"Just like you and just like people behind me, I am my ancestors' dream," said Johnson. "Their blood flows through my veins, just like their blood flows through yours. We are the descendants of the 1% they could not kill and the 1% that they could not take away ...

"As the first people of Tongva of Los Angeles, we have suffered much from the Spanish crown, the Mexican Republic and the current administration. They have tried to erase our people, to destroy our way of life.They have taken our kids, our freedom, our culture, our land, and yet, E'kwa'shem -- we are still here. And now as freedom is continually being taken away from our friends, neighbors, and community members, we should not be surprised, only saddened, that we have to teach these rulers these lessons again. The lesson that we have taught them for some 400 years now: we are people that bleed red, the same as you. We eat, sleep, dream, and have the right to live, the same as you do. Nothing they can do will change this reality."

Message From Museum

Ann Burroughs, president and CEO of JANM, noted that the event was being held in the Norman Y. Mineta Democracy Plaza, named in memory of a congressman, U.S. transportation secretary, and JANM trustee. She described Mineta as ""a man who dedicated his life to public service ... who fought tirelessly to ensure that the history, the memories, the experiences, and the stories of the Japanese Americans are never forgotten ... It was important that we named this plaza for him because ... for many, many Japanese American families, this is hallowed ground.

"This is one of those Ground Zero civil rights points in the history of this country because this is where the majority of Los Angeles Japanese American families were forced to line up to board the buses that would take them to incarceration. So for us JANM, this memory, this occurrence is part of our DNA ... We will not bow to any pressure to erase history, to change our exhibits, to change the way we tell the story, or to change the way we honor history and the people who made that hstory."

Burroughs, a native of South Africa who was jailed as a political prisoner for demonstrating against apartheid, warned against repeating the transgressions of past U.S. policies. "What happened to Japanese Americans in 1942 was a miscarriage of justice then, and what we've seen happening to our brothers and sisters in the immigrant communities is a miscarriage of justice now. The terror that ICE and the Customs and Border Patrol raise across the country, the terror of 1942 when families were rounded up, forcibly removed, dispossessed and incarcerated ... That terror is no different. The same laws are being used now that were used in 1942. It is the same climate of prejudice, of hate, of racism and discrimination. And we have to stand strong ...

"We cannot forget that what we are doing today is standing up against the actions of the administration's broader and ongoing assault to dismantle the foundational principles of diversity, of equity, of inclusion, the principles of democracy ... to suppress historical narratives that challenge their own preferred version of events, their attempt to erase the contributions of people of color, women, LGBTQIA+ individuals ... They're trying to recast American history as American exceptionalism, and to do that ignores the diversity and the extraordinary richness of the ethnic and cultural diversity that makes up this country.

"All of the things that we celebrate, that make this country great, they are attempting to erase, but it's important to understand that it is not just from an ideological perspective. They have weapons at their disposal to ensure that museums and libraries, places where public history is told, fall to their will. They've dismantled the institutions. They've dismantled funding streams that have been instrumental in funding public history, libraries, museums. The implications of what's happening now stretch far beyond America's historical sites, which is why we have to continue to challenge the revisionist history."

National Park Perspective

Dennis Arguelles of the National Parks Conservation Association said of the parks, "They're places of spectacular natural beauty and we decided to protect them in perpetuity. Someone even called them 'America's best idea.' Personally, I feel there are some better American ideas, like ending slavery, the 1964 Civil Rights Act. But our parks play a critical role preserving and telling the stories that shape our nation, including those chapters where we failed to live up to our own democratic ideals. A real democracy doesn't shy away from the truth, dsspite how painful and unflattering ...

"Unfortunately, our parks face an existential crisis. This administration and its allies would happily sacrifice (those stories) to short-term profit and corporate greed, and rewrite history to promote their own exclusionist narrative. If given the chance, they'll eliminate up to three quarters of our parks and devastate the ranks of our national park rangers -- a plan that is already in process. Since January, the National Park Service has lost nearly 25% of its staff, with more draconian cut along the way.

"This administration's recent order to supposedly bring 'sanity' back to American history is nothing less than an attempt to impose its own narrow, jingoistic and chauvinistic view of American heritage. To this we join in demanding, 'Hands off our history! People and places will not be erased!'

Arguelles added, "Japanese American exclusion and incarceration during World War II is one of the many stories told by our national parks. But it reverberates so powerfully because of what we are witnessing today, including right on this spot a little more than a week ago, the militariization of our streets, stripping due process, inhumane detention, and the racist scapegoating of people of color ... We will resist efforts to plunder our public lands and whitewash our past, and we pledge our support to those of you on the front line in protecting our parks, history and democracy."

Family History

Glen Kitayama of the Manzanar Committee related some of his family history. "On the early morning of Dec. 8, 1941, just hours after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, my maternal grandfather, Shintaro Nakagawa, was dragged out of his bed and arrested by the FBI. My mother, Kimiko Nakagawa, remembers the terror that morning as a 9-year-old girl wondering if she would ever see her father again. And this is what we see happening right now.

"The Justice Department held my grandfather without due process and without medication to treat his Type 1 diabetes. His only crime was that he was a Japanese immigrant fisherman from Terminal Island. Like many of you ... we never thought that we'd witness anything like this in our lifetime, and yet here we are today. The Trump Administration has used the Enemy Aliens Act for the first time since World War II to kidnap and arrest immigrants just like my grandfather ... The late Nikkei journalist James Omura asked rhetorically, 'Has the Gustavo come to America?' I ask that same question today ...

"They began the overhaul of the National Park Service, the Smithsonian and other public institutions to censor how American history is remembered, presented and taught. They punish universities for allowing free speech on campus. They target the free press as enemies of the people ... Sadly, many of these institutions have bowed down to the tyrant's demands. Taken together, what does that look like to you?"

Kitayama continued, "We need to decide what kind of world that we want to live in. We cannot normalize impunity. We cannot normalize a police state, like we saw last week ... We cannot normalize fascism -- call it what it is. We have to defy it for our rights and the rights of others. We've been through this before. We're not going away. Democracy is fragile and we need to keep going. I know these are really dark times right now, but remember, there's always hope."

He reminded the crowd that some dictators, like former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, are now in prison.

First-hand Experiences

Takashi Hoshizaki, 99, was one of the 63 draft resisters at the Heart Mountain camp in Wyoming. He recalled, "We were sentenced to three years in the federal penitentiary, and after serving about two years ... we were released, but we were still under the jurisdiction of the federal prison." The resisters, who had refused to serve in the military until their civil rights were restored, were pardoned by President Harry Truman in 1947.

As Sansei became more politically active and protested the Vietnam War, he said, they asked why Nisei didn't we protest their incarceration. Hoshizaki credited writer Frank Chin with researching and writing about the resisters, ultimately publishing an article about them in The Rafu Shimpo and letting the community know that were was indeed resistance during World War II.

Kyoko Oda, 80, who was born in camp, said that her family was incarcerated at Tule Lake because they had answered "no-no" on the loyalty questionnaire. "it was the most notorious of the 10 concentration camps. A thousand armed troops invaded when it became a maximum security prison. It was an example of extreme violence against humanity where Japanese and Japanese American families suffered mental and physical abuse. My father, Tatsuo Inouye, was confined to the Tule Lake segregation stockade without due process in place that was a prison in a prison. He was beaten and continually starved by the guards, who allowed him one tablespoon of rice. He was tortured by standing up in the freezing snow for several hours for 100 days ...

"It was like Alligator Alcatraz, to strike fear just because he was Japanese. This is a dark secret that is revealed in his diary. My mother and sisters were traumatized when he was suddenly taken to the stockade ... He was innocent of any wrongdoing.

"I am here today to represent my family ... The same thing is happening here in Los Angeles and across the country today. Our history is in danger of being erased at places like the national monuments at Tule Lake and Manzanar. Our government describes it as 'content correction.' Today is a day of action and I am enraged how immigrants are being treated violently. The masked raids have continued daily in our city.

"My father wrote in his diary in 1943, 'I want to believe that goodness exists in this country. I want to believe that there are people with good judgment who believes in justice and democratic principles. I want to appeal to such people to let them know the miserable conditions that the Japanese are experiencing here. I want to appeal to them as a member of the human race.'

"Our brown-skinned brothers and sisters are going through hell. We must deserve and protect our national parks' historical integrity, or there will be no democracy tomorrow."

Jeanette Fujita Ohnishi, who was born at the Minidoka camp in Idaho on Aug. 23, 1945, was brought on stage so that the audience could sing "Happy Birthday."

"There were lots of places she could be today, but she said she needed to be here," said Heatherton.

Descendant of Incarcerees

Abigail Chun of Nikkei Progressives spoke as a descendant of Gila River, Ariz. incarcerees. "I first learned about Japanese American incarceration in the fourth grade, learning what happened to my community, my grandmother, seven years old at the time ... But in this history, I also found deep inspiration and pride. I was part of a legacy of resilience and resistance to injustice. Learning about the experiences of my ancestors opened the door to a much larger awakening. I started thinking not just of Japanese American history, but the histories of other oppressed communities as well. And the more I learned, the more similarities I found, and the clearer it became that our destinies, like our past, were inextricably intertwined.

"The histories of our communities must continue to be preserved and shared, not only for ourselves but for everyone. Our past teaches us the importance of fighting against our erasure as well as the erasure of others. It shows us what it takes to make social change and to protect one another. And it tells us that the answer is most often teamwork. The Trump Administration's targeting of Japanese American history is personal to us, but it is not isolated. And that means we cannot be isolated in our resistance.

"But the great news, the news that Trump and his team desperately do not want you to know, is that we the people have a lot of practice working together. From Oxnard sugar beet strike to South African divestment, to the Filipino farmworkers' movement and Palestinian organizing, from the Third World Liberation Front to the reparations movement, history shows that we can do amazing things when we unite as one. Today our immigrant communities are under vicious attacks by the Trump Administration ... Since January, Nikkei Progressives has been working in Little Tokyo and beyond to support our immigrant brothers and sisters, and we encourage you to help us by getting involved.

"The world Trump aims to create is a world incompatible with reality. The truth of oppressed people's existence, our ongoing place in history, disprove and invalidate his whitewashed vision for America. That is why Trump and his team are so urgently trying to destroy truth and why they must fight to protect it. The next generation deserves to know our histories, to have the opportunity that I did to be inspired, awakened, shaped, and moved by them."

Rev. Yoshi Kuramoto of Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE) and San Pedro United Methodist Church, said, "As a preacher, I wholeheartedly believe in the practice of deliberating God. 'The word became flesh' means that our prayers for justice must have concrete manifestation, so I appreciate all of your frontline presence in defining the spirit that will always stand amidst the people who fight for what is moral and fair and right and just. Now the violent abduction, primarily of our Latinx/Hispanic neighbors, that we witness today in this city reminds us of a painful past, of the children and families of Japanese heritage and their complete uprooting from their homes on the road to incarceration. And it is in their name and it is in their honor that we must solemnly swear to tell the truth of history and to confront the lies of erasure and revisionism by the means of organization and sustained struggle.

"And 'Never again' means we stand side by side, people of all colors and all religions, across identity lines, firmly against the threats of fascism. And as we connect the dots of history, we have to know that what happened was not a Japanese problem, nor is it today a Mexican or a Central American problem. It is a problem imposed upon the people because these are our neighbors."

Kuramoto closed by saying, "Los Angeles, the City of Angels, the sanctuary city -- let us welcome the smile of our ancestors by committing to making these words a reality: ICE, get the heck out of this city!"

Vlad Carrasco of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA) said, "Little Tokyo ... is where in 1942, families were kidnapped, separated, and sent to internment camps. Japanese Americans were torn from their families and they were called enemy aliens, having done nothing wrong, committed no crime. The only thing that was different about them was the way they look, and that's what we're seeing now, 80 years later.

"Literally days ago, CBP (Customs and Border Protection) raided Little Tokyo and invaded this immigrant community ... The past came roaring back into our present. Now our immigrant families, Latino, Black, Asian, Muslim communities, are getting disappeared again ... So we know that the camps are not a relic at the past. Back then they called them relocation camps, but now they call them detention camps. We know that what they are for real, they're prisons ...

"The struggles of the Japanese Americans in 1942 are clearly connected to the struggles for justice today, the struggles for justice for immigrant communities. So when they put our people in cages ... they're trying to say that some people's rights are optional, that some people are dismissable, that some people don't count. But what we've got to remember is that ... we have our power."

Chun led the gathering in a chant: "When our community is under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!"

The program, which was briefly interrupted by a cloudburst, opened and closed with a performance by L.A. Taiko Collective.