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And then the other thing is, more recent, is Tsuru for Solidarity. So the idea for Tsuru for Solidarity sort of started percolating at the Tule Lake pilgrimage in 2018. The "Muslim ban" had just been cleared by the Supreme Court that year and the zero tolerance policy, where ICE was intentionally separating kids from their family at the border, had just happened. And so everyone was really upset about that, because family separation in particular was like, yeah, we know what that's like, that's happened during World War II. And scapegoating of Muslims, yeah, we know about that too. [Laughs] Just like after Pearl Harbor, and even before Pearl Harbor, racial stereotypes. An in World War II, if you're a "Jap," you can't be trusted, and after 9/11, it's like, if you're Muslim, you can't be trusted. So we said, "Oh, yeah, we know what that's like." So we held our own little rally to protest the Muslim ban and zero tolerance policy, separation of families, incarceration of children. And then they did it at the Minidoka pilgrimage the week after that, and then other people started doing stuff around. So, in 2019 it was all kind of spontaneous all over the country.

So in 2019, people were going out to Crystal City, and they found out that Dilley, which is one of the family detention centers, there were three at that time, specifically family detention centers, where they're locking up families that came across the border. That Dilley was like half an hour drive away from Crystal City. So they said, "Well, hell, we ought to go over there and protest," so they went over and protested. And then they found out that they're going to create another, specifically child imprisonment, detention center at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, later that summer, so they said, "Well, we got to go there and protest that." And so people showed up, including a number of what we call our survivors, the people who were actually in the camps, like Satsuki In is probably the most well-known, but like Paul Tomita locally was also in that group. They've all been really outspoken. So that's kind of energized us to, or for some of us, kind of shamed us. Said, okay, so there's these people who, now they're like eight, eighty-five years old, who are out there protesting injustice because of what happened to them as little kids. So what are we doing? We can't just sit on our ass and do nothing. So, yeah. So I've been working with La Resistencia and going out to the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma to try to help shut it down and also to free people. Because conditions were bad there to begin with, but with COVID it's even worse. All those things that we know of and remember from the camps period, like separation of families, locking up kids, bad sanitation, bad food, inadequate health care. And we go through that list and every one of them you can check off at NWDC. And Paul says, "The names change, the colors change, but it's all the same old shit." So we're going back out there on February 19th for Day of Remembrance. We're going to stop at Puyallup where they locked people up for temporary detention in '42, and then we're going to drive over and hold another rally in front of the detention center, Northwest Detention Center, where they're still locking up people in 2022, and try to draw the connections. Eighty years on, we're still doing the same type of racial stereotyping and incarceration with no real justification. Other than, "We don't like your color and your race or where you came from."

AT: I work with the Nikkei Student Union here and we're planning on trying to recruit people to also join in on that effort on the 19th. Yeah.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2022 Seattle Chapter JACL. All Rights Reserved.