February 26, 2025
Earlier this month, we joined the Puyallup Valley JACL for a Day of Remembrance at the site of the former Puyallup Assembly Center on the Washington State Fairgrounds. This event was a powerful reminder of the impact the incarceration experience has had on our families, our communities, and our country. In addition to hearing from survivors and other community members, it was a special opportunity to view the new Puyallup Remembrance Gallery, a permanent historic exhibit and memorial wall that lists the names of the more than 7,500 people imprisoned at Puyallup in 1942.
We then joined Tsuru for Solidarity last week for a rally and press conference to declare together as a community: Stop Repeating History! Speakers called attention to the unjust arrests and deportations that immigrants currently face, echoing the trauma and violence faced by our own community during WWII.
Together, these community gatherings served as a critical reminder that the Day of Remembrance is not merely a passive commemoration of the past — it is a way to activate the lessons of our history and interrupt injustice in the present.
As Stan Shikuma said when he addressed the crowd at Puyallup, “When we say ‘Never Again Is Now,’ what we are actually asking you to do is to step up, speak out, step forward…. We think so much of the people who lived through the camp experience, who resisted and survived through that ordeal, and we have great respect for them. I have a grandson that’s going to turn two in a few months, and I wonder, in 40 years or 60 years, what he’s going to say about his grandfather. When they say, ‘Remember the dark days when people were being pulled off the street, families were broken up, and they were deported in horrible conditions and put in mass concentration camps? Do you know what my grandpa did?’ I want him to be able to say I did something and not be ashamed. So why do we do this? Kodomo no tame ni, for the sake of the children.”
Thank you to our friends at Tsuru for Solidarity and the Puyallup Valley JACL for organizing these powerful Day of Remembrance events!
Learn more about the Puyallup Remembrance Gallery from our friends at the Puyallup Valley JACL, and be sure to follow Tsuru for Solidarity for news and calls to action.