“I keep saying this, but remembering is a call to action,” Visiting Assistant Professor of Comparative American Studies Erin Aoyama said before a teach-in on Thursday commemorating the Day of Remembrance.
Since 1978, the Day of Remembrance has been observed within Japanese American communities to mark the anniversary of Executive Order 9066, which, in 1942, authorized the internment of over 125,000 Japanese Americans. On Thursday, students, faculty, and community members gathered in Hallock Auditorium to hear from activist Mike Ishii, OC ’88; Roy Ebihara, an internment camp survivor; and members of Oberlin faculty, who spoke about the history of Japanese American internment and connected it to the ongoing detention of migrants by the Trump administration.
Aoyama began planning the teach-in last year with College third-year Sam Pinedo, who helped organize a similar event last February. In addition to the current programming connected to Japanese American history on campus, including an exhibition on contested histories, Aoyama wanted the teach-in to draw from that momentum while pushing the conversation further.
Pinedo said she appreciated the connections and expertise that Aoyama brings as a scholar of Japanese incarceration and echoed Aoyama’s comments on what the past can reflect about our present state.
“I just think it’s super important to use the memory of the past to propel current-day activism,” Pinedo said. “It helps establish patterns and helps us understand the world around us in a way, and also [is a] way to remember our family [and] what they went through.”
Throughout the teach-in, frequent links were made between the incarceration of people of Japanese descent during World War II and the current treatment of immigrants under the Trump administration.
Professor of Africana Studies and Comparative American Studies Meredith Gadsby connected the Day of Remembrance to Toni Morrison’s work about the othering of people in their own country. She related this othering to both the internment of Japanese Americans and to the current targeting of immigrant groups. Visiting Assistant Professor of History Jonathan Van Harmelen drew connections between the legal and political justification for incarceration of Japanese Americans with the detention of immigrants through ICE. He related the recent Supreme Court case Noem vs. Vazquez Perdomo to Korematsu vs. United States, which held internment to be constitutional. He also likened Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelan immigrants to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s use of the Act to put Japanese Americans in internment camps.
Ishii discussed his activism related to immigration enforcement alongside his family history. He is the executive director of Tsuru for Solidarity, a Japanese American organization dedicated to ending the detention of migrants by the U.S. government.
“What’s happening today is a repetition of our history,” he said in an interview with the Review. “They’re using the blueprint from World War II, and they’ve applied it to immigrants once again today with surveillance, with forced removals, with mass incarceration, with denial of due process and civil liberties with extreme violations of human rights.”
Drawing parallels between current proposals for nationwide ICE detention expansion and the historical incarceration of Japanese Americans, Ishii emphasized the devastating impact on children. He referenced the abduction of five-year-old Liam Ramos of Minneapolis, connecting the tragedy to his personal history — Ishii’s mother was detained at age 10, along with members of his extended family.
The event closed with a conversation between Aoyama and Ebihara on the latter’s experiences of being incarcerated as a child. Ebihara, a longtime Oberlin resident, said he still struggles with memories of how his family was treated during World War II. He spoke about how after the attack on Pearl Harbor, his family was nearly killed, and their house was burned by vigilante groups before they were detained. He was held for several years at Topaz War Relocation Center in Delta, UT, before his family was relocated to Cleveland.
The teach-in was not the only event remembering the history of Japanese Americans this February. On Friday, Ishii spoke at the Allen Memorial Art Museum at an event showcasing the works of Japanese American artists in the Allen’s collection. Aoyama also helped bring to Oberlin the “Contested Histories” traveling exhibit, which features a collection of artifacts related to Japanese internment. “Contested Histories” is currently on display on the first floor of Mary Church Terrell Main Library and will remain there until March 15.
