‘We cannot remain silent’: Descendants of incarcerated Japanese Americans turn trauma into advocacy

Irene Nakahara still wonders what could have been. 

As a third-generation Japanese American living in Los Angeles during the early 1940s, the now 85-year-old Richmond resident had a bright future. She later told her granddaughter, Miya Sommers, that if she had grown up and stayed in the United States, she could have gone into academia and lived a more independent life. 

But on February 19, 1942, Nakahara’s family’s trajectory was upended. 

On that day, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt passed Executive Order 9066, condemning 125,000 Japanese Americans to relocation and incarceration at camps around the country. The law was passed in the aftermath of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, leading to racist fears of a security emergency, even though all but a handful of Americans of Japanese descent were peaceful and most were citizens. The National Park Service has said that “no person of Japanese ancestry living in the U.S. was convicted of any serious act of espionage or sabotage during World War II,” while 18 white people were convicted. 

The incarceration decimated Japanese Americans, including multiple families in Richmond, El Cerrito and San Pablo who were the heart of a thriving Northern California flower growing industry. Homes were repossessed, businesses were destroyed, and personal property — worth $400 million — was taken over and never recovered.

The impacts on Japanese families in Richmond and west Contra Costa County are explored in the short documentary Blossoms and Thorns, commissioned and funded by the Contra Costa Japanese American Citizens League to depict the stories of Richmond’s Nikkei flower growers Ruby Adachi Hiramoto, Flora Ninomiya, and Tom Oishi. The industry blossomed in the late 1800s and became a hub for the cut flower industry throughout Northern California, according to the Japanese American National Museum. But after Pearl Harbor these residents were rounded up and removed to remote parts of the United States, forced to live in barren desert incarceration camps. Some of them returned to Richmond after the war while others went back to Japan.

Sommers told Richmondside that her grandmother, who currently lives in an assisted living facility in Richmond, believed women did not have the same educational opportunities in Japan as in the United States in those days, and she struggled to adapt. 

“In Japan, they were poor, and [because the society was] hierarchical and sexist, she didn’t get the same opportunities,” Sommers said. “So she was always resentful they had to go back.”

About 20 years later, Nakahara returned to the United States with her family, but she felt she had missed the opportunity to get the best possible education and build a better life.

Thousands of Japanese Americans suffered similar indignities that not only made it harder to stand up for themselves economically but also led to a lifetime of rancor and trauma. 

A study in the mid-1990s found a significant number of people who were incarcerated at those camps still experienced post-traumatic stress disorder 50 years later. Many also dealt with the stoic “Shikata ga nai” mentality (“It cannot be helped”), which led to intergenerational trauma where succeeding generations failed to understand their parents’ struggles. Others rejected their heritage, leading to identity issues. And some felt the country never appreciated their decision to go peacefully into the camps and even fight in the war for the Allies. 

Angela Urata, an Oakland resident, said her mother not only never spoke to her about the camps because of that trauma but also left her with a sense of hardness in personal relationships in general. 

She once told her daughter she should not trust her friends because they can stab you in the back. This is a reference to her mother getting taken away by government employees in front of white female friends, who did not do anything to stop the officials and instead “were just staring at her.” 

“That colored her perception of people,” Urata said. 

Over the years, Japanese Americans sought to place increased attention on these difficulties through remembrance events, often by connecting their experience to that of other immigrants. 

The Richmond Museum of History & Culture has a rose garden dedicated to the legacy of the flower growing families, who when they returned from their incarceration found their properties had been vandalized or reappropriated.

Recently, remembrance events have grown in urgency as more people who lived through that time pass away each year, and after Trump won the election on an anti-immigrant platform and has rushed to implement a series of hard-line, aggressive immigration enforcement policies in his first weeks in office.  

In the week leading to the 83rd anniversary of the incarceration, Japanese American organizations have been highlighting the similarities of the WWII-era camps to Donald Trump’s recent policies and rhetoric, calling for solidarity between the communities affected, including Asian Americans and Latino Americans, to fight back together. 

On Feb. 11, the Board of Trustees of the Japanese American National Museum released a statement saying they would continue to use history “to confront contemporary threats to democracy and human dignity.” The statement denounced the creation of a new detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 for mass deportation, the attempt to end birthright citizenship, and the freezing of federal funds. 

“We are deeply troubled by the erosion of civil rights … We cannot remain silent while these policies attempt to strip people of their humanity and dignity and reverse course on our nation’s journey towards a more just and equitable future,” the board said. 

On Feb. 14, the San Francisco-based Japanese American Historical Society (JAHS) held a press conference highlighting how survivors of concentration camps saw human rights violations within hours of Roosevelt’s executive order. Saburo Fukuda, an immigrant rights advocate whose family was sent to the Amache American concentration camp and Crystal City Family Detention Camp, spoke about seeing the FBI arrest his father, a leader in the San Francisco Konko Church. 

Sommers said her family’s incarceration and the subsequent civil rights fight her parents engaged in the 1980s also inspired her to get involved in activism. 

When President Trump was elected in 2016, Japanese Americans like her immediately recognized the implications of his rise to power. They saw parallels between the 1940s camps and the abusive and inhuman detention system and immigration policies of Trump’s first term, including the incarceration of children, separating families, and physical and sexual violence. In the last two years, this community has also drawn parallels between the encampments and the challenges faced by the Palestinian people. 

Sommers says Trump’s first month of his second term and the restrictive immigration policies he has proposed and implemented are activating more people today. 

“More folks are thinking about training ourselves about how to intervene if ICE comes [calling], thinking about how to get organized and connecting with local communities [dealing with them],” Sommers said. 

An emotional Japantown ceremony

On Sunday, Feb. 16, the JAHS hosted the annual Bay Area Day of Remembrance. The theme, “Carrying the Light for Justice,” connected the encampments of the past and present.

Attendees said part of remembering the struggles of their families, nearly 2,000 of whom died in the camps, meant standing up for people currently denigrated, separated, and incarcerated without justification. 

The ceremony took place inside the AMC Kabuki 8 Theaters in San Francisco. It was a beautiful, sometimes somber program full of histories, dance, music, and a call to action against injustice. 

Mike Ishii, the director of Tsuru for Solidarity, an organization solely focused on supporting immigrants and refugees, was the main speaker. 

In a speech full of passion, he called out to his fellow Japanese Americans to stand with their neighbors and to think about how much their parents would have appreciated that help when they needed it the most. 

“ We are dazed by the cruelty and efficiency of an attempted overthrow of civil society, and there is despair, there’s fear and discouragement. After all, they’re bringing armed forces into the communities to round people up,” Ishii said. “But to succumb and remain complacent in this moment is a form of obedience. And a surrender to fascism. It abandons our ancestors and our survivors present here today to the moral complacency of a nation that allowed for our people to be rounded-up.” 

After Ishii spoke, a heart-rending edition of a traditional Japanese classical melody was played to the respectful silence of the hundreds gathered. 

Then, after a presentation by the director of a Japanese Latin American organization about the history of displacement, three girls from a local elementary school read a poem about the need for mutual respect and support between communities. A cleansing ceremony followed, conducted before the candlelight vigil. Descendants of incarcerated people or living survivors placed candles on top of miniature versions of each camp. After the ceremony, the survivors led a procession through Japantown. 

Satsuki Ina, a published author and mental health professional, was celebrated as this year’s remembrance honoree. Ina, who was born in a prison camp, wrote a book about her family’s incarceration based on secret letters her parents sent to each other while incarcerated at separate camps. In the last few years, she has been among the most visible Japanese American immigrant advocates, at one point standing in front of a detention facility in Dilley, Texas, to stop ICE from transferring immigrants. 

Ryan Hamamoto, a San Francisco resident who participated in the procession, said he brought his daughter to the event to reclaim the culture lost during incarceration. 

“There’s a pretty bold throughline that goes from the events of the past to where we currently are,” Hamamoto said. 

Several Japanese American organizations, including Tsuru and the Berkeley Buddhist Temple, hosted an interfaith service at Christ United Presbyterian Church in San Francisco Feb. 19.  

Honoring ancestors by supporting all immigrants

Jefferey Nakamura, a leader at the Japanese American Religious Federation, said many in his community want to help all immigrants fight Trump because they feel they will also be targeted. 

Nakamura said he believed Chinese immigrants could be targeted for detention, which could increase overall racism toward other Asian Americans. After all, the COVID-19 pandemic already increased demeaning actions against them. 

 ”The problem is that we just got over this whole anti-Asian hate thing driven by, unfortunately, xenophobia with Trump saying that the China virus created COVID,” Nakamura said. “We’re sort of saying, ‘Gee, here we go again he’s weaponizing this anti-immigrant thing.”

The community leader said one current issue facing Latin American immigrants that the Japanese community can relate to is the need for a safe sanctuary. After the camps, Nakamura noted that many churches opened their doors and let the immigrants live for up to a year while they got back on their feet. 

“ Some of them were, you know, illegal aliens, too. So, they were in danger of being deported. Just like the immigrants today,“ Nakamura said.

Minori Tsuge, an Oakland resident for about 30 years, said her family had friends who went to incarceration camps, but many of them have now passed away. Seeing the news of a rise in hateful rhetoric is sad, she said, and it’s like “reliving the horrible past all over again.”

“These friends of ours lived in Mountain View, Palo Alto, and the surrounding areas [who] were gardeners, farmers, seamstresses, and florists,” Tsuge noted, making the point that many of the people rounded up today also do these low-income jobs. 

Miya Sommers, an activist in San Francisco, said that as the Trump administration continues its “assault” on American institutions, it’s essential for activists like herself to have a sustained long-term plan for engagement. After the election and a year of activism focused on Ukraine and Palestine, she noticed many were burned out. They need to refresh and regroup to build resiliency over the coming four years. 

“We’re very fractured at the moment because, after the election, folks slowed down. I think we were completely unprepared for a second troubled election,” Sommers said. That’s why focusing on historical parallels where extreme injustice took place but where a measure of justice ultimately won out because of people working together and getting involved publicly and loudly is essential. 

Connections in agriculture and advocacy

The similarities and connections between the immigrant experiences of Asian and Latin Americans go back to the country’s beginning. Both communities often worked alongside Black residents to build the country’s infrastructure, from managing and tilling land to putting down the country’s rails.  

Many of the incarcerated Japanese Americans were agricultural or manual laborers, just like many Latin American immigrants today. Agriculture expert and East Bay native James Nakahara (no relation to Irene) said Japanese American farmers ran lucrative farms in California, Washington, and Oregon because of their knowledge of Japanese volcanic soil. When they returned after the war, it took them years to regain their level of success. 

There were also many Latin Americans of Asian descent who were affected by the incarcerations around WWII. Thousands were also repatriated and lost their homes, something organizations like the Japanese Peruvian Oral History Project and the Campaign for Justice work to highlight. 

At the Japanese Remembrance Ceremony in San Francisco, Grace Shimizu, director of the Japanese-Peruvian Oral History Project, noted that 32,000 people from 18 Latin American countries, and also of German, Italian, and Jewish ancestry, were turned into government facilities along with Japanese Americans. 

“ We must include the wartime and redress experiences of the enemy aliens in the U.S. and Latin America. Because one lesson we’ve learned is that the U.S. government will target vulnerable communities as it has in many times targeted immigrants and migrants,” she said. 

Angela Urata said her family’s history of hardship not only pushed her to learn more about incarceration and engage more directly with it, but it eventually led to her working to help Latin Americans in their land. 

Urata was one of the first Japanese American organizers to return to Tule Lake decades after the encampments as part of the Japanese American community’s redress movement. This was the movement that pushed for recognition from the U.S. government to admit its wrong, and led to the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 and reparations of $20,000 to people who survived. As Jefferey Nakamura said, their parents “deserved some recognition and some recompense,” 

That work led Urata to work in a nonprofit that sought to help El Salvador in the aftermath of its political turmoil between the 1980s and 2000s. “When I heard about the killings in El Salvador, I just felt like I needed to stand up and do something about it,” she said. 

When Trump was elected in 2016, Urata worked with the First Church in Berkeley, which opened its arms to her fellow Japanese Americans in the 1940s, to create a protest program to do the same for Muslim immigrants in the East Bay. For 2025, she has a similar message of empowerment through action.  

“What’s happening now is a repeat of what happened to our people. We must take action and stand on moral authority to honor their legacy. It’s the only course to take during these times,” she said in a phone interview as she quietly cried. “I’m here to protect the rights of the most vulnerable people. These policies have to stop. I feel stronger than ever that solidarity is love in action and has a generative power. We were made for these times. We’ve inherited the grit and grace of our ancestors. We are strong. I really believe that.”

Richmondside Editor Kari Hulac contributed to this report.