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Nihonmachi Outreach Committee (NOC)
                           Equality, Justice and Peace

 

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  January, 2019 Issue
 
39th Annual San Jose
Day of Remembrance


"#NeverAgainIsNow" 
2019 Day of Remembrance Flyer 
Sunday, February 17, 2019
5:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m.

San Jose Buddhist Church Betsuin
640 North Fifth Street
San Jose, CA

Event is free and open to the public
Download flyer
 
  The 39th Annual San Jose Day of Remembrance event commemorates the 77th anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 9066. The order led to the forced removal and incarceration of 120,000 people of Japanese descent during World War II.  Hundreds of people will gather together at this annual event not only to remember that great civil liberties tragedy, but to also reflect on what that event means to all of us today.

The 2019  event carries the theme "#Never Again Is Now".  During the past year, the story of Japanese American incarceration has been melded into several big national stories.

Border detention  
Many prominent Americans, including former first lady, Laura Bush, and actor George Takei, drew stark parallels between Japanese American WWII incarceration and the "zero tolerance" border policy
 
"I cannot for a moment imagine what my childhood would have been like had I been thrown into a camp without my parents. That this is happening today fills me with both rage and grief: rage toward a failed political leadership who appear to have lost even their most basic humanity, and a profound grief for the families affected."
-- George Takei
 
No to Concentration Camps and Islamaphobia Rally    
Justice Sonia Sotomayor's dissent in
Trump v. Hawaii (Trump Travel Ban):
 
"By blindly accepting the Government's misguided invitation to sanction a discriminatory policy motivated by animosity toward a disfavored group, all in the name of a superficial claim of national security, the Court redeploys the same dangerous logic underlying Korematsu and merely replaces one “gravely wrong” decision with another."
Download SCOTUS Trump v. Hawaii opinion

As recipients of an official apology from the United States government as a part of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, many Japanese Americans, as well as other Americans, feel that it is our responsibility to defend our friends, neighbors,  classmates, colleagues, and other communities when they become the target of discrimination. During these tumultuous and divisive times, ordinary people are rising up within their own communities to effect positive change.

 
 

The Day of Remembrance is an event that aims to bring diverse communities together in order to build trust, respect, and understanding among all people and to renew our pledge to fight for equality, justice, and peace.

 
 
Candlelight procession in San Jose Japantown   Candlelighting ceremony honors each camp
Traditional candlelight procession through San Jose's historic Japantown. Photo courtesy of Andy Frazer.   A candle is lit in memory for each of the camps.
Photo courtesy of Andy Frazer.
 

Featured Speaker:  Don Tamaki
 
Don Tamaki     Don Tamaki, a partner for Minami Tamaki LLP, was an attorney for the coram nobis legal team that reopened and helped to overturn the Supreme Court case Korematsu v. the United States. Don wrote the following article for the Nichi Bei Weekly in July 2018. 
 
On June 26, 2018, by a 5-4 majority, the Supreme Court in Trump v. Hawaii upheld President Donald Trump’s so-called “Travel Ban,” the thrice-revised executive orders barring entry of people from Muslim-majority nations.

When Trump announced his first order in January, 2017, travelers having nothing to do with terrorism were detained, U.S. residents were stranded abroad, and families were separated. Thousands of validly issued visas were canceled. Hundreds with such visas were prevented from boarding planes or denied entry on arrival, including refugees running for their lives from terrorism who had already undergone a stringent vetting process.
 Read more...

Featured Speaker:  Teresa Castellanos
Teresa Caltellanos    Teresa Castellanos is the Coordinator for Immigrant Relations and Integration Services for Santa Clara County. She has worked with immigrant communities for over 25 years. Through Teresa’s work in collaboration with colleagues and community agencies, 131,000 SCC residents have received assistance with the citizenship process.  Previously she worked as Citizenship Services Coordinator for Catholic Charities. She has also served on the Curriculum Advisory Committee representing Special Education. 

Remembrance Speaker:  Chizu Omori
Chizu Omori Chizu Omori was 12 years old when she and her family were forced from their home in Southern California to the Poston War Relocation Center in 1942. Under Executive Order 9066, they were imprisoned in the Arizona desert for three and a half years. Chizu and her sister co-produced the documentary Rabbit in the Moon, which told about their family’s WWII incarceration experiences and the divisions and tensions that the incarceration caused within the Japanese-American community. Their documentary was recognized with several awards including the Best Documentary Cinematography at the Sundance Film Festival in 1999. Currently in her late eighties, Chizu is active with the Nikkei Resisters, a Japanese American social justice group in the Bay Area. 
Listen to Chizu Omori talk about how her incarceration experience fuels her activism on KALW

NOC Keynote Speaker: Masao Suzuki
Masao Suzuki   
Professor Masao Suzuki has taught economics at Skyline College for 18 years. His main fields of interest are U.S. economic crisis and the economics of race, ethnicity, and immigration, in particular the economic achievement of Japanese immigrants to the United States. He has written articles on these topics for Fight Back! newspaper and scholarly journals and has given many talks on campus and in the community. Professor Suzuki has been active in the Japanese American community in the South Bay for almost 30 years with the Nihonmachi Outreach Committee (NOC).

In 2010, Masao Suzuki was visited by the FBI as part of the raids and Federal Grand Jury subpoenas aimed at antiwar and international solidarity activists in the Midwest. Since then he has worked with the South Bay Committee Against Political Repression (SBCAPR), an affiliate of the national Committee to Stop FBI Repression (CSFR).
 

Other San Jose Day of Remembrance Events 

Korematsu
Speaking Up!
 
Fred T. Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution
January 26, 2019
1:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.

Wesley United Methodist Church Fellowship Hall
566 North Fifth Street
 
Japanese American Museum of San Jose
See JAMsj event page
 
Day of Remembrance Radio Discussion and
Community Art Project


Sunday, February 17, 2019
1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Japanese American Museum of San Jose

RSVP: PublicPrograms@jamsj.org
 
Panelists from the San Jose Japanese, Chinese, Mexican American, and other communities discuss our shared history of exclusion and how we can come together in defense of civil liberties today. Moderated by Rose Aguilar, host of “Your Call,” a public affairs show on NPR affiliate KALW 97.1 FM.
 
Latern DoR   Create paper lanterns, and commemorative, personalized tags as part of a collective art piece designed by local artist, Corinne Okada Takara for the San Jose Day of Remembrance.
 
DeAnza DoR
De Anza College Day of Remembrance
Tuesday, February 19, 2019
1:30 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Location: De Anza College Campus Center
Conference Rooms A & B

Website: https://www.deanza.edu/califhistory/event-2019-remembrance.html
Help Save Tule Lake
Save Tule Lake
Make a donation to save the historic camp site from development.

www.tulelake.org
Manzanar Pilgrimage
San Jose JACL Manzanar Pilgrimage
April 26-28, 2019
 
 
San Jose Nihonmachi Outreach Committee (NOC)
P.O. Box 2293,
San Jose, CA  95109

E-Mail: info@sjnoc.org
Website:
www.sjnoc.org

"In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
                                                                           - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.