Day of Remembrance 2009 – Honouliuli concentration camp and E.O. 9066

The Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii and the Japanese American Citizens League Honolulu Chapter are sponsoring the annual Day of Remembrance for the Executive Order 9066 that authorized the WWII relocation and internment of more than 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry in concentration camps.

The event will take place March 1, 2009, 1:00 pm to 3:30 pm at the University of Hawai’i Architecture Auditorium and will highlight the history of the Honouliuli concentration camp where persons of Japanese ancestry were imprisoned during World War II.

Few remember that there were several locations in Hawai’i where persons of Japanese ancestry were interned during WWII. One of these sites is in Honouliuli, on land now owned by Monsanto. Past Day of Remembrance events in Hawai’i have reached out to the Arab and Muslim community who were facing intense racial profiling and harassment in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks.

The push to recover the history of the Honouliuli site and the internment stories from Hawai’i is important.

My critique is that the Hawai’i Japanese groups have been noticeably silent on the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and on the issues of torture, extraordinary renditions, secret prisons, repression of dissent and widespread spying on citizens.  Japanese American groups in other cities in the U.S. have strongly opposed the wars and have spoken out against U.S. torture.

I think this will be a valuable event to gain a better understanding of the concentration camps and past government oppression of a single ethnic group. And I hope people will challenge local Japanese groups to speak out against the wars, torture, repression and spying.