The gathering at Tule Lake National Monument takes place Saturday, Aug. 23, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. It is part of the biennial pilgrimage organized by the Tule Lake Committee to preserve the memory of those held there during World War II.
This year’s visit coincides with the National Day of Action, a nationwide event led by the National Parks Conservation Association to raise awareness about threats facing national parks. The committee plans to use the day to protest what it calls the federal government’s erasure of incarceration history at national park sites.
From 1942 to 1946, the U.S. government forcibly detained approximately 110,000 Japanese Americans at 10 camps in Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. Tule Lake was the largest, holding nearly 30,000 people during its four years of operation. It was also the last to close.
Go Sasaki, a member of the Tule Lake Committee's board of directors, said his mother was born in the segregation center at Tule Lake. He believes sharing the traumatic history of the camps can help prevent it from happening again.
“One of the lessons that I hope would be taken from the Japanese incarceration,” he said, “is that everyone, regardless of background, deserves due process.”
After the monument visit, some committee members plan to travel to Klamath Falls to honor those who died at Tule Lake. While they were originally buried on-site in a cemetery, their remains were relocated to Oregon when the camp closed in 1946.
