As a society, we are still developing the right vocabulary for recognizing the damage of Japanese American wartime incarceration. Because we do not have the right descriptors or labels, community pilgrimages like the one I embarked on in 2014 are misread, illegible or invisible. And indeed, the wrong language can prevent survivors and descendants from visiting former sites of Japanese American incarceration to honor our history—and to heal.
My father (who died when I was 10) and his family members were among the nearly 30,000 people incarcerated at Tule Lake, California, for close to four years during World War II. In total, the United States government imprisoned more than 125,000 “persons of Japanese descent,” most hailing from the West Coast, during the war years. Close to two-thirds of them were American citizens held without due process. The nonprofit Densho has mapped close to 100 sites of Japanese American incarceration across the country, from jails and citizen isolation centers to concentration camps and federal prison sites owned and operated by the military.
Today, most of these sites have faded into the landscape without visible historical markers; those that remain are at risk of closing off access to community pilgrimages. One of the more publicized battles is taking place at the Minidoka concentration camp site in Idaho, where a proposed Lava Ridge wind farm threatens to put hundreds of 720-foot-tall wind turbines on the same desert land that once imprisoned more than 13,000 Japanese Americans. The National Trust for Historic Preservation named Minidoka one of the 11 Most Endangered Historic Places in 2022. Most of the camp buildings are gone, but currently, the site is open to visitors daily, with guided tours on summer weekends.
The wind farm would undo Minidoka’s potential for public education and forever disrupt the remote and desolate viewshed that visitors experience now. Adding insult to injury, in the Bureau of Land Management’s 2023 draft environmental impact statement, officials listed Minidoka as a site for “recreation.” In response, Japanese American survivors, descendants and allies from the nonprofit Friends of Minidoka mounted a powerful campaign against this terminology. “I am not a tourist,” read one poster held by protester Paul Tomita, which showed a photo of him as a young child at Minidoka. “I am a survivor.”