'History is being repeated.' Japanese Americans call for Northwest Detention Center's end

February 16, 2024 / 4:27 pm

caption: Margaret Sekijima addresses the crowd at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma on the Day of Remembrance in 2022. Several of Sekijima's relatives were incarcerated in the Minidoka, Heart Mountain, Tule Lake and Topaz relocation centers.

Japanese Americans and groups calling for the closure of the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma blocked the federal building in downtown Seattle on Friday.

The Japanese American advocacy group Tsuru for Solidarity teamed up with La Resistencia, an immigration advocacy group calling for the end of immigrant detention, to start their Week of Action. It commemorates the upcoming 82nd anniversary of Executive Order 9066, which forced thousands of Japanese Americans into incarceration camps.

At 10 years old, Michael Ishii's mother was forced to go to the Puyallup Assembly Center, nicknamed “Camp Harmony,” where the Western Washington Fairgrounds stand today.

Ishii, an organizer with Tsuru for Solidarity, said history is being repeated through immigrant detention centers.

“In the United States, we have this system of locking people in prisons when they migrate," he said. "My community was detained in a similar way during World War II. We have a moral obligation to stand up and say, 'Not again.' If we don't stand up for our neighbors, just like nobody stood up for us during World War II, then we're no better. That’s why we’re showing up.”

Maru Mora-Villalpando, an organizer with La Resistencia, said her group is thankful that Japanese Americans are willing to support them.

“This partnership is unique," she said. "You don’t always find people that share this level of experience.”

Villalpando added that although Japanese Americans are not facing this experience to the same extent now, "They still are risking themselves to bring attention to this issue."

In 1988, then-President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act, an official apology to Japanese Americans for incarcerating them during World War II. Additionally, $20,000 in reparations was paid to surviving victims.

This weekend, Tsuru for Solidarity and La Resistencia will hold a memorial at the Western Washington Fairgrounds, which was the initial holding site of Japanese Americans before many were sent to a camp in Minidoka Idaho. the groups also plan to hold a rally in front of the Tacoma Ice Facility Center, one of the largest immigrant detention centers in the U.S.