Manzanar Committee

The Nikkei community lost a giant this week with the passing of Kyoko Nancy Oda. Born at the Tule Lake concentration camp in 1945 to Tatsuo and Yuriko Inouye, Kyoko dedicated her life to service as a teacher and principal in the Los Angeles Unified School District, president of the San Fernando Valley Japanese American Community Center, and president of the Tuna Canyon Detention Station Coalition. 

Kyoko devoted much of her life to telling her father’s story in the Tule Lake Stockade – a prison within the Tule Lake Segregation Center. Because of the stigma attached to Tule Lake inmates, Tatsuo did not talk about his experiences for many years until Kyoko encouraged him to attend the Pilgrimages to Poston, Manzanar, and Tule Lake in the 1970s. At some point during their travels, Kyoko noted that her father decided to share the diary that he kept while he endured the inhumane treatment in the Tule Lake Stockade. Over the years, Kyoko worked with her father to transcribe his diary from Japanese to English in the hours after work and after her kids were put to bed. Tatsuo Inouye’s Tule Lake Stockade Diary was eventually published in 2020 and stands as a testament to resilience in the face of hostility.

Rest in Power, Kyoko.

Read reflections from Manzanar Committee members on our website: https://manzanarcommittee.org/2026/05/17/nancy-kyoko-oda/

Check out this important story from the Los Angeles Times about the Trump effort to cut budget and
stifle the message at Manzanar

https://www.latimes.com/california/newsletter/2026-05-12/2-0-essential-california-template-do-not-use-make-a-copy

Thanks to all who joined us for the 57th Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage on Saturday April 25th 2026.

For anyone who missed it and for those who want to revisit the day, you can check out the video footage on our YouTube page:

https://youtube.com/

Check out the great article about the 57th Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage by Pacific Citizen

https://www.pacificcitizen.org/lessons-from-manzanarvigilance-is-the-price-of-democracy/

"This year’s gathering, which centered on the theme “Lessons From Manzanar: Vigilance Is the Price of Democracy, 1942-Today,” felt especially poignant given continued attempts by the current administration to change policies and laws, stripping the civil and human rights of millions of Americans.

As Manzanar Committee Co-Chair Bruce Embrey said in the announcement for this year’s pilgrimage, “The significance of our annual Manzanar Pilgrimage has never been greater than it is today. As the assault on our democracy, the militarization of our cities and the building of massive concentration camps unfolds, we need to come together like we did during the Redress Movement and fight for our democracy. My mother, the late Sue Kunitomi Embrey, always reminded us that democracy was fragile, so we must make every effort to protect it when we recognize injustice.”"

Read more:

‘Lessons From Manzanar:Vigilance Is the Price of Democracy’ – Pacific Citizen Keynote speaker Dale Minami, co-founder of the law firm Minami Tamaki LLP (Photo: Matt Weisbly) The 2026 pilgrimage focuses on the importance of vigilance and its essential role in preserving freedom. By Matthew Weisbly, JACL Education Programs Manager Under overcast skies and surrounded by the snow...

American Muslims gather at WWII Japanese internment camp The annual pilgrimage, now in its 57th year, brings together different communities to remember the 120,000 Japanese Americans who were forced from their homes.

Dale Minami delivered the keynote at this past weekend's , covered on the front page of The Inyo Register.

Min­ami said he first came to Man­zanar in 1972, and con­siders it to be “both a sac­red and hor­rific site.”

“This coun­try has got­ten worse since 2019, and my hope is that we can do bet­ter,” he said. “We can­not allow that big, polit­ical eraser to wipe us off the white­board of his­tory.”

He said the lie that Japan­ese Amer­ic­ans posed a “national secur­ity threat” dur­ing World War II was used to make them “con­sti­tu­tional orphans who were sen­tenced to indef­in­ite con­fine­ment without a trial,” and he sees the same thing hap­pen­ing to groups such as immig­rants today.

He cau­tioned that just like all three branches of gov­ern­ment had to agree to allow for the incar­cer­a­tion of Japan­ese Amer­ic­ans then, the same thing is hap­pen­ing today that allows the cur­rent pres­id­ent and his admin­is­tra­tion to go for­ward with “the rejec­tion of the rule of law.”

“Demo­cracy is fall­ing and if we don’t do something about it we will face a cata­strophe,” he said.

https://www.pressreader.com/usa/inyo-register/20260428/281496462884582

Every year we publish a printed program for the annual Manzanar Pilgrimage, which includes articles connecting our history and current events, information about our speakers and performers, and updates about what’s going on at the Manzanar National Historic Site.

Check out the printable program for the 57th Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage:

https://manzanarcommittee.org/2026/04/28/57th-annual-pilgrimage-printed-program/