Aiming for completion in February 2026
It is a widely known historical fact that many Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans were sent to internment camps across the U.S. during World War II. However, while there are memorials for each camp, I learned for the first time through my reporting on "Camp Wall" that there is still no monument listing the names of the 140,000 people who were interned in the 10 camps.
The Camp Wall, which will be built as a wall with ten walls engraved with the names of the prisoners from each camp, has been decided to be built in Columbia Park in Torrance, California. In the late 2010s, the WWII Camp Wall Committee was established with Kanji Sahara at the center, and in April 2023, the City of Torrance approved their proposal for Columbia Park as the site for the Camp Wall. After that, California Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi, the only Japanese-American member of the California State Assembly, lobbied the state and succeeded in obtaining $5 million in funding. As of August 2024, the project is moving forward with the aim of completing the monument in February 2026.
One day in March 2024, through an introduction from Councilman Muratsuchi's wife, Hiroko Higuchi, I had the opportunity to hear from Kanji Sahara, the originator of the monument, and Nancy Hayata, the committee president, in Torrance. Kanji was born in Hiroshima in 1934 and grew up near downtown Los Angeles.
"My family was first sent to the Santa Anita Assembly Center. It used facilities at the Santa Anita Racetrack, which is still there today. 18,000 Japanese Americans were gathered there. The caravan (caravan) to Santa Anita started at St. Mary's Church (in Los Angeles). My father loaded us into the car he used for work and drove us there himself.
What happened to the car in the camp? It was turned into money to buy supplies. As for how I felt at the time, all the people in my neighborhood were heading to the same place, so I just thought we were all going somewhere together. I was too young to have any complicated feelings."
The creator's memories of internment
After Santa Anita, they were sent to the faraway Jerome Internment Camp in Arkansas, and then to the Lower Internment Camp in the same state, where Kanji and his family stayed until the end of the war. Kanji recalls that they had been internment, with their home and possessions taken away, but when the war ended, they were ordered to leave the camp immediately, as if they were being forced to leave. However, they were sent to Chicago, Illinois, instead of Los Angeles, where they had been living for a long time.
"The reason I didn't return to California was because there were restrictions placed on Japanese immigrants and discrimination remained. At that time, Japanese immigrants were not allowed to buy real estate in California. But in Chicago, anyone had the right to buy property, and it was said that there was relatively little discrimination against immigrants from Asia, just like immigrants from Europe. So my whole family moved to Chicago, and I completed the rest of my elementary, middle, high school, and college years there. I then earned a doctorate at Northwestern University's graduate school and became an aerospace engineer."
After returning to California as an engineer, Kanji worked hard at his job and was an active member of the Democratic Party Club. He also became deeply involved in the Tuna Canyon Detention Station Coalition (Tuna Canyon), a non-profit organization run by former inmates of the Tuna Canyon Detention Station, a detention facility where Japanese Americans were temporarily held during the war. As a result, he came up with an idea. Nancy Hayata told me about it.
"I think it was around 2019 when the idea for a peace park was born in Tuna Canyon. The idea was to build a park promoting peace within the Tuna Canyon area and plant trees there. Then Kanji suggested that we build a wall in the park with the names of all the people who were detained at the Tuna Canyon center engraved on it. This initial idea grew and developed into building a wall with the names of all the detainees in each of the Japanese American internment camps across the United States. This was the beginning of Camp Wall. However, it was unrealistic to secure such land in the Tuna Canyon area, so the plan eventually fell apart. However, the vision lived on in Kanji's mind, and he began to speak about the idea of Camp Wall and its importance at various gatherings."
New Leader’s Sense of Mission
Kanji, the creator of "Camp Wall," has handed over the leadership to Nancy due to his advanced age. Nancy, a third-generation Japanese American, did not experience the internment camps. When did she first learn about them?
"I remember when I was a child. I would occasionally go out to a store on First Street in Little Tokyo, and there were photographs of the internment camp era on display in the store's window (author's note: most likely Toyo Miyatake Studio). I remember looking at the photographs through the window. My mother would ask every Japanese-American she met for the first time, 'Which internment camp were you sent to?' After that, my father took us on a family trip, and we visited Tule Lake, where my father had been internment, and Manzanar, where my mother had stayed. Although my father never said it out loud, I think he wanted us to know about history.
My mother also said about the camps, "We were young, so it wasn't hard for us. We danced in the camps and could go to the movies on weekends." I think it was their parents (Nancy's grandparents) who had a really hard time. I think they would have done anything to make their children's time as comfortable and fun as possible.
Moreover, when they left the camps, each person was given only $25. How could they make a living on that? Yet many of my parents' generation worked hard to send their children to college and give them a good education. There are many things that are not being said, but at the very least, those experiences must never be repeated."
Nancy is, in a sense, a descendant of a concentration camp survivor, but she says that the roots of her work on Camp Wall lie in the ethical values she learned from her parents.
"What motivates me is the work ethic that my parents instilled in me from an early age. They taught me to do whatever I put my mind to, to not do things half-heartedly, to give it my all, and to create something I can be proud of."
When I visited Columbia Park in April 2024, preparations for the construction of Camp Wall had not even begun yet, and cherry blossoms were in full bloom on the grounds.
"My goal as a promoter is to see Kanji cut the ribbon at the opening of Camp Wall," said Councilman Muratsuchi. Time is limited. The committee is calling for cooperation and donations to make that day a reality as soon as possible.
Details of the "Camp Wall" project
© 2024 Keiko Fukuda
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