By Jason Cruz
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY
“America turned its back on us,” said 82-year-old Dr. Satsuki Ina, a Japanese American who was born in a U.S. concentration camp during World War II.
The 4 day pilgrimage began at Hing Hay Park (Photo by by Jason Cruz)
On Wednesday, Ina and fellow survivors of the Japanese American incarceration joined activists at Hing Hay Park in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District to begin a four-day, 45-mile pilgrimage protesting ICE detention and the separation of immigrant families. Their message: America must not repeat the injustices of its past.
Ina is also a co-founder of Tsuru for Solidarity, the Japanese American, nonviolent, direct action organization that partnered on the walk with La Resistencia and the Free Families: National Coalition to End Family and Child Detention.
Photo by by Jason Cruz
Ina is a retired psychotherapist and Professor Emeritus at California State University, Sacramento. She was born in the Tule Lake, California concentration camp.
“My father was taken from his job and my mother was cleaning people’s houses when she disappeared,” recalled Dr. Ina of how her family was taken and arrested by the U.S. government. “Members of our communities in San Francisco Japantown, students, elders were removed and there were no protests, nobody showed up,” Dr. Ina explained.
“Where were the other Americans standing up for us? My parents were American citizens.” Dr. Ina spoke to the crowd at the King County International Airport next to a sign, a picture of herself as a little girl at the internment camp at Tule Lake entitled “CONCENTRATION CAMP SURVIVORS…End Child Detention.”
Dr Satsuka Ina voices her concerns standing next to a picture of herself as a child while interned at Tule Lake. (Photo by by Jason Cruz)
“So I feel like it is so important for us to show up today. We want to stop this whole removal and stigmatizing these people seeking asylum as criminals. We want to stop our government from repeating the history that led to so much trauma for our community.”
“We felt we had to do something bigger than a one day thing because…it’s really a blip in the news cycle and in people’s consciousness,” said Stan Shikuma, one of the organizers of the Seattle march. “This is something that takes more commitment, more passion.”
“It gathers more attention, it inspires more people, and it makes more people stop and think,” Shikuma added, “[H]opefully it [will] inspire them to take up more action and say, well if they can walk for 45 miles over four days, I can surely write my congressperson or I can go down to the King County Council and ask them to stop the ICE deportation flights.”
The first day stopped at the King County International Airport, where flights have brought detainees to the ICE detention center in Tacoma or have shipped people off to other detention centers or out of the country. Several speakers voiced their opinion to the crowd of media in the parking lot of the airport. Amid the backdrop of the airport building and the sounds of airplanes taking off and landing, marchers held up signs, including one reading “ICE DESTROYS FAMILIES.” La Resistincia has been observing almost every ICE flight since 2023.
Protestors placed cranes on a sign at the airport symbolizing the many that have died in internment camps and at the hands of ICE. (Photo by by Jason Cruz)
“We are extremely concerned about the sharp increase of people being deported and the safety concerns on these flights,” said Josefina Mora-Cheung of La Resistincia.
Cranes were placed on a sign in front of the airport in memory of those who passed away in the Japanese Internment Camps in the 1940s and those that have died in ICE custody in recent times. The marchers read over 7,000 names during the four-day march.
In addition to the King County International Airport, the marchers will go to the Tukwila ICE Facility, the White River Buddhist Temple in Auburn, and the Puyallup Fairgrounds, which was known as “Camp Harmony,” a temporary concentration camp in 1942. The march will conclude with a Solidarity Rally at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma on Saturday Oct. 10.
Jason can be reached at newstips@nwasianweekly.com.
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