Jimi Yamaichi, 1922-2018
More than four hundred pilgrims gathered for the three-day Tule Lake Pilgrimage, held every two years. At a memorial service for those who died in the concentration camp, the community fondly remembered Jimi Yamaichi, who passed away in May. Jimi is known as the “soul and conscience” of the Pilgrimage, and gave invaluable testimony in this documentary.
After the memorial service, Mike Ishii and a team from United to End Racism organized a multitude of pilgrims to rally in front of the Tule Lake jail, taking up the cries of #FamiliesBelongTogether and #NoMuslimBanEver. In recent weeks the people of the U.S. had wrestled with the travesty of the government deliberately tearing away children from their parents as punishment for illegally crossing the border. Responding to outrage over that policy, the Trump administration had then promoted penning migrant families together in new concentration camps as a humane alternative. The Supreme Court had also that week made a show of repudiating the Korematsu decision, while upholding the Travel Ban that blatantly targeted Muslims.
2018 pilgrimages draw national coverage
This year, pilgrimages at Minidoka, Manzanar, and Heart Mountain spoke with the same voice of dissent, broadcast through social media and picked up by major news organizations. NBC Asian America featured the pilgrimages, and Washington Post sent Op-Ed producer Kate Woodsome and hired director Konrad Aderer to shoot at Tule Lake.
This first of two videos to be posted with this footage takes aim at the Trump Administration’s nefarious use of language to demonize immigrants and sanitize its own cruel policies. Satsuki Ina, Karen Korematsu and Carl Takei eviscerate the use of terms “Tender Care Facility” and “Family Residential Centers” to whitewash the traumatizing detention facilities where parents and their children, even infants, are confined.
The second piece is a portrait of the intergenerational effects of incarceration, following the Kashiwagis at Tule Lake at the June-July pilgrimage and tracing the Japanese American community’s path of #Resistance up to the present moment.
To read more about Tule Lake Pilgrimage 2018, check out Martha Nakagawa’s recap for The Rafu Shimpo:
Part 1: Solemnity and Moment of Division at Pilgrimage
