San Jose Day of Remembrance resumes in-person after 3-year break
Commemorates 1942 Executive Order 9066
San José, CA – On Sunday, February 19, more than 350 people from the Japanese American community gathered at the San José Buddhist Church Betsuin Hall for the 43rd annual Day of Remembrance. The San José Day of Remembrance was organized the Nihonmachi Outreach Committee. The event commemorates the signing of Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1942. Executive Order 9066 laid the basis for the incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans in concentration camps during World War II.
With the theme “Reparative Justice: Together We Rise”, the program stressed the unity of the Japanese American community with others who have also faced a history of national oppression in the United States. The program began with a live statement by Sumi Tanabe, and a video statement by Satomi Susie Yasui, both of them Nisei (second generation Japanese Americans) women who were sent to the camps as children.
After a candlelight procession through San José Japantown, the program restarted with a solidarity statement by Athar Sidiqee, chairman of the South Bay Islamic Association, whose original mosque is just blocks away from Japantown. The Nihonmachi Outreach Committee has had an American Muslim speaker and even a co-chair for 20 years, in solidarity with that community following the wave of attacks and government harassment following 2001.
The guest speaker was Veronica Martinez, representing the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, whose historic lands are just south of San José. The Amah Mutsun have been fighting corporate development on these lands.
Ending the program was a performance by the San José Taiko, a Japanese drum group. In her introduction to the Taiko, Yuzo Kubota said that “I am the voice of the oppressed.” The Taiko then played DoR, written and inspired by previous Day of Remembrance programs.