Burroughs also noted the historical significance of the museum itself, which sits on a plaza where, 80 years ago, hundreds of Japanese American families lined up and boarded buses to incarceration camps.
“I consider it to be one of those ground zero points in the civil rights history of this country,” she said.
The Ireichō is one phase of the Irei Monument Project, an interactive, multifaceted memorial founded by Rev. Duncan Ryuken Williams, the director of the USC Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture. Funded by a $3 million grant from the Mellon Foundation, the project includes a website that allows people to search the names of survivors and a number of light sculptures that will be installed at various former incarceration camps starting in 2024.
Clement Hanami, the museum’s art director and vice president of exhibitions, said Williams has compiled the most accurate and extensive record to date of Japanese American incarceration. In addition to the thousands of people imprisoned at the 10 major incarceration camps, like Manzanar, Heart Mountain and Tule Lake, Hanami said, Williams also accounted for those sent to smaller sites run by the Department of Justice and makeshift camps called “assembly centers.”
And since the book was unveiled to the public on Sept. 25, Hanami said, the list has grown. “People have come to us and said their family members aren’t in the book,” he said. “Then we’ll do research and potentially include them. It epitomizes the idea of repair.”
The Ireicho itself, Hanami continued, references the kakochō, a death register that’s placed in Japanese Buddhist temples and brought out during memorials so people can chant the names of the deceased.
“It’s a very Japanese and Japanese American way of respecting the ancestors and their histories,” Hanami said.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
