Rhythmix Cultural Works honors the memory of Alameda’s lost Japantown with a commemorative celebration of the Day of Remembrance.
The annual Day of Remembrance, February 19, 1942, commemorates the signing of Executive Order 9066, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, which led to the forced removal and incarceration of 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast, who had to abandon their jobs, their homes, and lives, to be sent to one of ten internment camps scattered in desolate, remote regions of the country. No Japanese Americans, living here during WWII, were ever charged, much less convicted, of espionage or sabotage against the United States. Yet they were targeted, rounded up, and imprisoned for years, simply for having the “face of the enemy.”
Executive Order 9066 is responsible for the disappearance of a once thriving Alameda Japantown. The words and stories of the Japanese in Alameda remind us of an extreme act of racial targeting that took place only 78 years ago.
Excerpts from the documentary Honoring Alameda’s Japanese Americans introduced by Reverend Michael Yoshii of Buena Vista United Methodist Church, Alameda.
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