The Rafu Shimpo - L.A. Japanese Daily News

Manzanar Pilgrimage Begins a New Era
By JOYCE TSE
RAFU STAFF WRITER
Wednesday, May 2, 2007

The 38th annual trip celebrates the life of pioneering activist Sue Kunitomi Embrey, whose legacy lives on.

Photos by MARIO G. REYES/Rafu Shimpo
UCLA Kyodo Taiko kicks off the 38th annual Manzanar Pilgrimage on Saturday at the cemetery of the former internment camp.

Former internee Kiyoko Luster finds herself in a photo at the Manzanar Interpretive Center.

Hussam Ayloush, executive director of Council on American-Islamic Relations recites the opening chapter of the Quran at an interfaith service at the Manzanar cemetery.

Bruce Embrey, the son of the late Sue Embrey, shares memories of his mother and her work, during obeservances at Manzanar on Sunday. He is flanked by family members, from left, Barbara, Monica and Michael.

It was a bittersweet day for many of the wayfaring trekkers to the 38th annual Manzanar Pilgrimage, which took place at the site of the former internment camp’s cemetery on Saturday, April 28.

For the first time since the pilgrimage’s inception, it was obvious that the presence of one of the pioneering activists of the event was missed. Sue Kunitomi Embrey, a former internee and Manzanar Committee Chair, died on May 15, 2006 in Los Angeles at the age of 83.

To honor her, the theme of this year’s pilgrimage was “One Life…Legacy for All.”

In a poignant program featuring speakers that knew or worked alongside Embrey for years, anecdotes and remembrances were shared from the bed of a Department of Water and Power truck serving as a stage for the day.

What is generally an emotionally moving day for many seemed just a bit more somber with the absence of Embrey. And yet, many found consolation in seeing the more than 500 people who attended the program—her legacy.

Rose Ochi, Manzanar legal counsel and longtime friend of Embrey, tearfully recounted Embrey’s courage to stand up and advocate for Manzanar’s establishment as a National Historic Landmark.

“Once in a city council meeting, the president of DWP was towering over Sue, his finger jabbing in her face and saying, ‘(Manzanar) will never become a part of the park system.’ And Sue stood up and said, ‘The city did not incarcerate us. To have the city establish a park for us is unacceptable. We demand only a federal park!’” recalled Ochi.

Embrey would later confide in Ochi that she was trembling with fear during her retort.

“I told her that she looked like she was shaking with indignation,” Ochi said, to laughter from the audience.

Other speakers included Lillian Kawasaki, chairperson for the Friends of Manzanar, who works closely with the National Park Service especially for educational and capital programs; Jack Kunitomi, brother, who shared a story about “Baka guts,” their inside joke about being stupid but having the guts to do things; Paul Takagi, a former Manzanar internee who worked with at the Manzanar Free Press; and Janice Trubitt, niece of Sadao Munemori, the first Japanese American to ever be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his bravery in the 442nd Infantry Regimental Combat Team. Trubitt’s mother, who was also interned at Manzanar, was close friends with Embrey.

“My mom wrote of the troubling times of the internment … The family was notified of (Sadao’s) death at camp. There in northern Italy, late in the war in 1945, mom’s brother Sadao Munemori, a Nisei boy from Los Angeles, threw himself onto a German grenade to save his buddies” said Trubitt.

After her mother’s death on Feb. 10, 2003, it was Embrey who told Trubitt of one of her mother’s wishes—one Trubitt had never heard before.

“My mom told Sue that she wanted to take some of the Italian soil where her brother Sadao had died to Manzanar and the site of the Munemori household,” said Trubitt.

Trubitt’s family, along with Embrey, met in Lone Pine in August 2004 to
“sprinkle vials of Italian soil onto the sands of Manzanar.”

It was stories like these that moved participants of the pilgrimage to tears, but when Embrey’s son Bruce, and his family took the stage to say their thanks, memories of the first pilgrimages to Manzanar were shared, reminding all of why the tradition must continue.

Choking back tears, Bruce described his mother’s dedication to the preservation of Manzanar and of seeing his aunts during a second pilgrimage to Manzanar “drawing strength from this desolate place” all while speaking on bullhorns about the “injustices they had endured.”

“That’s when I understood what my mother was trying to do. She saw the resisters and veterans as soldiers struggling for democracy. My mom believed democracy was a very fragile thing,” Bruce said, adding that there are parallels between the climate of post-9/11 America and what happened to his mother and fellow Japanese Americans in 1942.

“People being detained without due process is back. Wartime hysteria and racial profiling are all back. These are things that led to the incarceration of Japanese Americans. Our legacy is to ensure that no other people or community will have to make a pilgrimage to their own camps,” he said.

Also part of the program was the singing of “Ue o muite (Sukiyaki)” with musician Ken Koishio and the M.C. of the day, Darrell Kunitomi.

An interfaith memorial led by Rev. Roy Nishida for the Shinto service; Rev. Paul Nakamura, Rev. Dr. Hidemi Ito and Rev. Dr. Paul Nagano for the Christian service; and Bishop Seicho Asahi, Rev. Yasunori Teruoka and Rev. Tomoyuki Hasegawa for the Buddhist service, followed.

And lively ondo dancing with taiko accompaniment from UCLA’s Kyodo
Taiko drew the ceremony to a close, a joyous spectacle against the backdrop of snowcapped mountains on a clear and beautiful day.

Among the first time visitors to Manzanar were some who rode in on a bus from Little Tokyo.

Kiyoko (Kami) Luster, 66, of Glendale was interned at Manzanar with her family from the age of 1.

“I was bound and determined (to make it here),” said Luster. “It’s like coming home. I think this was the happiest for me, growing up here. As a matter of fact, I was so unhappy going back to civilization that I asked my father if we could go back to Nihon because I thought this was Japan.
“These are happy memories for me, anyway,” Luster said, noting that this was because she was so young in camp.

Luster’s son, Kenji, 38, and his wife, Karen, 40, were also on the trip, accompanying her.

“I’m happy to finally make it here,” said Kenji. “I’ve been trying to make it here for years. Just to see how the Japanese American community was treated at that time and to be put out here in the middle of nowhere…it’s very hard to understand by today’s world. But we’re so close to repeating those mistakes.”

For Karen, what happened at Manzanar and the other nine camps around the country “is just atrocious.”

“I never knew about this until I got to college,” she said. “I don’t even remember seeing it in my history book in high school. To have this happen here on our soil and anywhere … it’s shocking.”

The Lusters weren’t the only first timers touched by the experience of finally visiting Manzanar.

Floyd Cheung, 37, a professor of Asian American studies at Smith College in Massachusetts chaperoned a group of nine students from his Narratives of Internment course on the trip.

“It’s eerie. It’s really something to see a location which I’ve studied so much and read so much about,” said Cheung. “It all comes together in a new way.”