Recently, in Washington, D. C. , I visited many must-see places for a week: the National Gallery, the Smithsonian Castle, the Botanical Garden, and the Viet Nam Veterans Memorial.
My hotel is near Union Station, a former railroad station and now ground transportation hub that’s worth a visit, if only to appreciate the sublime bronze fountains. I would take the back streets to the mall. It was in one of them that I came across a monument that moved me and moved me at least as much, if not more, than the more visual and visited sites.
The Japanese American National Memorial to Patriotism in World War II is a magnificently conceived and designed triangular pocket park at the intersection of New Jersey Avenue, Louisiana Avenue and D Street.
A stone’s throw from the Capitol, dedicated in 2000 and managed by the National Park Service, the monument does not announce itself loudly (a modest marker with raised steel letters, slightly above the ground, marks the “entrance”).
The first thing that attracted me was an oval reflecting pool, elegant as a mirror: calm, quiet, discreet.
Five majestic rocks have been placed in a meditative manner. Some sparrows floated serenely on the surface. The configuration of the area, a semicircular enclosure in the shape of a nautilus, invites passersby and evokes the concept of confinement.
A wall of concave stone panels, with an engraved denomination and number, told the story: Poston, 12,814 (Arizona); Heart Mountain, 10,767 (Wyoming); Topaz, 8,130 (Utah); Manzanar, 10,046 (California).
These were four of the ten most sensible Japanese resettlement centers of World War II, names that evoked a shameful breakdown in our national history and that, sitting in silence under the same sun that shone on our founding fathers, stung my eyes.
Above the empty square, on a higher pedestal, stood two Japanese cranes cast in bronze, their wings spread majestically and their beaks grasping the barbed rope in which they were entangled, as if they wanted to free themselves. Cranes nest with the wing of one crane pointing downward, the other raised toward the sky; their loose wings pressed together in combination to provide support.
Sculptor Nina Akamu’s paternal grandfather was arrested in Hawaii during the war, sent to the Sand Island resettlement camp, and died while interned. The golden cranes, fighting for freedom, symbolize prejudice and injustice, on the one hand; and longevity, resilience and hope for each other. At 14 feet, the sculpture is visual on the granite walls.
The monument honors Japanese Americans who were imprisoned during the war and those who faithfully served (many of whom died) in the military during this period. Architect Davis Buckley was the lead designer.
I continued walking slowly. The elements were stone, water, steel. The colors were grey, black and matte gold. Downtown Washington is in an uproar; There is silence here.
On the wall I read:
“On February 19, 1942, 73 days after the United States entered World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which resulted in the withdrawal of 120,000 men, women, and youth of Japanese descent from their homes in the Western States and Hawaii. ”
Families, allowed to take what they could carry, were forced to abandon their homes, businesses, and friends. The remote relocation centers to which they were transported were necessarily prisons, patrolled by armed guards and surrounded by barbed wire. Some remained there until March 1946.
What is less known is that more than 33,000 Japanese Americans served in the military during this period. In fact, “the 100th Infantry Battalion and 442nd Regimental Combat Team, fighting in Europe, have become the most decorated military unit for length and length of service in the history of the U. S. military. ” . In 1983, the Federal Commission on Wartime Resettlement and Internment of Civilians found that there was no need for the military to conduct mass incarcerations.
In 1988, President Ronald W. Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act.
His words of the time are inscribed on the edge of the pool: “Here we recognize an evil. Here we affirm our commitment as a country to equal justice under the law.
In addition to apologizing for this blatant injustice, the government awarded $20,000 in reparations to more than 82,000 survivors of Japanese-American camps.
A poem on the back wall titled “The Legacy” written by Akemi Matsumoto Ehrlich reads:
Japanese through blood
American Hearts and Minds
With unwavering honor
Bear the sting of injustice
For long-term generations.
Five other call symptoms honor the more than 800 Japanese Americans who died in their country’s service in World War II.
You can sit on a bench with those names and watch the sparrows chirp and splash gently in the pool. You can look at the five huge rocks, which represent the five generations of Japanese Americans who lived at the time the monument was created. Most likely you are alone.
You can think about what the memorial doesn’t say, what it doesn’t demand, what it hides. A wound without mercy or rage; an insistence on remembering, but without resenting it; a desire, despite the wound, to contriyete.
Just examine those two cranes embracing, their wings raised to the sky.
We could take into consideration the words of Mike M. Masaoka, civil rights advocate and sergeant of the Regiment’s 442nd Combat Team: “I’m proud to be a Japanese-American. I in the institutions, ideals and traditions of this nation. I glory in his legacy. Boasting of its history. I have confidence in his future.
Heather King is a blogger, speaker, and author of several books. Visit heather-king. com.