FREE
In Person Reservation Virtual Reservation
A joint conference of the JACSC and USC Ito Center
The Japanese American Confinement Sites Consortium (JACSC) and USC Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture (USC Ito Center) will host a free joint conference at the Japanese American National Museum (JANM) in Los Angeles, California.
How do the makers of monuments today conceive of memory, especially when memorializing difficult historical events? This conference brings together leading figures in memory and monument work who focus on racial and religious exclusion and trauma affecting myriad communities in the US and around the world. All who are interested in monument-making and memory work from a comparative, multicommunity, and international lens are welcome.
Building upon the 2020 and 2021 virtual conferences, JACSC brings together practitioners in preservation, education, and advocacy related to the Japanese American experience. JACSC serves as a national professional network and resource hub for member individuals and organizations to learn from one another, with the aim of advancing the field as a whole. Interested members of the public will find an opportunity of intensive learning about the field of the preservation and advancement of the Japanese American wartime sites and stories. It is a forum for inspiring conversations and educational opportunities with a national community of thought leaders and experts.
This year, JACSC partners with Dr. Duncan Ryuken Williams, Director of the USC Ito Center, whose inspirational project Irei: National Monument for the WWII Japanese American Incarceration addresses the attempted erasure of individuals of Japanese ancestry who experienced wartime incarceration by memorializing their names in a multi-modal monuments project. Through this expanded approach, the conference will look at cross-community and global perspectives in order to contextualize Japanese American confinement sites in a broader milieu.
SCHEDULE
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Friday, September 22, 2023
- 5 p.m.–6:30 p.m.: Welcome Reception
- 5 p.m.–6:30 p.m.: Welcome Reception
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Saturday, September 23, 2023
- 8:30 a.m.–9:30 a.m.: Business Meeting for JACSC Members
- 10 a.m.–5 p.m.: Conference Sessions
- 4:30 p.m.–6:30 p.m.: Optional Evening Activities
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Sunday, September 24, 2023
- 9 a.m.–10 a.m.: NPS Information Session: JACE and JACS Grants
- 10:30 a.m.–5:15 p.m.: Conference Sessions
- 4:30 p.m.–6:30 p.m.: Optional Evening Activities
Funding for the conference comes from the Mellon Foundation, USC Ito Center, and the Japanese American Confinement Sites Consortium.
Schedule
Friday, Sep 22 | 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Previewing Tule Lake Japanese Library & Opening Reception
Tomoko Bialock, MLIS
Please join us for light refreshments as we kick off the weekend with a welcome reception.
Created by incarcerees themselves at the Tule Lake Segregation Center, the Tule Lake Japanese Library consisted of thousands of books. A large proportion of the library holdings made their way to UCLA, where they were entered into general circulation until Tomoko Bialock, Japanese Studies Librarian at the UCLA East Asian Library, recognized them for the treasures that they are. Tomoko is eager to share this collection with descendant communities of Tule Lake and other camps, and will be on site to showcase a number of actual books from the new Tule Lake Japanese Library Collection.
Saturday, Sep 23 | 9:00 AM - 9:30 AM
JACSC Stakeholder Business Meeting
Annual meeting for JACSC Stakeholders, including a review of organizational finances, staffing, and of the educational conference.
Saturday, Sep 23 | 9:30 AM - 10:00 AM
BREAK
Continental breakfast provided.
Saturday, Sep 23 | 10:00 AM - 10:30 AM
Opening Remarks
Ann Burroughs, Dr. Emily Anderson, Dr. Duncan Ryuken Williams
All conference attendees are invited to join for opening remarks from Ann Burroughs, Dr. Emily Anderson, and Dr. Duncan Ryuken Williams.
Saturday, Sep 23 | 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Stories, Pilgrimages & Preservation at 3 Confinement Sites
Aura Newlin, Marlene Shigekawa, Robyn Achilles
This session focuses on current projects at Heart Mountain, Minidoka, and Poston to preserve the stories of the wartime incarceration in both material terms and in the creation of new ways of storytelling. With well- established pilgrimages at the three sites, the speakers will present most recent efforts serve not only the survivor and descendant communities at regular intervals, but build enduring structures of memory and remembrances at the former confinement sites.
Saturday, Sep 23 | 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
LUNCH
On your own in Little Tokyo.
Saturday, Sep 23 | 1:30 PM - 3:00 PM
Capturing Memories as an Act of Justice: Comparative Perspective
Dr. Ran Zwigenberg, Dr. Colleen Murphy, Dr. Rachel Deblinger
As the effort capture memories, recover histories, and establish monuments continues, this panel invites scholars whose work and research address conceptually similar issues in different communities. From questions of how justice is experienced and sought, to the challenges of capturing memories and what they mean, to the ways that what is memorialized changes meaning over time, this session seeks to expand the discussion around how we remember and honor the past.
Saturday, Sep 23 | 3:00 PM - 3:15 PM
BREAK
Saturday, Sep 23 | 3:15 PM - 5:15 PM
(Keynote) Repairing America's Racial Karma: The National Memorial for Peace and Justice and the Irei Names Monuments
Dr. Duncan Ryuken Williams; Jeffrey Mansfield; Sunyoung Lee
This session features a presentation by Jeffrey Mansfield, the director of MASS Design’s memorialization projects, which include the National Memorial for Peace and Justice (the Lynching Memorial) in Alabama, who will share the firm’s philosophy and process for creating monuments followed by a talk by Duncan Ryuken Williams, the founder of the Irei Monument project, about the significance of names and the theory of monument-making behind the making of the Ireicho (book of names), the Ireizo (online archive), and the Ireihi (the installations slated to be placed at a number of former WWII confinement sites). Sunyoung Lee will join the conversation as the Irei Project’s creative director, speaking to why the form of a book as a monument challenges traditional notions of the value of monument and how various design choices were made. The session will cover themes such as community involvement in monument-making, collecting soil, and the notion of monuments as ongoing acts of repairing the racial karma of America.
Saturday, Sep 23 | 5:15 PM - 5:45 PM
The Historical Importance of the Wakasa Monument
Nancy Ukai, Dr. Duncan Ryuken Williams
The rediscovery of the Wakasa Monument at the Topaz concentration camp rewrites the narrative of the camps. An unauthorized, 2,000-pound boulder was erected by defiant issei at the spot where their 63-year-old friend was shot through the chest by a watchtower military guard in 1943. Although the monument site is not where James Hatsuaki Wakasa was buried, the memorial has come to symbolize a sacred gravestone. It is physical evidence of the courage and agency of the issei in the face of military authority and the trauma endured by those incarcerated. Arguably, it is the most important Japanese American civil rights monument of all the camps.
Saturday, Sep 23 | 4:30 PM - 6:30 PM
Optional Activity (by appointment only): Ireicho Stamping
Nancy Ukai, Dr. Duncan Ryuken Williams
The Ireicho contains the first comprehensive listing of over 125,000 persons of Japanese ancestry who were incarcerated in US Army, Department of Justice, Wartime Civil Control Administration, and War Relocation Authority camps. Embedded into the very materiality of the Ireich are special ceramic pieces made from soil collected by the project from seventy-five former incarceration sites from Alaska to Hawai‘i, Arkansas to California, and from almost every other region of the United States.
Sunday, Sep 24 | 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM
National Park Service JACE/JACS Grant Information Session
Tom Leatherman, Kara Miyagishima, Rachel Franklin-Weekley
The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 established a new competitive grant category, the Norman Y. Mineta Japanese American Confinement Education Grants, to be administered through the current Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant program. These new grants, referred to as Japanese American Confinement Education or JACE Grants, will be awarded to Japanese American Organizations who promote the understanding and appreciation of the ethnic and cultural diversity of the United States by illustrating the Japanese American experience throughout the history of the United States.
The legislation establishing these new grants provides some general parameters for this new category, and we are seeking public comments to help us better understand the perspectives of the larger community in the development of grant guidelines. In order to answer questions you might have about this new category of grants we will be hosting a general information session to give a brief overview of the enabling legislation and provide a forum for you to ask questions about the development of the guidelines.
Sunday, Sep 24 | 10:00 AM - 10:30 AM
BREAK
Continental breakfast provided.
Sunday, Sep 24 | 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Reinscribing Forgotten Pasts: The Snow Country Prison Japanese American Memorial Project at Ft Lincoln, Bismarck, ND
Dr. Satsuki Ina; Mayrah Udvardi, Brent Kleinjan, Brian Niiya
A session featuring key representatives from the Japanese American community, the Native American community, and the MASS Design group, who have been working closely for years to tell the story of the Fort Lincoln (Bismarck) Internment Camp. Known as the Snow Country Prison Japanese American Memorial, the collaborative project recently marked the official launch of the building of a monument on the site of the former DOJ internment camp and current campus of the United Tribes Technical College. The session will cover the collaborative process in designing the monument given how this site represents multiple layers of history that is deeply meaningful to both the Japanese and Native American communities.
Sunday, Sep 24 | 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
LUNCH
Bentos provided.
Sunday, Sep 24 | 1:00 PM - 1:45 PM
Sharing Memories for Future Generations: JANM's StoryFiles Update
Dr. Kristen Hayashi, June Aochi Berk
During the first JACSC Conference, we introduced the new StoryFiles project. In this panel, actual participants in the process share their thoughts on what this project means to them and what they seek to accomplish through StoryFiles.
Sunday, Sep 24 | 1:45 PM - 2:00 PM
BREAK
Sunday, Sep 24 | 2:00 PM - 2:45 PM
Repopulating Manzanar: Introducing Densho’s “Manzanar CloseUp” Project
Brian Niiya
An evolution of Densho’s popular Sites of Shame project, Manzanar CloseUp applies similar data extraction and visualization tools to one concentration camp, illustrating both geographical and population based features of the camp down to the barrack level. Densho Content Director Brian Niiya will provide a preview of the site, which will officially launch in the coming months.
Sunday, Sep 24 | 2:45 PM - 3:00 PM
BREAK
Sunday, Sep 24 | 3:00 PM - 3:45 PM
(Keynote) Glenn Kaino and Clement Hanami in Conversation
Glenn Kaino, Clement Hanami
Glenn Kaino: Aki’s Market is inspired by Akira and Sachiye Shiraishi’s small neighborhood market (1957–1970) in East Los Angeles. Created by artist Glenn Akira Kaino (Akira’s grandson and namesake), the exhibition explores the transgenerational trauma from the World War II Japanese American incarceration experience through the stories of Kaino, his family, and the community. It is also an interrogation of the American practice of displacement—collapsing almost 100 years of cultural subjugation into a spiritual, exploratory space from which the building blocks of peace might be discovered.
The exhibition draws from the life of Kaino’s grandfather, Akira Shiraishi, a legendary high school football player who was unable to realize his dreams of attending Occidental College when he was incarcerated at the Heart Mountain concentration camp in Wyoming. Upon returning to East LA after the war, he and Sachiye dedicated their lives to building their market on the corner of Blanchard Street and Geraghty Avenue—a multicultural anchor that served the Japanese and Hispanic communities.
Kaino only knew his grandfather through family stories. To recreate the market, he pulled from his artistic toolkit and used his skill of unlocking past memories through layered conversations (as in his work with historical figures like Olympian, Tommie Smith). He used this methodology to draw out family memories and paint a full picture of the place they called “The Store.”
Through a virtual reality recreation of the store and an installation of related works, Glenn Kaino: Aki’s Market is an exhibition about collective memory where the archival bleeds into the imaginary and where the most advanced technology serves the most personal past.
Sunday, Sep 24 | 3:45 PM - 4:30 PM
Closing Remarks and Attendee Reflections
All conference attendees are invited to gather together for a reflective discussion about the weekend’s key takeaways.
Sunday, Sep 24 | 4:30 PM - 6:30 PM
Optional Activity (by appointment only): Ireicho Stamping
Nancy Ukai, Dr. Duncan Ryuken Williams The Ireicho contains the first comprehensive listing of over 125,000 persons of Japanese ancestry who were incarcerated in US Army, Department of Justice, Wartime Civil Control Administration, and War Relocation Authority camps. Embedded into the very materiality of the Ireicho are special ceramic pieces made from soil collected by the project from seventy-five former incarceration sites from Alaska to Hawai‘i, Arkansas to California, and from almost every other region of the United States.
Sunday, Sep 24 | 5:30 PM - 6:30 PM
Optional Activity: Curator and Artist-led JANM Gallery Tours
Glenn Kaino, Dr. Emily Anderson
Join Dr. Emily Anderson, curator of Don’t Fence Me In and artist Glenn Kaino, creator of Aki’s Market for behind-the-scenes guided tours of JANM’s current featured exhibitions.
Brought to you by:
Japanese American Confinement Sites Consortium
The Japanese American Confinement Sites Consortium is a national network of organizations working to preserve sites and artifacts related to the Japanese American incarceration experience during World War II and dedicated to interpreting this history for the benefit of public education. The Consortium mission is to preserve, protect, and interpret historic sites, artifacts, and experiences, and to elevate the social justice lessons of the Japanese American World War II experience to highlight ways that civil and human rights abuses put the rights of all Americans at risk.
USC Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture
The mission of the USC Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture is to promote the study of Japan at the University of Southern California. The center fosters this area of study through support of faculty-led research and publications, public conferences and events, supporting graduate students, offering postdoctoral fellowships and hosting visiting scholars.
Hosted by:
Japanese American National Museum
The mission of the Japanese American National Museum is to promote understanding and appreciation of America’s ethnic and cultural diversity by sharing the Japanese American experience.
Located in downtown Los Angeles’s Little Tokyo, JANM was established in 1985, and opened to the public in 1992, to share the experiences of Japanese Americans from early immigration in the 19th century through the present. In that time, JANM has amassed the largest collection of Japanese American materials in the world with over 150,000 items including photographs, fine art, documents, moving images, and artifacts.
