California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Japanese American National Museum President/CEO Ann Burroughs will be featured speakers during the 53rd annual Manzanar Pilgrimage, to be held online, premiering at 12 p.m. Pacific on Saturday, April 30, on the Manzanar Committee’s YouTube channel, https://www.youtube.com/user/manzanarcommittee.
Bonta and Burroughs will join U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) and Kathy Jefferson Bancroft, tribal historic preservation officer, Lone Pine Paiute-Shoshone Reservation, who will offer welcoming remarks.
Additional speakers include Dale Minami, Fred Korematsu’s lead counsel in his 1983 coram nobis case; Alan Nishio, former Southern California co-chair of the National Coalition for Redress and Reparations (now Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress); Karen Umemoto, director of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center; and Charlene Tonai Din of the Nikkei Student Union at UCLA.
UCLA Kyodo Taiko and Bonbu Stories will also be among the cultural performers featured during the program.
In addition to speakers and cultural performances, an interfaith component will also be featured during the online pilgrimage program.
Manzanar was the first of the American concentration camps in which more than 120,000 Japanese Americans and their immigrant parents were unjustly incarcerated during World War II.
Under normal circumstances, 1,000-2,500 people from all walks of life attend the Manzanar Pilgrimage each year, including students, teachers, community members, clergy and former incarcerees.
But like the past two years, the COVID-19 pandemic will prevent the Manzanar Committee from sponsoring the traditional live pilgrimage at the Manzanar National Historic Site. Likewise, the 2022 Manzanar At Dusk program will also be held online for the second consecutive year. The program is co-sponsored by the Nikkei Student Unions at CSU Fullerton; CSU Long Beach; California State Polytechnic University, Pomona; UCLA; UC Riverside; and UC San Diego.
The 2022 Manzanar At Dusk program will be held live at 5 p.m. Pacific via Zoom on April 30. For more information and to register for the program, go to: https://forms.gle/kM9Jjh6cBiVmdEE18.
For additional information, call (323) 662-5102 or email info@manzanarcommittee.org.