OAKLAND – The Crystal City Pilgrimage Committee, a volunteer-run non-profit operated by Japanese American and Japanese Peruvian survivors and descendants of the World War II incarceration, will be hosting a pilgrimage to the former site of the Crystal City Family Internment Camp in Texas taking place Oct. 9 to 12.
One of over 75 detention sites used to imprison innocent civilians of Japanese ancestry during World War II, Crystal City held more than 4,000 people ranging in age from infants born in the prison to elders in their eighties during the years it operated from 1942 to 1948.
Crystal City was unique as the only large-scale detention facility that held German and Italian nationals in addition to Japanese, who were arrested under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. As a family reunification center, the prison was designed to reunite families who had been separated across multiple detention sites for up to a year.
Later, the prison was also used to imprison Latin Americans of Japanese, German, and Italian ancestry who were kidnapped and sent to the U.S. as hostages to be used in a planned prisoner exchange with Axis nations. These Latin American prisoners were to be traded for non-combatant U.S. citizens trapped behind enemy lines. Many were repatriated against their will to countries where their Latin American-born children had never before visited.
Pilgrimage attendees will include incarceration survivors of Japanese and German ancestry, and their descendants.
This year’s pilgrimage theme is “Crystal City Rising — Neighbors Not Enemies.” In addition to learning about the unique history and stories of survivors of the Crystal City Concentration Camp, the Pilgrimage will address the parallels between WWII immigrant scapegoating and present-day attacks on immigrant communities.
The event will include a multi-day educational conference taking place in San Antonio on Friday, Oct. 10, and a visit to the site of the former prison camp in Crystal City on Saturday, Oct. 11.
Reflecting on the importance of the pilgrimage amid the current political landscape, committee co-chair Brian Shibayama remembers his own family’s experience during the war.
“It’s important to me to contribute to the Crystal City Pilgrimage to honor my father and his family who were unjustly taken from Peru and transported to Crystal City,” Shibayama said. “With the current administration’s attempts to whitewash our country’s history, continuing to support events that preserve historical integrity and prevent the erasure of dark moments is more imperative today.”
During the educational conference, Crystal City survivors will share their personal stories of hardships experienced as a result of their forced removal and incarceration – and also the sense of hope they found in community spaces built inside the prison camp during their unjust imprisonment.
Presenters include Hiroshi Shimizu, who was born in the Topaz concentration camp in Utah, where his family initially decided to repatriate to Japan in the prisoner exchange program. Sent to New York City to await their repatriation to Japan, the ship was too full to take them. The Shimizus were sent to the Rohwer concentration camp in Arkansas, then Tule Lake in California, where they renounced their citizenship.
They later joined the approximately 3,000 renunciants who attempted to rescind their renunciation and were sent to Crystal City in January 1946 while the government decided what to do with them.
As a childhood incarceration survivor, Shimizu reflects on how his early childhood experiences at Crystal City impacted him throughout his adult life. “I realized as an adult that being a prisoner for the first 4-1/2 years of my life, both physically and psychologically, is something that stays with me all the time. Not front and center all the time, but always there,” Shimizu said.
Shimizu and other survivors see a similarity between their experiences and the current increase
in immigration-related law enforcement. Shimizu shared, “The only real difference is that not all Mexican Americans are being detained, incarcerated and deported, but ICE personnel are profiling non-white people for possible detention, incarceration and deportation. The outrageous reality is that if you are detained, you could find yourself in a prison in another country within hours, without ever having had a trial.”
Another panelist, Kazumu Julio Cesar Naganuma, who also serves as president of the Crystal City Pilgrimage Committee, was born in Callao, Peru. Arrested by FBI agents in 1942, the Naganuma family was forced to leave a flourishing laundry business of nearly 30 years in Peru and travel for three weeks by boat and train before being imprisoned in Texas.
“By sharing our nation’s hidden histories and the powerful stories of survivors, we can begin to undo the historical amnesia that allows our government to harm children and families today,” said Naganuma.
The third survivor on the panel is Trudy Werner, the U.S.-born daughter of German immigrants who were.. arrested under the AEA in Detroit and imprisoned at Ellis Island until provisions were made for their detention in Crystal City. The Werner family were among the more than 900 German nationals and their U.S.-born children who were incarcerated alongside persons of Japanese heritage in Texas.
A second plenary titled “Manufacturing Enemies: The Alien Enemies Act Then and Now” will explore how the AEA was used to imprison over 31,000 foreign nationals during World War II in the name of national security. In March 2025, President Trump invoked the same law and used it to deport Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador for indefinite detention.
This discussion will address how today as in the past, the AEA denies non-citizens their constitutional rights of equal protection and due process under the law, and current efforts to repeal the AEA through the passage of the Neighbors Not Enemies Act.
Panelists include Grace Shimizu (Campaign for Justice: Redress Now for Japanese Latin Americans! and Japanese Peruvian Oral History Project), Katherine Yon Ebright (Brennan Center for Justice), Larry Oda (Japanese American Citizens League), and Jennifer Ibañez Whitlock (National Immigration Law Center).
Several workshops will also be held that explore the ongoing efforts to memorialize victims of the wartime incarceration, and work that is being done to preserve and interpret the former site of the Crystal City prison camp.
Another programming tract will explore the overlapping histories between the wartime incarceration and multigenerational Chicano Movement in South Texas, featuring members of the progressive Mexican American political movement La Raza Unida Party.
The final workshop will bring together activists and scholars in a roundtable discussion that explores how the Japanese ancestry community’s experience in overcoming past injustice can help inform current movements for justice and reparations. This session will also explore prisoner and migrant solidarity rights work happening across the country and in Texas.
Conference programs will be held at the DoubleTree San Antonio Airport Hotel, 611 NW Loop 410
San Antonio, Texas, on Oct. 10. The group will then make a one-day pilgrimage by bus on Oct. 11 to Crystal City, where a memorial service will be held for the 29 individuals who died in the prison camp.
For more information about the 2025 pilgrimage, visit: www.crystalcitypilgrimage.org/