The renowned activist and psychotherapist
will speak at the 56th annual event on April 26.
LOS ANGELES — The Manzanar Committee is proud to announce that Dr. Satsuki Ina will be the keynote speaker at the 56th Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage on April 26.
Dr. Satsuki Ina
A nationally recognized psychotherapist, filmmaker and co-founder of Tsuru for Solidarity, Ina will share her insights on the lasting impacts of the incarceration of people of Japanese ancestry during World War II and how it relates to the political landscape today.
Ina has dedicated her career to addressing the psychological effects of racial injustice, displacement and oppression.
As a therapist, she has worked extensively with survivors of political persecution and other forms of historical trauma.
As an activist with Tsuru for Solidarity, a project by Japanese American social justice advocates and allies working to end detention sites and support immigrant and refugee communities, she has been a tenacious advocate for social justice.
In addition, during the first Trump administration, she was a prominent figure in denouncing the injustice and cruelty of how children in immigrant detention camps were separated from their families.
Ina and Tsuru for Solidarity understand the parallels between trauma Japanese Americans experienced during World War II and the trauma asylum seekers have experienced when incarcerated in U.S. detention centers.
Ina recounted her childhood experience at Tule Lake and Crystal City when she met with asylum seekers in an article written for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in 2015: “My visit with mothers and children at the euphemistically named Karnes County ‘Residential Center’ a few weeks ago triggered distressing associations of my own experience as a child. We, too, lived in a constant state of fear and anxiety, never knowing what our fate would be. . . .
“As a licensed family therapist,” Ina continued, “I was appalled at the severity of the trauma that the women and children had experienced prior to their arrival in the U.S. And even more disturbing was the evident criminalization of their efforts to escape violence and seek safety and protection for their children. To be imprisoned with their children — infants and toddlers, school age and teens — is not only unjust, it cruelly plunges them back into their past powerlessness and terror.”
Said Manzanar co-chair Bruce Embrey, “We are honored to have Satsuki Ina as our keynote speaker this year. Dr. Ina’s understanding of the parallels between the trauma Japanese Americans experienced during WWII and the treatment immigrants and refugees experienced during the first Trump administration and continue to face today makes her uniquely qualified to speak at this year’s pilgrimage.”
This year’s Manzanar Pilgrimage will also include the Irei Project’s the Ireichō: Book of Names that memorializes the more than 125,000 Nikkei incarcerated in the American concentration camps during WWII.
This interactive exhibit is traveling to all 10 former WRA concentration camps and other incarceration sites, in conjunction with pilgrimages in 2025 and 2026.
The tour is a collaboration of the Irei Project, founded by Rev. Duncan Ryuken Williams, and the Japanese American National Museum as part of JANM on the Go, a series of programs and exhibits presented during the renovation of the Museum’s Pavilion.
Reservations to stamp a name in memory of those incarcerated during WWII in American concentration camps in the Ireichō Book of Names will be available by appointment only. To request your appointment, visit https://bit.ly/ireicho.
If you are interested in taking a bus up to the pilgrimage, please submit your name to be put on a waiting list, since all spaces have already been reserved. To fill out the form to be placed on a waiting list, visit bit.ly/56manzanarbus.
For more information about the Manzanar Pilgrimage, please visit manzanarcommittee.org.
