I recently spent a week in Washington, DC and visited many of the major attractions: the National Gallery, the Smithsonian Castle, the Botanical Garden, and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
My hotel was near Union Station, a magnificent old railroad junction that is now a transportation hub and worth a visit just for the elegant brass drinking fountains. I took the side streets down to the Mall. In one of them I came across a monument that touched and moved me just as much, if not more, than the more conspicuous, more visited places.
The National Japanese American Memorial to Patriotism During World War II is a beautifully thought out and designed triangular small park at the intersection of New Jersey Avenue, Louisiana Avenue and D Street.
Just a stone’s throw from Capitol Hill, the memorial was dedicated in 2000 and is now operated by the National Park Service. It’s not very conspicuous and doesn’t give much away about itself (a modest marker with raised metal letters, barely above the ground, marks the “entrance”).
What attracted me first was a mirror-smooth, oval pool: calm, quiet, unobtrusive.
Five majestic boulders were placed meditatively. A few sparrows floated quietly on the surface. The configuration of the space – a sort of semi-circular, nautilus-shaped enclosure – invites the passerby and evokes the concept of imprisonment.
A wall of concave stone slabs, each engraved with a name 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 largest relocation centers for Japanese during World War II. These names commemorate a shameful chapter in our national history, and these names caught my eye because they lay silently under the same sun that shone on our founding fathers.
Standing on a high pedestal above the otherwise empty square were two bronze Japanese cranes, their wings majestically spread, their beaks clutching the barbed wire in which they were entangled, as if trying to break free. The cranes are nestled together, with one wing pointing downward and the other stretched skyward, their free wings compressed for support.
Sculptor Nina Akamu’s paternal grandfather was arrested in Hawaii during the war, sent to the Sand Island relocation camp, and died during internment. The golden cranes fighting for their freedom symbolize prejudice and injustice on the one hand, and longevity, resilience, and hope on the other. The 14-foot-tall sculpture is visible above the granite walls.
The memorial honors both those Japanese-Americans who were imprisoned during the war and those who loyally served the military during that time – many of whom died. The main designer was architect Davis Buckley.
The bronze Japanese crane sculpture by Nina Akamu. (Heather King)
I walked slowly. The elements were stone, water and steel. The colors were gray, black and dull gold. Downtown DC was bustling, here it was quiet.
On the right 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 expulsion of 120,000 Japanese-Americans, men, women, and children, from their homes in the western states and Hawaii.”
Families were allowed to take only what they could carry and had to leave behind their homes, businesses and friends. The remote relocation centers they were taken to were essentially prisons, guarded by armed guards and surrounded by barbed wire. Some remained until March 1946.
What is less well known is that more than 33,000 Americans of Japanese descent served in the military at the time. In fact, “the 100th Infantry Battalion and 442nd Regimental Combat Team, fighting in Europe, became the most decorated Army unit in American military history because of their size and length of service.” In 1983, the Federal Commission on War Relocation and Internment of Civilians found that there was no military necessity for the mass incarceration.
In 1988, President Ronald W. Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act.
His words from that time are engraved on the edge of the pool: “Here we admit a wrong. Here we reaffirm our commitment as a nation to equal justice under the law.”
The government not only apologized for the blatant injustice, but also awarded compensation of $20,000 each to the more than 82,000 Japanese-Americans who had survived the camps.
A poem on the back wall entitled “The Legacy” by Akemi Matsumoto Ehrlich reads:
Japanese by birth
Hearts and Minds Americans
With unbroken honor
Enduring the sting of injustice
For future generations.
Five additional panels The names honor the more than 800 Americans of Japanese descent who died serving their country during World War II.
You can sit on a bench next to those names and watch the sparrows chirp softly and splash in the pond. You can ponder on the five giant rocks that represent the five generations of Japanese-Americans who lived when the monument was erected. You’ll probably be all alone.
You can reflect on what the memorial does not say, what it does not ask for, what it withholds. A wound without self-pity or anger; an insistence on remembering but without resentment; a desire to contribute despite the pain.
You could study these two intertwined cranes, stretching their wings toward the sky.
You might reflect on the words of Mike M. Masaoka, civil rights activist and staff sergeant of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team: “I am proud to be an American of Japanese descent. I believe in the institutions, ideals and traditions of this nation. I am proud of its heritage. I am proud of its history. I have faith in its future.”
