ILLUMINATION 2022-23: Aimee Yogi

Photo credit: Melissa "Mimi" Nolledo

"So by September 1943, 5000 students from the West Coast had been placed in 529 colleges and universities inland, to continue their education… Japanese-American concentration camp survivors and veterans joined Martin Luther King on the March on Washington. And in 1964, we had the Civil Rights Act. In 1995, after the Oklahoma City bombing of the Alfred Murrah Federal Building, Dale Minami led a team of Japanese-American attorneys as legal first-responders for the Middle Eastern Arabic-American citizens who were being harassed and detained as suspected terrorists… [I]n 2019, Japanese-American concentration camp survivors have led the effort to close the detention centers on the southern border. These are the detention centers where the refugees and immigrants coming from Latin America, and really all over the world, recalling their own separation from their families in 1942… So the takeaway from all this is, having gone through the injustice that this particular community has. After two Presidential apologies, redress and reparations, the injustice continues. And it is up to all of us to fight for the democracy we want to see, and we cherish. And we must stand united with everyone who suffers injustice…"