Once Put In Concentration Camps, Japanese Americans Rally For Detained Immigrants

TACOMA, Wash. — My 95-year-old grandfather, Homer Yasui, has never been one to dwell on trauma. This is supposed to be a country of refuge and salvation and asylum, and here we’re treating them like criminals and putting people in jail!” That’s why last Sunday morning, as black clouds loomed in the south and the weather forecast predicted sheets of rain all day, he donned his Tsuru for Solidarity T-shirt and dressed head to toe in black — “I look like a ninja,” he joked — to go to a protest outside the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington. On June 6, Tsuru delegations from around the country will converge in Washington, D.C., with 126,000 paper cranes — representing the number of people of Japanese ancestry incarcerated in the U.S. during World War II — to stage a massive demonstration calling for closure of the immigrant detention camps and an end to the Trump administration’s targeting of immigrant communities through mass arrests, family separation, detention and deportation. “Even if tomorrow all of these facilities were, they’re going to carry this with them for the rest of their lives, like my parents and my grandparents.” As part of the planned June protest, delegations of Japanese Americans from around the country will converge on the nation's capital with 126,000 paper cranes — representing the number of people of Japanese ancestry incarcerated in the U.S. during World War II. Mari Hayman/HuffPost With any luck, Grandpa will be one of the Japanese American camp survivors taking Tsuru for Solidarity’s “never again” message directly to Washington in June, though perhaps not to President Donald Trump.