Courtesy/JACL
JACL News:
Twenty years ago, feelings of neglect and resentment boiled over when a group of historians, community leaders, and Japanese Americans worked to create a memorial acknowledging the internment camp that housed over 4500 men of Japanese ancestry and existed 2 1/2 miles from the Santa Fe Plaza during WWII.
In “A Community in Conflict,” filmmaker Claudia Katayanagi addresses the fraught history of the attempts of some to memorialize the Santa Fe Camp and the opposition of others who felt it would insult the memory of WWII veterans. The film presents for the first time both sides of an issue that brought back painful memories of the Bataan Death March as well as the injustices of Japanese American incarceration.
The Santa Fe Internment Historical Marker was dedicated in 2002 on a windy hill in Frank Ortiz Park, overlooking the former campsite, which is now the residential neighborhood of Casa Solana. The Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) Players, a readers theater group, will dramatize stories from inside and outside the barbed wire of the Santa Fe camp, including the childhood memories of a former mayor and the sons of two internment camp guards. Director Katayanagi will moderate a panel discussion with interviewees from her film and engage in a Q&A with the audience.
This program gives visitors to the traveling Smithsonian exhibit, “Righting a Wrong,” a chance to broaden their knowledge of Japanese American incarceration through the little-known stories of the WWII Department of Justice camps of New Mexico (Santa Fe, Lordsburg, Fort Stanton, Old Raton Ranch). The history of Japanese internment has been recently added to the high school history curriculum standards by the PED.
This program is free and open to the public thanks to funding from the Japanese American Community Foundation of Oakland, Calif.
This program is 1-4 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 19 at the New Mexico History Museum in Santa Fe. Paid admission to the New Mexico History Museum & the Smithsonian exhibit is required.
Visit the website for more information and order tickets for this program here.
Contact: Shelley Takeuchi: shell93013@outlook.com.