By Sharon Yamato
Many know Terminal Island as a place with an ignominious history as the Japanese American fishing community that was quickly decimated after the signing of EO 9066, when men were yanked from their boats, businesses, and homes because they were thought to be dangerous enemies. However, it wasn’t until recently that I got a first-hand glimpse of how its turbulent past reverberates today.
The first and only other time I visited Terminal Island was 50 years ago while working at a local TV station. I was introduced to Susan Loewenberg, founder and director of L.A. Theater Works. Back in the day before there was any formal mention of DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) for the underrepresented, she was beginning her now illustrious career birthing an innovative arts program at Terminal Island Prison.
Fresh out of college, I was visibly moved by the work that was being done to offer a creative outlet for incarcerated people. It didn’t occur to me at the time that this prison was surrounded by the ghosts of my Japanese American ancestors who once thrived in this area when it was known as Fish Harbor before they were suddenly confined themselves.
A few weeks ago, while driving across the immense Vincent Thomas Bridge, I was shocked at how things had changed in the decades since I’d last been there. Container after orange container stacked almost to the sky covered every inch of this massive harbor and seemed to go on for miles.
Tucked away on a little-traveled thoroughfare surrounded by unidentified buildings, a memorial built to commemorate Fish Harbor’s past was all that was left to show the flourishing community now long gone.
Fortunately, there are now efforts by community leaders and organizations to preserve that history by asking the L.A. City Council to save two remaining buildings on Terminal Island’s Tuna Street. This request followed the recent proclamation that Terminal Island was deemed one of “America’s 11 Most Endangered Places” by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
As important as memorializing this historic site is, the reason for my visit was something I considered of greater consequence, i.e., to protest the possible use of the local Terminal Island Prison to lock up innocent men, women, and children being picked up by ICE much in the same way that our Issei forefathers were suddenly detained without any due process 83 years ago.
While it was only rumored that the prison in and around the former Japanese American fishing village will be used as an ICE detention center, residents have been patrolling the area and claim that increased traffic is a clear sign that ICE is moving in.
With the passage of the Big Ugly Bill, a whopping $45 billion will be poured into detention facilities, with an unbelievable increase of 265% in ICE’s annual detention budget. This insane boost in the ICE budget has already resulted in the rapid eight-day construction and immediate use of chained facilities, one of the worst of which has been appropriately labeled “Alligator Alcatraz” for its remote location in Florida surrounded by alligator-infested waters.
Although the rapid building and deployment of today’s detention centers is far more appalling than anything this country has known, there is an eerie similarity to the immediate construction of 16 euphemistically named “assembly centers” only weeks after EO 9066 was signed. Terminal Islanders were told only two days following Roosevelt’s executive order that they had 48 hours to prepare for detention.
A total of 3,000 residents were eventually sent to the Owens Valley Reception Center (which later became Manzanar). By comparison, 3,000 detainees per day are being ordered today to be picked up by ICE. At that rate, it will only take 30 days before the total of 92,000 forcibly removed to assembly centers back in 1942 will be reached.
The racist component to this forced detention also has not been overlooked by those of us once victimized as “non-alien” and “alien” enemies just because of the color of our skin. As a Japanese American, I was happy to see Little Tokyo’s grassroots organization, Nikkei Progressives, co-sponsoring the Terminal Island evening protest.
Amy Oba spoke on behalf of them and all our ancestors when she shouted before this crowd of more than 100 demonstrators, “We watched as the targeting of immigrants, the removal of due process to facilitate arrests, and even ICE’s use of Terminal Island, where a thriving community used to be. As Japanese Americans, we say that this new iteration of violence against immigrants must end.”
Perhaps it’s this connection to our own history that makes me feel the suffering of what is happening today deep in my gut. I also can’t help but wonder if there were only more protestors when our families were being thrown into camps, perhaps things would have been different.
These mass demonstrations today provide a glimmer of hope that goodness and decency can prevail in a country that protects, not imprisons, each and every one of us. As Japanese Americans who are victims of horrible bigotry and mass detention, I think it’s up to us to lead the way.
Sharon Yamato writes from Playa del Rey and can be reached at [email protected] expressed in this column are not necessarily those ofThe Rafu Shimpo.