SETTLER NATION REPEATS CONCENTRATION CAMP MISERY: Resistance Builds Solidarity
- Momii Palapaz
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
Momii Palapaz
“We started this journey together welcoming and talking about who we are as Modoc people ..." said Welcome ceremony speaker, Taylor Tucker. She is the 9th great direct lineal descendant of Chief Kintpuash aka Captain Jack, along with Scarface Charlie and many other Modoc warriors from the Klamath, Modoc, and Yahooskin (Yahuskin) Band of Northern Paiute Indians), Oregon.
Today, July 4th, over 350 survivors and descendants gathered for the 24th bi-annual pilgrimage at the Oregon Institute of Technology in Klamath Falls, Oregon. Over 120,000 Japanese Americans and their families were imprisoned by the US government in WWII, on stolen land. My parents, both born in the US, were amongst those railroaded with their families to 2 of 10 concentration camps in the west and midwest states in 1942. My mom’s family voted “Yes” to the Loyalty questionnaire so they could keep the family together. The notorious Tule Lake Concentration Camp became the segregation prison for those who voted “no” to protest US injustice and incarceration.
Taylor’s ancestors “all fought in the Modoc War of 1872 and 1873 (against the US army). Right in the lands where you were also incarcerated…We should be here when we’re on ancestral homelands. When we come together like this, it’s really good to have this healing time and healing spirit.”
Shouting “NO ICE NO WALLS NO CAMPS” and “KODOMO NO TAME NI. THERE ARE CHILDREN SET THEM FREE” Tsuru(Crane) For Solidarity rallied pilgrims at the Tule Lake Concentration Camp memorial site. “Kodomo o Tame Ni” means “For the Sake of the Children”
The super seniors; the survivors and descendants of the US concentration camps gathered here in past pilgrimages and founded Tsuru For Solidarity. Many experienced the present criminality of deportation now set on our brothers and sisters from false borders. Satsuki Ina, a founding member and psychotherapist, demanded to investigate the prisons housing children in Dilley, Texas and other detention centers. Tsuru For Solidarity said “DON’T REPEAT HISTORY. NEVER AGAIN”.
But the violence is happening again and again and continues to become more violent, racist and white nationalist against all of us humans. Just the past two weeks, Lorenzo Salgado of Texas, Duran Guerrero of Maine, and a brother in Florida were killed by ICE agents. And everyday human beings are gunned down or run over by ICE .
Tanforan Assembly Ctr- Dad/Takeshi Momii Tule Lake Memorial Book of Names-Mom/Molly Takagi
White Supremacy and racist laws
In 1942 Peru, the government collaborated with US President FD Roosevelt to kidnap, ship and imprison Japanese in Crystal City, Texas. In Brazil, Hawaii and Cuba, governments repeated it. The migration of Asians during the 1900’s was constantly postponed, protested, remodeled, and continually debated with violence. Capitalists and the government maneuvered to replace the “freed” African slaves with another labor force of Asian indigenous, Pacific Islanders, Caribbeans and South Americans. From1868 to1943 US “Act”(s), legislation, and laws were instituted to categorize Chinese, Japanese entry and later Filipinos and Mexicans on the legality of living on stolen land.
Sweaty hot, I look around the beige, dry and dusty expanse of Tule Lake, California, reflecting on decades past when our community was abruptly imprisoned by the dictates of a system determined to manufacture our identity, our “loyalty”, now our “legality”. Most of my relatives have pushed this painful part of our history deep down and passed up opportunities to revisit CC sites. It was 84 years ago but still traumatic. With my niece Sara and her daughter Maya, we are the descendants of the concentration camps, generations of history, yet to be fully told. Every visit is to honor and pay respects, and every 2 years, generations new to the camp history carry on the tradition.
Castle Rock Mountain towers in the background, overlooking what was once a prehistoric lake, sucked dry by government profit making ideals. Over 100 years ago, the Lower Klamath and Tule Lake had over 500,000 acres of water diverted. It destroyed Indigenous Modoc land and people to supply settler farmlands. For generations, the native indigenous community has been reviving this land, opening up the rivers from dismantled dams to freely run Salmon no longer blocked from swimming and nourishing the communities of Klamath.
From the Tsuru For Solidarity NO ICE rally, “The greatest risk of all is to do nothing. We must all choose to act now for our ancestors, families, for our children”
