(soft music)
- The first time I came here there's nothing.
It was before it was a national monument.
It was just desert and a couple of concrete pads.
It was hard to find because
local people didn't know it was here.
My first impression was, what a desolate place.
There's no story, and you get curious.
(soft music)
- The spirit is here for me.
You hear about Gaman, the endurance of the people here.
I feel that spirit even today.
(soft music)
- My parents, my grandmothers, my aunts,
my uncles were all incarcerees.
Part of it is a search for knowledge,
because nobody really wants to talk about it.
There's the shame factor.
And you know, you spend your entire youth
and nobody will speak to it.
You go on vacations with your family,
you'll travel cross country, and they'll stop
in different towns and say, oh I gotta meet so-and-so.
We were in camp together.
And we all imaged boy scouts, YMCA, YWCA, OMSI kind of camp.
We never realized that they were talking
about concentration camp.
(soft music)
- This is my 14th pilgrimage.
I come back here for the people.
I come back here to honor them,
to celebrate those who were here before me.
And for those who come now, they've become my family.
- All of us seekers and allies our hearts and minds are
filled with newly unbound stories and conflicting emotions.
We have felt the spirit and legacy
of our Issei grandparents, of parents, relatives,
and friends whispering in the hot wind,
and swirling, dusty air here at Minidoka.
Empower us to reflect on our own fears and biases,
to discern how to speak out and take action now
in this current climate of targeting any other.
- And I lived in Block 21, so it was very, very close
I'm 86 now, and we're all gonna be gone in a few years.
And so I just feel that it is so important to share it
with all the young people who are coming to the pilgrimages.
Beautiful memory of the dining hall,
is the young adults would have crepe paper
and decorate the ceilings beautifully for Christmas
or whenever they decided that
they want to celebrate somebody's birthday, whatever.
And so they'll pile up these heavy dining tables
against the walls, and since I was a little bit younger,
I'd sneak in and hide underneath there
so I could see what's going on with the young adults.
- It's really hard to get people to talk,
so we created this constant storytelling theme,
and the truth of it is, they couldn't remember
those things because they suppressed it.
But you get them on site, and you get them
amongst other incarcerees and all the sudden,
they do remember certain stories.
- The first thing that hit me was this is not Minidoka,
because I don't see the sagebrush and the tumbleweeds
and all the burdock and holes for rattlesnakes, and ticks.
It's green, it's beautiful.
But then once we got into the barracks,
and begin to get a little more history
of some of the structures, it begin to come home, yeah.
- [Guard] Watch your step.
- So this was our quarters, so you could kind of visualize
the cots all lined up, and no privacy,
unless you got more of your lightweight bedspread
and would hang them up to make privacy.
- I was six here in Minidoka,
and my memories were like childhood memories.
- There was seven of us in here.
- [Nami] Yeah, we had seven in our family,
so we were just in the B unit.
- [Cameraman] So you had the luxury sweet then?
(cameraman laughs)
- I mean we were so young then.
- [Nami] Yeah, we were--
- It's just like camping now.
(group laughs)
- The impact wasn't until, actually I was in college.
And this gal was talking about Minidoka,
and she called it a concentration camp.
And then it kind of like, wow!
It kind of hit me because
I just didn't think of it that way.
- We reflect what our parents and our grandparents do.
And there's some scars from that, that we didn't understand,
and now we come here to heal those scars.
- Totally changed my life.
We were farmers before we came here.
We lost everything.
My dad went from being a farmer
to a farm laborer, and I joined him.
And that's what we did.
We had seven in our family.
Any one of the six above me had the talents
and the abilities to progress higher.
This took it away from me.
- I feel bad, for my parents, what they had to give up,
I think a lot of the hurt was for them.
- It's a shame that it's not that much in the history books.
(group talking in background)
We need to keep this in front of people.
If you don't then they will forget.
- So a great deal of the journey for most of these people,
is just the exploration of their family history
and the country's history as to why and how they could
possibly think putting 110, 120,000 people away
and taking their jobs, their cars, their homes is,
I understand panic, but just because you look like the enemy
doesn't mean you are the enemy.
- And as we go our separate ways today,
give us courage to continue talking story.
To share our difficult stories and emotions
with widening circles of Yonsei, Gosei, and allies.
Honor the cultural resilience,
and perseverance of our Issei forebearers.
Break the silence about the lost years.
We are all woven into the Minidoka story.
Into these threads.
Help us to remember.
Help us to listen.
Keep us from forgetting.
Never again, is now.
(soft music)