Pilgrimage

Amid the 1960s civil rights struggles, younger Japanese Americans spoke out, shattering their elders’ silence and shame about the camps. In December 1969 a group of about 150 people journeyed to Manzanar for what they called the first Manzanar Pilgrimage. They discovered that two Issei leaders, Buddhist minister Sentoku Maeda and Christian minister Shoichi Wakahiro, had actually been returning to the site for 25 years.
 
Sue Kunitomi arrived at Manzanar in May 1942, at age 19. In camp, she served as a teacher’s aid and wove camouflage nets to support the war effort. She also worked as a reporter, and then managing editor of the Manzanar Free Press.

Years later, Sue Kunitomi Embrey was among the first of her generation to speak out about the camps. As the driving force behind the Manzanar Committee, she organized the Manzanar Pilgrimage for 37 years. She worked tirelessly to ensure that this site and its stories would be preserved to protect the human and civil rights of all. Today, Sue’s legacy endures in the ongoing work of informing and inspiring future generations.

In recent years the Manzanar Committee has reached out to Arab- and Muslim-American groups and included their representatives in the Pilgrimage events. At the 2006 Pilgrimage, Monica Embrey, granddaughter of Manzanar Committee founder Sue Kunitomi Embrey, said, “In the early days of the Manzanar Pilgrimage, our grandmother often spoke of how gratifying it was to have so many Sansei and young people of all races coming and struggling to understand how and why this happened. And more importantly, she always said how essential it was that so many people came forward pledging to fight against something like this ever happening again.”