A Multimodal Memorial Remembers Japanese American WWII Incarceration

Together with a coalition of Japanese American community groups, Professor Duncan Ryuken Williams and the USC Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture are creating a memorial to every individual of Japanese ancestry incarcerated during World War II in America’s concentration camps.  

The US policy of internment and incarceration during World War II affected more than 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry, as estimated by the National World War II Museum. Citizens and immigrants alike were removed from their homes and assigned to camps during this period of heightened anti-Japanese sentiment.     

By early 2022, more than 75 years since the camps were closed, there was still no comprehensive list of the names of those who were incarcerated. And while there are memorials that commemorate Japanese internment, there was never a consolidated monument to recognize each individual who experienced injustices like wartime forced removal, family separation, unjust deportation, and incarceration.  

Part of Mellon’s Monuments Project Presidential Initiative, a $3.5 million grant from Mellon to the University of Southern California (USC) aims to help redress this absence by supporting the creation of the first comprehensive list of names of people who were removed from their homes.   

The Japanese word Irei is translated by the project team as “consoling spirits.” The project expands our understanding of what a monument is in taking multiple, related forms: (1) a sacred book of names, the Ireichō (“book to console the spirits”) listing every person who was incarcerated; (2) an Ireihi (“structure for consoling the spirits”) sculptural memorial onto which the names of those incarcerated can be projected; and (3) a web-based Ireizo (“consoling spirits storehouse”) where the names of and information about the internees and incarcerees can be gathered in a virtual memorial. 

Those working on the project shared with Mellon that the Irei monument’s approach—of adequately commemorating wartime incarceration—has roots in the memorializing practices of the incarcerated individuals themselves, the majority of whom were Buddhist. Remembrance, in this spiritual tradition, involves a ritual of writing, in which names of those who have passed are inscribed into a sacred book and chanted as a way to make them present again.

In this way and others, the people who are memorialized through Irei are remembered both collectively and as individuals.

In a 2023 article in Hyperallergic, USC Professor Duncan Ryūken Williams, who is leading the project, explained why this expansive approach is part of the Irei’s design.

“Little babies and infirm grandmothers, what real threat to national security would they constitute? But they were just smeared as a grouping, and so the way I thought deeply to correct that is to honor each person and their personhood, and the names stand in for that.” 

In 2022, the Ireichō (“book to console the spirits”) was unveiled at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, and shortly thereafter, visitors were invited to make use of a hanko—a Japanese stamp or seal—to leave a mark next to a name in the book as a means of honoring and remembering that person. 

The two additional monument components—the multiple-location Ireihi  (“structure for consoling the spirits”) and the web-based Ireizo (“consoling spirits storehouse”)—will help achieve an even broader reach, continuing resistance to the erasure of those who were incarcerated.