Talk Title: The Five Gates: Building the Irei National Names Monument

Talk Title: The Five Gates: Building the Irei National Names Monument

A JOINT CONFERENCE OF THE JACSC AND USC ITO CENTER

The Japanese American Confinement Sites Consortium (JACSC) and USC Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture (USC Ito Center) will host a free joint conference at the Japanese American National Museum (JANM) in Los Angeles, California.  

How do the makers of monuments today conceive of memory, especially when memorializing difficult historical events? This conference brings together leading figures in memory and monument work who focus on racial and religious exclusion and trauma affecting myriad communities in the US and around the world. All who are interested in monument-making and memory work from a comparative, multicommunity, and international lens are welcome. 

Building upon the 2020 and 2021 virtual conferences, JACSC brings together practitioners in preservation, education, and advocacy related to the Japanese American  experience. JACSC serves as a national professional network and resource hub for member individuals and organizations to learn from one another, with the aim of advancing the field as a whole. Interested members of the public will find an opportunity of intensive learning about the field of the preservation and advancement of the Japanese American wartime sites and stories. It is a forum for inspiring conversations and educational opportunities with a national community of thought leaders and experts. 

This year, JACSC partners with Dr. Duncan Ryuken Williams, Director of the USC Ito Center, whose inspirational project Irei: National Monument for the WWII Japanese American Incarceration addresses the attempted erasure of individuals of Japanese ancestry who experienced wartime incarceration by memorializing their names in a multi-modal monuments project. Through this expanded approach, the conference will look at cross-community and global perspectives in order to contextualize Japanese American confinement sites in a broader milieu.

Sponsor: Japanese American Confinement Sites Consortium and the USC Ito Center

BCA Buddhist Education Center Tri-Temple Seminar

Lecture by Duncan Ryuken Williams for the USC Office of Religious & Spiritual Life Speaker Series

Closing Event of the “Sutra and Bible” exhibit with Rev. Deborah Lee, Beth Hessel, Anne Blankenship, Jonathan van Harmelen, and Emily Anderson

Exhibitions like Sutra and Bible are made possible by the dedicated efforts of family and community members who have preserved and researched their family’s histories and the objects, images, and documents that tell these stories. Join us as we learn from Dr. Gail Okawa, Mitch Homma, Elizabeth Nishiura, and Laura Dominguez-Yon about their families and the efforts they’ve made to record and share their stories and preserve the unique and rare objects that are featured in Sutra and Bible. Nancy Ukai, Project Director of 50 Objects, will moderate our conversation.

FREE Hybrid Event

Sponsored by Zenshuji Zazenkai

Sponsored by Zenshuji Zazenkai

Reparations Past and Present: A Conversation with Ta-Nehisi Coates

A conversation with journalist, MacArthur Fellow, and National Book Award-winning author Ta-nehisi Coates. During his tenure as senior editor at The Atlantic, Coates wrote the influential 2014 essay “The Case for Reparations” and in 2019 testified in front of a Congressional House hearing on H.R. 40, a bill to establish a commission to study reparations. The conversation will be moderated by Duncan Ryuken Williams (USC Ito Center).

Is there a Buddhist approach to acknowledging and transforming America’s enduring racial karma? Larry Ward - senior Dharma teacher ordained by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hahn and founder of the Lotus Institute - will share insights from his recently released book America’s Racial Karma: An Invitation to Heal on how to break the nation’s cycles of racial trauma. In conversation with Ito Center Director Duncan Ryuken Williams.

Co-sponsored by the Lotus Institute  

Larry Ward (pronouns- he/him) is a senior teacher in Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh's Plum Village tradition and the author of the book America's Racial Karma. Dr. Ward brings 25 years of international experience in organizational change and local community renewal to his work as director of the Lotus Institute and as an advisor to the Executive Mind Leadership Institute at the Drucker School of Management. He holds a PhD in Religious Studies with an emphasis on Buddhism and the neuroscience of meditation

Letting Go: A Zen and Shin Buddhist Approach to Liberation

The BCA Center for Buddhist Education (CBE) will present this seminar online via Zoom.

The Zoom link will be sent to you on the Monday before the lecture .

Please check your email again on the day before the lecture for final information and possibly lecture handouts.

The Manzanar Ireito (Consoling Spirits Tower) is an iconic symbolic of the forced removal and indefinite incarceration of over 125,000 persons of Japanese ancestry during WWII. An interfaith monument built in 1943 in time for the Buddhist summer ancestral festival of Obon, it was designed by a Catholic architect Ryozo Kado, built by the Young Buddhist Association and residents of Block 9, and dedicated by the Holiness Church’s Rev. Junro Kashitani and Buddhist priest Rev. Shinjo Nagatomi, whose calligraphy adorns the monument built at the cemetery to honor the spirits of those who had passed away in the camp. Today, at a moment when controversial monuments are being pulled down in a national reckoning about America’s history of racial violence and exclusion, the Irei Names Monument is a new initiative that memorializes the names of all persons of Japanese ancestry who experienced incarceration during WWII in Army, DOJ, WCCA, WRA confinement sites and temporary detention facilities. Duncan Ryuken Williams will speak about the making of the names list, the construction of an installation, and the building of an online memorial website.

A workshop exploring how Buddhist communities in Japan and the U.S. have skillfully adapted to the constraints, suffering, and challenges from the global COVID-19 pandemic. Presentations will include an overview of religious responses to COVID-19 in Japan by Levi MacLaughlin (North Carolina State University), adaptations at North American Buddhist temples by Jeff Wilson (University of Waterloo), and Buddhist practice at the San Quentin State Prison by Jun Hamamoto. The workshop will be moderated by Duncan Ryuken Williams (USC Ito Center).

From Japanese American Redress to Black Reparations: A Conversation with John Tateishi and William Darity/A. Kirsten Mullen

A conversation between former national JACL Executive Director John Tateishi (author of Redress: The Inside Story of the Successful Campaign for Japanese American Reparations - Heyday, 2020) and Duke University Professor William Darity and Independent Scholar A. Kirsten Mullen (co-authors of From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century - UNC Press, 2020). The conversation will be introduced by Duncan Ryuken Williams (USC Ito Center) and moderated by Susan Kamei (USC).

Resilience and Freedom: How Enduring Lessons from the WWII Japanese American Buddhist Experience Can Heal Us Today

In this time of Covid-19 lockdowns, our loss of freedom has been one of the most difficult aspects to bear. The inability to see loved ones and go where we want, when we want, has been painful, overwhelming - and increasingly, profoundly depressing. How will we cope with what looks like months more of this pandemic-imposed imprisonment? Perhaps we can learn from the experience of law-abiding people who underwent actual imprisonment and found a way to thrive with the help of their unfolding Buddhist faith. On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the Secretary of War to declare much of the West Coast a military exclusion zone. This act resulted in the incarceration of 120,000 U.S. residents of Japanese descent -- including some 70,000 American citizens. Their crime? Being of the wrong ancestry in a time of war hysteria and rampant racism. These Japanese Americans were forced from their homes, deprived of their property and civil rights, and locked in concentration camps. Yet, behind barbed wire, many looked to their Buddhist faith and found the inner strength and peace to carve out a new life. Professor and author of the new book American Sutra, Duncan Ryūken Williams, PhD, will show us a path to peace found in the experiences and teachings of these imprisoned believers. As they discovered, the wisdom and compassion of their faith led to true "freedom" that enabled them to rise above the circumstances.

Due to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), I have cancelled all upcoming public events for March through May. I will be in contact with you if and when there is a foreseeable change to this timeline.

Clarke and Horowitz Annual Lectures of Religion 2020 – “American Sutra: Buddhism and the WWII Japanese American Incarceration”

“American Sutra” lecture. Sponsored by the Institute for the Study of Humanistic Buddhism.

“Recalling the Ancestors: Buddhism and the WWII Japanese American Internment” - a Day of Remembrance event. Sponsored by Oakland Asian Cultural Center and Eastwind Books of Berkeley.

“American Sutra: Buddhism and the World War II Incarceration” Lecture

“American Sutra: Buddhism and the World War II Incarceration” Lecture

“Recovering Pasts, Imagining Futures: A Roundtable Conversation about New Books on Buddhism in the West” with Duncan Ryuken Williams (author of “American Sutra”, Harvard University Press), Ann Gleig (author of “American Dharma,” Yale University Press) and Wakoh Shannon Hickey (author of “Mind Cure,” Oxford University Press), with respondents Jane Iwamura (University of the West) and Erik Braun (University of Virginia).

Dharma Talk at Eitaikyo Service followed by “American Sutra” lecture. Book signing will follow.

“American Sutra: Buddhism and the WWII Japanese American Incarceration” lecture followed by a book signing. Co-sponsored by the Enmanji Buddhist Temple, Sonoma County JACL, Sonoma County Matsuri, and Sebastopol World Friends. Supporting educational institutions are Sonoma State University and Santa Rosa Junior College.

“American Sutra: Buddhism and the WWII Japanese American Incarceration” lecture

“American Sutra: Buddhism and the WWII Japanese American Incarceration” Lecture. Book sales and signing to follow.

NOTE: A Japanese-language talk about the book will take place at 10am.

Dharma Talk about American Sutra, followed by discussion and book signing.

Please note there are TWO talks this day.

Introduced by Rev. Kenji Akahoshi (Buddhist Temple of San Diego);

10AM-11AM Dharma Talk at morning service

1PM-2:30PM “American Sutra” talk in afternoon, followed by a book signing

Mountain View Buddhist Temple – Dharma message by Duncan Ryuken Williams based on “American Sutra.” Book signing will follow.