Liberation Obon: A Protest From WWII Japanese Incarceration to Modern Immigrant Detention

by Nimra Ahmad

On Sept. 1, outside the gray fences of the Northwest ICE Processing Center (formerly known as the Northwest Detention Center), Japanese American anti-detention activists will host a colorful and lively "Liberation Obon."

Traditionally, Obon is a Buddhist celebration for commemorating one's ancestors and honoring the dead, and this one will honor people who have died in ICE custody, including a man named Charles Leo Daniel who died in NWIPC earlier this year.

Tsuru for Solidarity, a Japanese American activist organization working toward shutting down immigration detention sites, is organizing the event along with La Resistencia. Tsuru recognizes connections between the WWII Japanese American incarceration camps of the 1940s and today's ICE detention centers.

"My grandparents and my parents, when they were children, were incarcerated, and they were in horse stalls at Santa Anita racetrack, and then transferred over to one of the prisons," said local Tsuru organizer Lynda Joko. "I feel like Japanese Americans are the moral authorities for what's going on at the Northwest Detention Center. It's so close to the bad treatment my relatives [experienced when they] were incarcerated and kind of the same situation. It feels very familiar … We're not learning from our mistakes."

Modeled after Bon Odori celebrations (Japanese American summer festivals), the Liberation Obon will include crafting tables for people to fold origami cranes and design uchiwa, Japanese paper fans used for some Obon dances. There will be speeches from community organizers and several dances, including a new dance to celebrate resistance against mass detention.

Conditions at Northwest ICE Processing Center

Northwest ICE Processing Center is one of the country's largest immigration detention centers with a capacity of 1,575 immigrants.

Detainees allege poor conditions at the facility, including inedible and rotten food, unsanitary conditions that could result in them contracting COVID-19, lack of medical care, punitive and excessive use of solitary confinement, and other human rights abuses. In response, they've held hunger strikes — seven in 2023, with one lasting over 50 days. Detainees are already on their seventh hunger strike of 2024, according to La Resistencia.

In March, a 61-year-old detainee from Trinidad and Tobago named Charles Leo Daniel died in NWIPC, and a medical examiner reported in June that he'd passed from natural causes. Daniel was held in solitary confinement for nearly the entirety of his stay in the facility, close to four years. The United Nations says 15 or more consecutive days in solitary confinement is a form of torture. According to research by the University of Washington, NWIPC detains people in solitary confinement for longer periods of time than any other ICE detention center in the country.

In response to Daniel's death, Tsuru organizers collaborated with La Resistencia to set up an encampment outside of NWIPC. The encampment is still active, and many members of Tsuru and La Resistencia have participated and continue to participate in hunger strikes in solidarity with detainees inside the facility.

"We make a lot of noise outside so they know that we're out there, and they know why we're out there," Joko said.

Obons as a Vehicle of Resistance

The origin of Obon is liberatory, coming from a Buddhist teaching in which a disciple of Buddha liberated his mother from suffering in the Realm of Hungry Ghosts by providing offerings. He danced with joy after he freed her, which became known as the first Obon.

"This story of how Obon originated is grounded in liberation," said K.C. Mukai, a lifelong Buddhist and Tsuru organizer flying in for the event from California. "We are freeing others from suffering, we're trying to free others from suffering."

Obon dances and festivals took place during Japanese internment, in both the "assembly centers" where most Japanese Americans were temporarily held during the summer of 1942, and in the camps themselves.

Vince Schleitwiler, an assistant teaching professor in the American Ethnic Studies department at the University of Washington, said that during internment, the U.S. government discouraged detainees from non-Christian cultural and religious practices, including Japanese and Buddhist practices.

"The fact that in the camps people were holding on to their religion, holding on to their festivals, is really important," Schleitwiler said. "It's kind of everyday cultural resistance to insist on claiming the parts of yourself that were being stigmatized."

Solidarity With Other Communities

Japanese American internment and the NWIPC are connected, Schleitwiler said, and it goes back to what's now the INSCAPE Arts and Cultural Center in Chinatown-International District.

The INSCAPE building was initially the United States Immigration Station and Assay Office when it was built in 1932. Its early detainees were primarily Chinese Americans. After Pearl Harbor, many Japanese Americans were held there until they were sent to other incarceration camps, Schleitwiler said. It continued to be an immigration detention center, known as the Immigration and Naturalization Services building, until it shut down in 2003 because a new facility was opening: Northwest ICE Processing Center.

"A lot of people have really, really bitter memories [of the INSCAPE building], but don't necessarily recognize that NWDC is a direct successor to that facility. If you trace that history of detention, it's one that so many of our communities have been touched by," Schleitwiler said.

Mukai said Japanese Americans have a "moral obligation" to advocate in solidarity with those who are detained today.

"We're seeing, just as we saw in Japanese American incarceration, where families were torn apart, children and families were put in cages, we're seeing that today," Mukai said. "It's again, just under the guise of 'national safety' being used to justify the targeting and roundup of whole groups of people."

Two-thirds of those incarcerated during Japanese internment were American citizens. Racist immigration laws prohibited the one-third who were not citizens from naturalizing because they were born in Japan.

"Japanese Americans are thinking of a pretty complicated relationship to the history of citizenship, because we know from our experience that the laws are often arbitrary, that they're not just, and that they don't recognize the humanity of some folks," Schleitwiler said. "I think that's something that gives us a particular sense of responsibility to stand up for folks who are being targeted similarly."

What's Next?

The Liberation Obon is taking place with general elections on the horizon in November. In July, Washington state legislators Pramila Jayapal (WA-07) and Adam Smith (WA-09) wrote a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas calling for the closure of private, for-profit immigrant detention centers, naming NWIPC. The private company that runs NWIPC, GEO Group, finishes out its contract next year.

Tsuru's goal remains the same: To shut down all immigration detention centers.

The Liberation Obon takes place Sept. 1 outside Northwest ICE Processing Center at 1 p.m.

This article is published under a Seattle Human Services Department grant, "Resilience Amidst Hate," in response to anti-Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander violence.

📸 Featured Image: Japanese American activists build a giant Daruma doll for the "Liberation Obon" event on Sunday, Sept. 1, at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma. (Photo courtesy of Tsuru Solidarity)