During an annual pilgrimage in late April to the site of a former internment camp, U.S.-born children of Japanese immigrants to the U.S. recounted divisions among Japanese-Americans during and after World War II.
During the war, the U.S. government interned more than 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry at 11 relocation camps built across the U.S., as they were deemed a danger to national security. Some 10,000 people were relocated to a camp constructed in the desert in Manzanar at the foot of the Sierra Nevada in California's Owens Valley, the site of the April pilgrimage.
Satsuki Ina, 71, professor emeritus at California State University, Sacramento, who was a keynote speaker at the 46th Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage at the Manzanar National Historic Site, was born at the Tule Lake Segregation Center, another former camp in the state. The war ended when she was 1 years old and the family was subsequently released.