Sacramento's Japanese American community joins pilgrimage to internment camp

Sixty Sac-area residents joined hundreds of others across California in a pilgrimage to one of the state's most emotionally charged historical sites.

The Manzanar War Relocation Center was the largest of 10 camps where the U.S. government detained more than 110,000 Americans and resident aliens of Japanese descent following the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. According to the National Park Service, more than two-thirds of those detained were American citizens. More than 10,000 individuals were interned at Manzanar.

About 600 residents from the then-town of Florin were taken to Manzanar during World War II, according to a Florin Japanese American Citizens League news release.

Marielle Tsukamoto, co-president of the Florin JACL, was one of eight former detainees on the bus for the 350-mile journey from Sacramento to the historical site situated between Lone Pine and Independence. She and her family were removed from Florin in April 1942, when Tsukamoto was 5 years old, and sent to a concentration camp in Arkansas. “It was terrifying,” she said of the experience, noting the differences in food and climate—it snowed—and the lack of private baths or toilets.

The Sacramento Valley chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations worked with the Florin JACL to organize the first Florin Pilgrimage.