Over Memorial Day weekend,
members and friends of the Japanese American Association of Lane County came
together at the Eugene Japanese American Memorial in downtown Eugene for what
was officially a cleaning event. Most of the work involved sweeping fallen
leaves and dirt from the bluestone paving and carefully brushing the stone
pillars and sculpture. Yet the gathering was never simply about maintenance; it
was a purposeful act of remembrance and community, a time to reflect quietly on
the painful history of Japanese American incarceration during World War II, and
to honor those who endured it. Many of the paving stones are engraved with the
names of local internees, including then-University of Oregon students, as well
as those whose efforts culminated in the memorial itself. The cleaning was a
kind of ritual, one that spoke more to reverence than utility.
The memorial’s narrative is both local and national. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, wartime hysteria and long-standing anti-Asian prejudice converged to devastating effect. Executive Order 9066 authorized the forced removal and incarceration of more than 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, most of them U.S. citizens, from the West Coast. Many from Lane County were among them. They lost homes, businesses, possessions, and years of their lives to unjust imprisonment in isolated camps across the interior West and South.(1)
A parallel injustice struck Canada, where my father’s family and other Japanese Canadian citizens were sent from Vancouver to remote locations such as New Denver and McGillivary Falls, British Columbia, their property confiscated without consent. My father, a teenager then, never spoke of those years. Whether his silence stemmed from pain, shame, or a desire to shield me and my brothers, I’ll never know. It left me with a fragmented sense of that history, a gap I’m only now beginning to bridge through my involvement with Eugene’s Japanese American community and a hoped-for pilgrimage to the site of my father’s internment. The Eugene Japanese American Memorial, with its quiet insistence upon remembrance, has become a touchstone in this journey, grounding my personal search in a shared history.
Planning for the memorial began in 2003, when the Eugene Japanese American Memorial Committee (EJAMC) formed with the goal of creating a permanent site of remembrance. A key turning point came when the Spirit Mountain Community Fund—administered by the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde—awarded a $50,000 challenge grant, spurring the grassroots campaign that ultimately raised the $100,000 needed to bring the project to life.
Completed in 2007, the
1,800-square-foot memorial takes the form of a small garden anchored by three
engraved stone pillars and a central sculpture. The pillars bear original
artwork and text by Kenge Kobayashi, himself incarcerated at Tule Lake
as a teenager. Each stone presents a theme: “Justice,” with portraits of civil rights activists Fred Korematsu, Gordon Hirabayashi,
and Min Yasui(2); “Perseverance,” depicting a Japanese
American family behind barbed wire with a guard tower looming in the distance;
and “Honor,” which pays tribute to the service of Nisei soldiers who fought for
the United States while their families remained behind fences. The committee
held a design competition for the central sculpture, ultimately selecting David
Clemons’s evocative bronze piece, Forced Journey, which depicts a
young girl seated atop a stack of suitcases and footlockers, her hand extended
toward a butterfly. It’s a poignant reminder of lives upended, of innocence
amid upheaval.
I know how form and setting can
shape memory and experience. The Eugene memorial is small, but it’s potent. It
compresses complex truths into a spatial experience that is direct, human-scale,
and quietly assertive. The engraved paving stones (by stone carver Lisa Ponder)
underfoot connect the past to the present. The stone pillars and their interpretive
plaques evoke the layers of injustice, resilience, and sacrifice. And Clemons’s
sculpture centers the experience on a single figure, a child on the threshold
between innocence and history. The Japanese American Association’s ongoing care
ensures the memorial remains a living space of connection. The lessons of 1942 feel
increasingly relevant today. The political climate has again made visible the
ease with which fear can become policy, and how quickly the rights of targeted
groups can erode under pressure. There are those who see parallels between past
and present, and who fear the repetition of mistakes we promised never to
repeat. The Eugene Japanese American Memorial does not offer resolution, but
it does insist on recognition. In this, it fulfills the basic charge of any
public memorial: to mark a wound, to hold space for truth, and to refuse
forgetting.
The memorial’s narrative is both local and national. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, wartime hysteria and long-standing anti-Asian prejudice converged to devastating effect. Executive Order 9066 authorized the forced removal and incarceration of more than 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, most of them U.S. citizens, from the West Coast. Many from Lane County were among them. They lost homes, businesses, possessions, and years of their lives to unjust imprisonment in isolated camps across the interior West and South.(1)
A parallel injustice struck Canada, where my father’s family and other Japanese Canadian citizens were sent from Vancouver to remote locations such as New Denver and McGillivary Falls, British Columbia, their property confiscated without consent. My father, a teenager then, never spoke of those years. Whether his silence stemmed from pain, shame, or a desire to shield me and my brothers, I’ll never know. It left me with a fragmented sense of that history, a gap I’m only now beginning to bridge through my involvement with Eugene’s Japanese American community and a hoped-for pilgrimage to the site of my father’s internment. The Eugene Japanese American Memorial, with its quiet insistence upon remembrance, has become a touchstone in this journey, grounding my personal search in a shared history.
The Office of the Custodian, Japanese Section was the government body established during World War II as part of the Canadian government's seizure and sale of property that belonged to the Japanese Canadians. This is the "custodian case file," for my grandmother (my father's mother) dated April 30, 1942. Note her internment registration number. The names and ages of my father (Shiro, 14) and his siblings are listed under "NAMES OF LIVING CHILDREN." Her home address is noted as "Marpole, B.C." Marpole was once an autonomous settlement but is now part of the City of Vancouver.
The Eugene Japanese American Memorial is located on a
modest plaza at the intersection of Willamette Street and 6th Avenue, tucked between the
Hult Center for the Performing Arts and the Graduate Hotel. It occupies part of
what in March of 1942 was the civil control station in Lane County where local
Japanese Americans were ordered to report before their forced removal to
internment camps. Though the setting of the memorial must contend with the steady din of 6th Avenue’s traffic, the space nonetheless
invites quiet contemplation.Planning for the memorial began in 2003, when the Eugene Japanese American Memorial Committee (EJAMC) formed with the goal of creating a permanent site of remembrance. A key turning point came when the Spirit Mountain Community Fund—administered by the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde—awarded a $50,000 challenge grant, spurring the grassroots campaign that ultimately raised the $100,000 needed to bring the project to life.
Two of the memorial's three stone pillars: "Justice" on the left, and Perseverance" on the right. (my photo)
Footnotes:
(1) These 10 sites were the primary facilities where Japanese Americans were held for extended periods, often under harsh conditions in remote locations:
- Manzanar War Relocation Center –
California
- Tule Lake Segregation Center –
California (initially a relocation center, later designated for those
labeled "disloyal")
- Poston War Relocation Center
(Colorado River) – Arizona
- Gila River War Relocation Center –
Arizona
- Heart Mountain War Relocation Center
– Wyoming
- Minidoka War Relocation Center –
Idaho
- Topaz War Relocation Center (Central
Utah) – Utah
- Granada War Relocation Center
(Amache) – Colorado
- Jerome War Relocation Center –
Arkansas
- Rohwer War Relocation Center –
Arkansas
(2) Korematsu, Hirabayashi, and Yasui—all American citizens—challenged the constitutionality of the forced removal and imprisonment of those of Japanese ancestry. Each would receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, posthumously in Yasui’s case. The University of Oregon recently named one of its new residence halls to honor Min Yasui.