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Talk Title: Resilience and Adaptation: Buddhism and the WWII Japanese American Incarceration
Sponsor: Nisei Veterans Memorial Center
Online Event
Registration for Event: https://www.nvmc.org
Talk Title: The Irei Project: Recalling the Names of Those Incarcerated at Crystal City
Event: Reaching Across Barbed Wire Fences: America’s Last WWII Concentration Camp
Sponsor: Crystal City Pilgrimage
Registration for Event: https://www.crystalcitypilgrimage.org
Event: Confronting Race and Injustice on the Path to True Freedom: A Year-Long Inquiry into Buddhist Community and Care Across Difference
Sponsor: Natural Dharma Fellowship: Wonderwell Mountain Refuge
Location: ONLINE EVENT
Talk Title: Building The WWII National Japanese American Incarceration Monument: A Buddhist Approach to Transforming The Racial Karma of America
Sponsor: American University Dept. of Philosophy & Religion and Oberoi Foundation for Religious Studies
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
Duncan Ryūken Williams, director of the USC Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture, author of American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War, and ordained Soto Zen Buddhist priest, will give a presentation on Irei: National Monument for the WWII Japanese American Incarceration, This project includes the Ireichō, a sacred book of names now on display at JANM.
Meet Duncan Ryuken Williams.
Hear from some who participated in the stamping of names with Ireicho.
Learn more about the Irei Project.
Please reserve a ticket for in-person or online accss via ZOOM. Limited seating is available.
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 Barre Center for Buddhist Studies
Sponsored by: Naropa University and Frederick P. Lenz Foundation for American Buddhism
Sponsored by: Grawsmeyer Religion Award Lecture
Sponsored by: “Confronting Racism, Discrimination, and Othering” Series, William Alanson White Institute
Online Event
Sponsor: Furman University Humanities Center
Online Event
Sponsor: Tufts University Mindfulness Sangha
sponsored by: The Willis Wood Fund Annual Lecture, Amherst College
Sponsor: Smith College Taitetsu Unno Memorial Lecture
Join Duncan Ryuken Williams and Emily Anderson, curators of the upcoming exhibition, Sutra and Bible: Faith and the Japanese American World War II Incarceration for a virtual preview of many never-before-seen artifacts that tell the stories of how Japanese Americans drew on their faith to survive forced removal and incarceration at a time when their race and religion were seen as threats to national security.
About the Sutra and Bible Exhibit:
From the confines of concentration camps and locales under martial law to the battlegrounds of Europe, Japanese Americans drew on their faith to survive forced removal, indefinite incarceration, unjust deportation, family separation, and war combat at a time when their race and religion were seen as threats to national security. The Sutra and Bible Exhibit explores the role that religion played in saving the exiled Japanese American community from despair through an array of astonishing artifacts: from the prayer books and religious scrolls they carried into camp, to the Buddha statues, crosses, altars they handcrafted to keep their spirits alive. At the heart of the exhibit are sacred scriptures created in camp: ink-inscribed stones that were unearthed from the Heart Mountain concentration camp’s cemetery that make up a section of the Lotus Sutra, and heavily annotated bilingual Bibles, handwritten by the Salvation Army’s Captain Masao Kitaji during his incarceration in the Poston concentration camp.
This exhibition shares the many ways that the Buddhist and Christian communities provided refuge, instilled hope, taught compassion as Japanese Americans survived behind barbed wire, under martial law, and on the battlefield.
The Sutra and Bible Exhibit is co-curated by Duncan Ryuken Williams and Emily Anderson and is sponsored by the Japanese American National Museum and the USC Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture, with support from the National Parks Services Japanese American Confinement Site grants program. The Exhibit is housed at the Japanese American National Museum and can be toured in-person by reserving a timed ticket from February 26 to November 27, 2022.
Bios
Duncan Ryuken Williams is Professor of American Studies & Ethnicity, Chair of the USC School of Religion, and the Director of the USC Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture. He has also been ordained since 1993 as a Buddhist priest in the Soto Zen tradition and previously served as the Buddhist chaplain at Harvard University, where he earned his PhD. Williams’ latest book, American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War (Harvard University Press, 2019) is the winner of the 2022 Grawemeyer Religion Award and a LA Times bestseller. Williams is also the author of The Other Side of Zen (Princeton) and editor of seven volumes including Hapa Japan (Kaya), Issei Buddhism in the Americas (Illinois), American Buddhism (Routledge), and Buddhism and Ecology (Harvard). Find him online at www.duncanryukenwilliams.com
Emily Anderson is Project Curator at the Japanese American National Museum and a specialist on modern Japan. Having received her PhD in modern Japanese history from UCLA in 2010, she was assistant professor of Japanese history at Washington State University (Pullman, Washington) from 2010-2014, and postdoctoral fellow at University of Auckland in 2014. She is the author of Christianity in Modern Japan: Empire for God (Bloomsbury, 2014) and the editor of Belief and Practice in Imperial Japan and Colonial Korea (Palgrave MacMillan, 2017) as well as a number of articles and book chapters on religion and imperialism in Japan and the Pacific. She also has extensive experience developing museum exhibits, including co-curating Boyle Heights: Power of Place (JANM, 2002-2003) and Cannibals: Myth and Reality (San Diego Museum of Us, 2015-ongoing).
Dial-In Information
Register for the Zoom Webinar by clicking here.
Sponsored by: USC Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture and Japanese American National Museum
Upcoming events:
February 26, 2022, exhibition opens, curator's preview zoom program
April 2, 2022, public programs, opening reception
August 13, 2022, launch of Irei Names Project
About the Sutra and Bible Exhibit:
From the confines of concentration camps and locales under martial law to the battlegrounds of Europe, Japanese Americans drew on their faith to survive forced removal, indefinite incarceration, unjust deportation, family separation, and war combat at a time when their race and religion were seen as threats to national security. The Sutra and Bible Exhibit explores the role that religion played in saving the exiled Japanese American community from despair through an array of astonishing artifacts: from the prayer books and religious scrolls they carried into camp, to the Buddha statues, crosses, altars they handcrafted to keep their spirits alive. At the heart of the exhibit are sacred scriptures created in camp: ink-inscribed stones that were unearthed from the Heart Mountain concentration camp’s cemetery that make up a section of the Lotus Sutra, and heavily annotated bilingual Bibles, handwritten by the Salvation Army’s Captain Masuo Kitaji during his incarceration in the Poston concentration camp.
This exhibition shares the many ways that the Buddhist and Christian communities provided refuge, instilled hope, taught compassion as Japanese Americans survived behind barbed wire, under martial law, and on the battlefield.
The Sutra and Bible Exhibit is co-curated by Duncan Ryuken Williams and Emily Anderson and is sponsored by the Japanese American National Museum and the USC Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture, with support from the National Parks Services Japanese American Confinement Site grants program. The Exhibit is housed at the Japanese American National Museum and can be toured in-person by reserving a timed ticket from February 26 to November 27, 2022.
Bios
Duncan Ryuken Williams is Professor of American Studies & Ethnicity, Chair of the USC School of Religion, and the Director of the USC Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture. He has also been ordained since 1993 as a Buddhist priest in the Soto Zen tradition and previously served as the Buddhist chaplain at Harvard University, where he earned his PhD. Williams’ latest book, American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War (Harvard University Press, 2019) is the winner of the 2022 Grawemeyer Religion Award and a LA Times bestseller. Williams is also the author of The Other Side of Zen (Princeton) and editor of seven volumes including Hapa Japan (Kaya), Issei Buddhism in the Americas (Illinois), American Buddhism (Routledge), and Buddhism and Ecology (Harvard). Find him online at www.duncanryukenwilliams.com
Emily Anderson is Project Curator at the Japanese American National Museum and a specialist on modern Japan. Having received her PhD in modern Japanese history from UCLA in 2010, she was assistant professor of Japanese history at Washington State University (Pullman, Washington) from 2010-2014, and postdoctoral fellow at University of Auckland in 2014. She is the author of Christianity in Modern Japan: Empire for God (Bloomsbury, 2014) and the editor of Belief and Practice in Imperial Japan and Colonial Korea (Palgrave MacMillan, 2017) as well as a number of articles and book chapters on religion and imperialism in Japan and the Pacific. She also has extensive experience developing museum exhibits, including co-curating Boyle Heights: Power of Place (JANM, 2002-2003) and Cannibals: Myth and Reality (San Diego Museum of Us, 2015-ongoing).
Dial-In Information
Register for the Zoom Webinar by clicking here.
Sponsored by: USC Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture and Japanese American National Museum
Upcoming events:
February 26, 2022, exhibition opens, curator's preview zoom program
April 2, 2022, public programs, opening reception
August 13, 2022, launch of Irei Names Project
Sponsored by Zenshuji Zazenkai
American Sutra: Buddhism and the WWII Japanese American Incarceration
The Role of Religion in Surviving Incarceration: Patriotism Through Religious Freedom
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
Global Asias and the Migrations of Race-Religion
Where do we find home? How do we become free together? How do we find a place of refuge and belonging in a world often intent on exclusion? These have been enduring questions for American Buddhists of Asian ancestry since the 1850s when the first Buddhist temples were built in the U.S. by immigrants and their descendants. Today, people of Asian heritage make up more than two-thirds of American Buddhists. Yet the histories and perspectives of Asian American Buddhists remain marginalized in many sanghas. What can we learn from Buddhist Asian American insights about navigating the complexities of identity and building an American Sangha that values multiplicity over singularity, hybridity over purity, and inclusivity over exclusivity? How does centering Asian American voices expand our understandings of race, identity, and belonging in American Buddhism? What can Buddhists of all backgrounds learn from Asian American Buddhists when it comes to building multiracial coalitions and inclusive communities?
In dialogue with each other and with participants, Duncan Ryūkan Williams and Chenxing Han will draw from their respective books, American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War (Harvard University Press, 2019) and Be the Refuge: Raising the Voices of Asian American Buddhists (North Atlantic Books, 2021). These groundbreaking works form the basis for a timely conversation on buried histories, trailblazing contributions, race and identity, belonging and refuge. We hope you’ll join us.
As we work to become a more inclusive, equitable, and diverse community, we invite feedback/suggestions you may have regarding ways that we can make participation in the program more accessible and welcoming; please email us at contact@buddhistinquiry.org.
This is a free online course. Register below.
