More than 200 people on Sunday came together in San Jose for a day of remembrance 81 years after President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order that led to the incarceration of tens of thousands of Japanese Americans during World War II.
Walking through the streets of San Jose's Japantown, people held tea lights to bring light to a time when 120,000 Japanese Americans were forced to live in internment camps. Those in attendance gathered to remember the past injustices and to unite to prevent them from happening again.
Sumi Tanabe of San Jose was just 4 years old when her family was forced to leave their California home to live in an internment camp in Arizona for three years.
"For me personally, it was a psychological damage that was done to us children," Tanabe said. "We were made to feel guilty for something we did not do just because of our ancestry and because of racism."
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She said when her family returned to California, they found they had lost their home and business.
Satomi Susie Yasui of San Jose also lived in an internment camp in Arizona at age 4, a time when she was supposed to be hospitalized receiving critical care for a bone disorder.
"I had no medical care at all," she said.
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She said her experience in the camp was devastating.
"It took all of my years of my childhood life away from me," she said. "I wasn't able to walk for seven years."
Tanabe said it's important to remember the stories from the past and beat the drums of change.
"We seem to have gone backwards over the last few years," she said. "I think it's quite sad that racism is still rearing its ugly head and that there are people still being targeted. To me, that’s very sad."
