FRANK ABE is co-editor with Floyd Cheung of a new Penguin Classics anthology, THE LITERATURE OF JAPANESE AMERICAN INCARCERATION. He is lead author of a graphic novel, WE HEREBY REFUSE: Japanese American Resistance to Wartime Incarceration, a Finalist in Creative Nonfiction for the Washington State Book Award. He won an American Book Award as co-editor of JOHN OKADA: The Life & Rediscovered Work of the Author of No-No Boy, in which he authored the first-ever biography of Okada and traced the origins of his novel. He wrote and directed the award-winning PBS documentary CONSCIENCE AND THE CONSTITUTION and helped organize the first-ever “Day of Remembrance.”

Emily Akpan (she/her) is a Tsuru for Solidarity Reparations Campaign co-chair, co-organizer of the National Nikkei Reparations Coalition (NNRC), and co-chair of the New York Day of Remembrance Committee. She is a multi-racial Yon-sei descending from Japanese, Nigerian, and Jewish peoples. Emily lives in Brooklyn, NY where she was born and raised.

Erin Aoyama (she/her) is an interdisciplinary historian and public humanities practitioner. Her work is rooted in Asian American studies, relational ethnic studies, and community and public memory. In addition to her work with Japanese American Memorial Pilgrimages (JAMP), Erin is co-director of “Seeing Memory: Landscapes of Japanese American Incarceration,” a digital mapping and storytelling project, and is a curatorial assistant at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, CA. Erin graduated with her PhD in American Studies from Brown University. Her dissertation engaged with the afterlives of Japanese American redress by focusing on Japanese American memory and community formation in New England and in Arkansas, grappling with the legacy of Nisei soldiers, and reckoning with how Japanese American historical storytelling can both hinder and strengthen movements for Black reparations and Native sovereignty. She holds an MA in Public Humanities, also from Brown.

Regina H. Boone is a photojournalist at the Richmond Free Press and is the granddaughter of Tsuruju Miyazaki, who was imprisoned at Rohwer and Ft. Howard, a detention center in Maryland. She completed her undergraduate degree in 1992 at Spelman College in Atlanta. She was a member of the Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme (JET), where she lived and taught English in Osaka. Boone pursued a master’s degree in photojournalism at Ohio University in the School of Visual Communication. She was formerly a photojournalist at the Detroit Free Press. Her photo of Sincere, a two-year-old boy who suffered from a rash tied to the tainted water in Flint, Michigan, was featured on the cover of Time Magazine.

I have been the Archivist for the San Joaquin County Historical Society and Museum since 2019, after having volunteered at the Museum for about ten years before that. In what I call “a previous lifetime,” I was a Registered Nurse who went back to college for a bachelor’s degree in English with a minor in History, and later, a master’s in Public History. My goals in my current profession are to create order from what is sometimes chaos, to preserve what is timelessly relevant and invaluable, to express this order for the benefit for researchers, and to help them put the pieces of their research together to add to their own story or project. I also enjoy hanging out in the jungle that is my garden and doing Scottish Country Dancing with my husband Bob.

Both documentary and scripted narratives define Dylan's experience in filmmaking on independent features that highlight human experience. Merging a background in technology with filmmaking helps Dylan apply a feature film aesthetic as he seeks to execute visual storytelling in new and compelling ways.

Reiko Janice Hamasaka was born in Rohwer Relocation Center in January 1943, four months after her parents, grandparents, and extended family arrived by train from the Santa Anita Assembly Center. Released after almost two years there, her family moved to Chicago for a few years before returning to Los Angeles. She grew up in Harbor City listening to her mother's stories of the bleak and uncertain life in camp. As a history major at UCLA, she wrote her senior thesis on her family's history using her mother's memories to depict their Rohwer experience. She is planning to join the Fudeko project to continue telling her family’s story.

Ross M. Harano, former Managing Director of the State of the Illinois Office of Trade and Investment, has over 40 years of experience in helping private and public organizations in the areas of public policy, management and finance. He currently serves as the Chief Operating Officer of The Hanford Group, LLC, an international consulting consortium.

Immediately prior to joining the Illinois Trade Office, Mr. Harano served as the President of the World Trade Center Chicago. Mr. Harano had previously served the Office of the Attorney General of Illinois concurrently as Equal Opportunity Officer, Director of Advisory Councils and Chief of the Crime Victims Division.

As a businessman, Mr. Harano was the operating partner for two international trading companies and served as the Chief Financial Officer for several international business ventures. As a banker at the Bank of Chicago on Wilson and Broadway, he served as a vice president for loans.

Mr. Harano has extensive involvement in public organizational activities and has served as President of the Illinois Ethnic Coalition and the Chicago Chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League. He has also served as the Treasurer of the Illinois Humanities Council and the Board President of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform. Mr. Harano served as the Chair of the Commission of Asian American Affairs for the City of Chicago.

In 1992, Mr. Harano was the first Asian American to be appointed as an Illinois Elector for the Electoral College. In 1994, he was the first Asian American to run for statewide office in Illinois when he was a Democratic candidate for Board Trustee of the University of Illinois.

Mr. Harano has received awards from the Illinois Department of Human Rights, the American Jewish Committee, the Chicago Commission on Human Relations, and the Illinois Ethnic Coalition.

Dreisen Heath (she/her) is an reparations activist and organizer specializing in capacity building, community infrastructure development, and strategic planning at the intersections of human rights, racial equity, and liberation. With a focus on reparative justice, she mobilizes communities for transformative change through movement building, research, narrative change and policy work. In addition to actively advising community-led reparations processes in over 24 jurisdictions and territories, Dreisen co-chairs the Public Education and Narrative Committee at the New Jersey Reparations Council and founded the Why We Can’t Wait National Reparations Coalition. She previously led racial justice and reparations initiatives at Human Rights Watch and is a graduate of Wesleyan University. Beyond her work, Dreisen is active in her community, organizes against police violence, enjoys playing and watching sports, and loves to marvel at nature's beauty.

Miya Iwataki’s life experience as an Asian woman activist, Japanese American warrior for Redress/Reparations; host/producer of KPFK-FM East Wind Radio series; architect of diversity and cultural competency programs for LA County health administration have Inspired a lifelong respect for cultures, community and commitment to justice and equity.

A founding member of NCRR, she was most profoundly impacted by the courage and testimonies by Issei and Nisei at the CWRIC Hearings; and having the opportunity to work with JA community heroes: camp survivors, 442nd Vets, Fair Play Committee members and powerful women like Yuri Kochiyama. Today with NP/NCRR Reparations Committee and NNRC, she working to support Black Reparations.

Marsha Endo Johnson, a Sansei, is a retired paralegal and research analyst. In her early adult years, she focused on helping children maneuver their way through the foster care system as a CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate). In addition, she focused on mental health advocacy at the micro level.

In the last few years, Marsha used her researching skills to learn more about her maternal grandfather, Chimata Sumida (an Issei). Before WWII, Chimata was a well-known businessman in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles. The FBI arrested him in January 1942, and he was one of the first Japanese internees at the Ft. Missoula Alien Detention Center. The Department of Justice later paroled Chimata Sumida to the Rohwer Internment Camp to join his wife, children, and Marsha’s brother, Todd Endo (A Rohwer Survivor). Marsha presently is conducting research on the Japanese internees imprisoned at Ft. Missoula Alien Detention Center in conjunction with its restoration project.

In 1945 after the U.S. Department of Justice paroled Marsha’s grandfather, most of the Sumida and Endo families moved to Washington, D.C. Joining an ondo group in suburban Washington, D.C., was an important way Marsha stayed connected to her Japanese culture. Her ondo group performed for many years at numerous events including the D.C. Folk Festival (now the Smithsonian Folklife Festival) and the annual Cherry Blossom Festival.

SF Bay area native Paul Kitagaki Jr. has traveled the world covering natural and human-caused disasters, documenting the lives of everyday Iraqis living under Saddam Hussein, Mexico City residents digging out of a deadly earthquake, Asian factory workers laboring for pennies to produce high-end athletic shoes for the U.S. and international athletes competing for gold at ten different Olympic Games.

Kitagaki’s work has been honored with dozens of photo awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, and been nominated for Emmys. He’s been published in news outlets worldwide, including National Geographic, Time, Smithsonian Magazine, Sports Illustrated, Stern, People, Mother Jones, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post, as well as in his home paper, The Sacramento Bee.

“Gambatte! Legacy of an Enduring Spirit” documents and illuminates a dark episode in our country's history, the relocation and internment of more than 120,000 ethnic Japanese Americans. A national traveling exhibition appearing at the Smithsonian and in cities throughout the country, Kitagaki has spent the 15 years locating the families who lived through the internment camps, documenting their stories of survival and inner strength to overcome injustice, racism, and wartime hysteria.

His award-winning book in it’s second printing “Behind Barbed Wire, Searching for Japanese Americans Incarcerated during WWII” has won a Independent Book Publisher Peacemaker Award gold medal and an International Photography Awards Professional Documentary book.

In 2014, he was featured in the PBS film “American Masters – Dorothea Lange: Grab a Hunk of Lightning,’’ on the life and times and the woman whose work sparked his own journey. The cinematographer for the show, Dyanna Taylor, is Lange’s granddaughter and an award-winning visual journalist in her own right. He is also featured in the 2019 Abby Ginzberg documentary “And Then They Came For Us.”

He is married to photojournalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Renée C. Byer.

instagram @paulkitagaki

Facebook personal https://www.facebook.com/paul.j.kitagaki

Facebook project page https://www.facebook.com/kitagakiphoto

website www.kitagakiphoto.com

Akemi Kochiyama is a Yonsei Harlem-based writer, scholar-activist and consultant whose work is focused on community building, solidarity and social justice. The granddaughter of human rights activist, Yuri Kochiyama, Akemi is co-director of the Yuri Kochiyama Solidarity Project and co-editor of Passing It On: A Memoir by Yuri Kochiyama.

Tommy Lofton is the Museum Director at the Mississippi Armed Forces Museum.

Kathy was born and raised in multicultural Boyle Heights and came of age during the late 60’s at the height of the Vietnam War and the dawn of Asian American Studies at UC Berkeley. These experiences shaped her values and direction. Since 1971, she has worked on issues related to youth, workers, housing in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles and redress for Japanese Americans. Currently Cochair of the Nikkei for Civil Rights & Redress, she served on the Editorial Team for the book, “NCRR: The Grassroots Struggle for Japanese American Redress and Reparations”, helped to educate the American public about the camps through the film/curriculum, “Stand Up for Justice” and was part of the NCRR 9/11 Committee which worked to build relationships with the American Muslim community after 9/11.

Kathy was honored to represent NCRR in Japan to support the rights of Koreans and other minorities in 1988 and is currently involved with NCRR, Nikkei Progressives, Vigilant Love, and the Sustainable Little Tokyo project. She continues to support reparations for Comfort Women who were used as sexual slaves during WWII by the Japanese military and through the Nikkei Progressives/NCRR Reparations Committee she is able to help build solidarity in support of long overdue reparations for African Americans and much needed structural changes. Retired from teaching at an LAUSD continuation high school in 2011, she lives in Los Angeles (Tongva land) with Mark Masaoka. They have a daughter Mayumi and son Dan and grandsons, Yuma, Leo and Keanu.

Phillip Merlo is a historian and educator who serves as the Executive Director of the San Joaquin County Historical Society & Museum. Phillip was born and raised in Stockton, California, and received his education at Franklin High School and UC Berkeley. Phillip's research interests lie in histories of diaspora, segregation, and economic development in California's Delta Valley. He firmly believes that Stockton is among the most historically significant places, not just in the Central Valley or California, but within the context of national and international history. His work at the museum has centered on diversifying institutional collections, exhibits, and programs, building strong partnerships with local governments and community organizations, promoting San Joaquin County as a location worthy of research in academia, and planning the redevelopment of the museum's campus. Prior to his work at the museum, he served as a history teacher in Stockton Unified School District.

Phillip's experiences growing up in Midtown Stockton, as a student at Cal, and as an educator in Stockton motivate him to use history to empower and provide opportunities for young people. While working in Stockton he hopes to continue his research on the municipal government’s history of disinvestment in low income communities, and to partner with other educators to build new forums for youth civics and local history education. In addition to his work at the museum, Phillip is a board member of Little Manila Rising and the United Way of San Joaquin. Additionally, Phillip coaches Science Olympiad for Franklin High, and chairs the Stockton Cultural Heritage Board.

David Ono is the evening anchor at KABC-TV in Los Angeles with three shows a day, including the top rated show in all of LA, Eyewitness News at 6pm. David was just recently named by Broadcast and Cable, America’s Anchor of the year. In addition, Ono’s high profile reports and documentaries have taken him all over the world, winning 31 Emmys and 10 Edward R Murrow awards.

Connie Shirakawa is a Chicago native who writes and tells stories about growing up in her parents' rooming house on the westside. She performs solo shows for Lifeline Theatre's Fillet of Solo Festivals, Solo Sundays, and tells stories at the Goodman Theatre, Chicago History Museum, the Snap Judgment podcast SPOOKED, at Illinois and DePaul Universities and is a frequent 2nd Story performer

Her story was published this year in De Paul's book, "Chicago Mosaic: Immigrant Stories of Objects Kept, Lost, or Left Behind."

Lauren Sumida is a yonsei artist and social worker who lives in Queens, New York. Much of their work in collage and watercolor draws upon archival documents as a way to learn and reimagine historical connections, starting with their own family's incarceration history and how it fits into the broader landscape of state violence in the U.S. As an aspiring herbalist, Lauren also finds insight and joy in drawing the plant world. They currently work as a facilitator on de-escalation strategies, protest safety, and trauma-informed care.

Kai Naima Williams is a multidisciplinary writer and performing artist based in Harlem, New York. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks He Tried To Drown The Ocean, I Waved (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2018) and Tomorrow Maps (The Hunger Press, 2023) and the children’s picture book The Bridges Yuri Built: How Yuri Kochiyama Marched Across Movements (Kaepernick Publishing, 2024). She is a co-founder of Eat At The Table Theatre Company.

Her work has been featured in MASK Magazine, DRØME Magazine, Louisiana Literature, Stirring Lit, Abolition Is, CRWN Magazine, Literary Manhattan and the upcoming anthology Black and Asian Feminist Solidarities (Haymarket Press, 2025). She has performed in showcases for Sakhi For South Asian Women, Planned Parenthood, Densho and as part of the Freshman Class at Bowery Poetry Club. She has written and directed plays for Eat At The Table Theatre Company and Good Evening Repertory. She has participated in speaking engagements organized by the Smithsonian Museum Asian Pacific Islander Center, the USC Pacific Asia Museum, Chinese American Museum and the Japanese American National Museum.

She is a 2023 Bandung Resident (MoCADA / Asian American Arts Alliance), 2019 Recipient of the Monroe Prize for Excellence in African American Studies, 2018 Recipient of the Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival Grand Prize in Fiction and a 2017 Honorable Mention for the New York Times’ Modern Love Essay Contest.

Erica Wong was born in Los Angeles, California in 2002. She is currently enrolled at Loyola University Chicago, double majoring in Studio Art and Graphic Design.

Her work has been shown in the Annual Juried Student Exhibition at the Ralph Arnold Gallery in 2023 and 2024. Upcoming shows include This Can’t Be It at the Loyola University Museum of Art (LUMA). Her work focuses on Asian-American identity in connection with queer identity. She explores the ideas of community and family dynamics complicated by intersectionality.

Jeffrey Yamaguchi is an author and longtime publishing professional. He serves on the Jerome Rohwer Pilgrimage planning committee, publishes the Concentrational Resonance newsletter, and is working on a project about the Rohwer concentration camp photography studio his Grandfather, Fred Yamaguchi, ran. Jeffrey’s grandparents and extended family were incarcerated at Rohwer.

Aeko is delighted to join the 2024 Pilgrimage & share information about her parents, Richard & Helen Yoshikawa. She is a young 75 year old, a Rohwer descendent and sansei that lived most of her life in Stockton, CA.

She sold her California home & moved to Warrenville, IL in 2022 to be close to her daughter and grandchildren. She definitely misses CA weather, tornado sirens can be unnerving.

Her current life consists of playing pickleball, cribbage & cards with her lady friends, driving into Chicago Monday night to practice Taiko, and watching her grandchildren playing in multiple sports. Aeko volunteers at the Northern Illinois Food Bank. She is an avid downhill skier and a member of the Professional Ski Instructors of America and the Fox Valley Snowdrifters.

In January she was on a 15 day pilgrimage to India & Nepal to follow the footsteps of the Buddha. This ski season she skied at Heavenly, NV; Winter Park, CO; Big White, Canada; Whiteface, NY and Big Sky, MT.