Community pilgrimages are at the heart of our work.
Pilgrimages to sites that hold Japanese American histories, especially former incarceration sites, are an important way for the community to gather to honor our ancestors, to learn deeper and more nuanced histories together, and to continue reckoning with the ongoing legacies of World War II and its aftermath.
Pilgrimages include a mix of relationship building and social time, educational programming, and opportunities for intergenerational conversations. It is important to JAMP that we create space for joy and for more somber reflection. Above all, pilgrimages are a chance to celebrate and continue to grow our community, while remembering with gratitude the ancestors and elders on whose shoulders we stand.
The Power of Pilgrimage
by Mary Ishimoto Morris
When I was a child, I hated my face. Other kids laughed at it. I was ashamed to be me. When I got older, I hated being alive. I tried to kill myself in middle school and high school. Secretly I wondered: What is wrong with me?
It’s funny realizing that all that time I spent in therapy as an adolescent and an adult, the fact that my parents had been unjustly incarcerated for three years of their lives never came up. But why would it? They rarely spoke of it and if it did surface, it was fraught with emotions I couldn’t fathom. Why go there?
I registered for the 2023 Jerome Rohwer Memorial Pilgrimage with trepidation from my lifetime of avoiding anything Japanese. But I left Arkansas changed: At the age of 71, the existential mystery code of what is wrong with me had been cracked. Had it not been for what I experienced there, I might never have worked it out…..
