Spotlight Sundays: Japanese American Legacies of Resistance
Spotlight Sundays: Japanese American Legacies of Resistance
Noviembre 15 from 1:00 pm – 3:30 pm
Program | 1–2:30 pm
Call to Action | 2:30–3:30 pm
This Domingo, we are stepping into the historical legacy that inspired OMCA’s latest special exhibition, BeHere / 1942: A New Lens on the Japanese American Incarceration. With opening remarks by OMCA Executive Director Lori Fogarty, we will engage with this present moment in American history with the clarity and learnings of the past.
Guest speakers Satsuki Ina and Miya Sommers, who both have personal or familial ties to wartime incarceration, will be joined in conversation by host Joemy Ito-Gates to explore how the shadows of this history led them to paths of anti-imperialist organizing, solidarity anchored in love, and healing work in times of enduring racial injustice. TaikoPeace will close the day with an interactive performance of “Ei Ja Nai Ka,” honoring Japanese American immigrant ancestors of this era and the echoes of their resistance through taiko, dance, and song. Come ready to learn, engage, and connect with one another!
Visitors are invited to continue the conversation during a post-program Call to Action gathering. Japanese American Families for Justice, Nikkei Resisters, and Tsuru for Solidarity will facilitate interactive protest art activities and share resources on how to get involved with current campaigns.
This program is a part of our exhibition programming for BeHere / 1942: A New Lens on the Japanese American Incarceration, on view through Diciembre 27, 2026.
Accesibilidad
Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) se compromete a ofrecer programas accesibles, acogedores e inclusivos para nuestra comunidad. Las sillas de ruedas, los dispositivos de inclusión sensorial y los servicios adicionales están disponibles en el mostrador de venta de entradas por orden de llegada. Para solicitar otras adaptaciones, como intérprete de lengua de signos americana (ASL), cantonés, español u otro idioma, envíe un correo electrónico a visitor@museumca.org al menos tres semanas antes del acto. Más información sobre nuestras opciones de accesibilidad.
About Speakers and Performers
Satsuki Ina, PhD, was born in the Tule Lake Segregation Center, a WWII maximum-security prison camp for so-called “disloyal” Japanese Americans during WWII. Her parents answered “No” to the so-called Loyalty Questionnaire and, under duress, renounced their American citizenship. She is co-founder of Tsuru for Solidarity, a project of Japanese American social justice advocates working to support front-line immigrant and refugee communities being targeted today. She is a community trauma consultant and author of The Poet and the Silk Girl: A Memoir of Love, Imprisonment, and Protest (Heyday Books 2024). She is Professor Emeritus at California State University, Sacramento.
Miya Sommers (they/she) is a mixed-race gosei (fifth-generation Japanese American) and a third-generation settler on the territory of xučyun, the ancestral and unceded land of the Chochenyo-speaking Ohlone people, the successors of the sovereign Verona Band of Alameda County. In deepening their understanding of this inheritance and responsibility as a settler at the intersection of the U.S. and Japanese empire, Miya’s political commitments center on building with movements for collective liberation through their work as an educator and land steward.
Joemy Ito-Gates (she/her) is a mother, Ethnic Studies educator, and community activist. She has been a public educator for twenty-three years and is the Co-Superintendent of the Buddhist Church of Oakland’s Dharma School. She is a core member of the grassroots organization Japanese American Families for Justice and has writing published in Britt Hawthorne’s Raising Antiracist Children and the newly released Mixed Roots: Writers on Multiracial Identity & Both/And Belonging, edited by Anne Liu Kellor.
TaikoPeace, founded by PJ Hirabayashi in 2018, uses Japanese taiko drumming to spread kinetic energy, spiritual vibration, and joy while inspiring positive social change and world peace. “PEACE” stands for her acronym: Partnerships, Empathy, and Creative Empowerment. Her signature composition, “Ei Ja Nai Ka,” performed worldwide, commemorates the first Japanese immigrants to America through taiko drumming, dance, and song. TaikoPeace frequently collaborates with other artists. Currently, 888 Taiko Collective has joined TaikoPeace, uniting drum, dance, and song as expressions of resistance, joy, and solidarity with communities engaged in social justice work.