Executive Order 9066
Weekend of Remembrance:
Never Again is Now
Saturday, Feb. 8 – Sunday, Feb. 9, 2025
Visiting the Puyallup Remembrance Gallery on Saturday, February 8, 2025
Araki Kodo VI playing the shakuhachi bamboo flute
The Rev. Irene Tanabe, Rector of All Souls Anglican Episcopal Church in Okinawa
Rev Irene Tanabe teaching the congregation a liturgical dance
Clergy and congregation participating in liturgical dance
Katya Nemec
The Revs Polly Shigaki, Irene Tanabe, Nat Johnson, and St. Peter's intern Laura Meyers
Rev. Polly Shigaki
Pleiades Dances by Takashi Yoshimatsu
Clergy and acolyte during the liturgy
Laura Meyers and Deacon Polly Shigaki processing with the Gospel book while dancer Joan Laage performs
Jay Shoji
The Rev. Carla Robinson
Original altar at St. Peter's
Every year, St. Peter’s commemorates the signing of Executive Order 9066, which authorized the forced removal and mass incarceration of Japanese Americans on the West Coast in February 1942. St. Peter’s closed for the duration of the internment as its members were incarcerated in desolate camps miles from home, along with 120,000 other Japanese Americans.
You can listen to some of St. Peter’s stories of internment here.
This year, St. Peter’s invited the diocese and larger community into a weekend of listening, reflection, and conversation dedicated to the throughline of this particular history, the realities of our sociopolitical present, and invitations of resistance and solidarity in our shared future.
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Day of Remembrance & Remembrance Gallery
Saturday, February 8
St. Peter’s and the Circles of Color made a pilgrimage down to Puyallup to participate in the annual Day of Remembrance event put on by local chapters of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), Tsuru for Solidarity, Minidoka Pilgrimage Planning Committee and other local groups.
Most Japanese Americans in the Seattle area spent their first few months in detention at the Puyallup Assembly Center, where the Washington State Fairgrounds stand today. The Day of Remembrance is a way to acknowledge and honor the over 125,000 people of Japanese descent who were incarcerated during World War II.
The event included speakers, a procession to the Remembrance Gallery, a viewing of the Silent Fair video, and more.
image: Behind Barbed Wire. Courtesy of the Tokuda Family Collection, Densho
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St. Peter’s Commemoration Service, Lunch, & History Tour
Sunday, February 9th at 10:30 a.m.
St. Peter’s held its annual commemoration service sitting in the tension of past, present, and future as Christ’s body and resisters of Empire. This service wove history, music, dance, art, and shared storytelling from members and friends of St. Peter’s. Japanese lunch and conversation followed, along with a parish history tour facilitated by members of St. Peter’s historic families.
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Other Events
Click here for community remembrance events.
image: View of Manzanar, a Japanese Internment Camp located in Independence, California. Dorothea Lange