On a cloudy spring day in March, over 40 middle and high school students from three Seattle churches (Emerald City Bible Fellowship, Bethany Presbyterian, and Japanese Presbyterian) gathered at Japanese Presbyterian Church to spend a day learning about the internment of over 100,000 people of Japanese descent along the Pacific coast after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.



Students spent the morning at the Wing Luke Museum of Asian Pacific American History.

Museum staff took students on walking tour of Seattle’s International District, stopping at locations such at the Panama Hotel and Tea House, where a glass-covered cut-out in the floor reveals abandoned suitcases and furniture in the basement, left behind by those incarcerated.

The students learned the often unknown history of American citizens being given mere days to leave homes, property, stores, and possessions and move into “War Relocation Camps.” Many of those interned from the Seattle area stopped first at Camp Harmony, a temporary facility on the Puyallup fairgrounds, and then were moved to a camp in Idaho called Minidoka.

After the tour, students met back at Japanese Presbyterian Church to hear living history from two internment camp survivors, now in their 80s.

Bringing history into conversation with current events, the day ended with a panel presentation and discussion with two Muslim American high school students who shared about their experiences after 9/11.

Students wrestled with the haunting and violent history of ethnic and racial prejudice in the US, and the intolerance that exists in their own lifetimes.  We closed the day by circling up and sharing a word, phrase or prayer about what the day meant to us.

Learning. Sadness. Relationship. Justice. Hope. Forgiveness. Healing. Reconciliation.