“Let It Not Happen Again”: History’s Lessons at BIJAEM

Bainbridge Island, just a 35-minute ferry ride away from Seattle, is home to quaint coffee shops, breathtaking natural areas, Pia the peacekeeping troll, and a wonderful community of warm, welcoming islanders. Bainbridge Island is a sparkling green gem in the Puget Sound and its history is rich, deep, and inspiring, especially as we face a rapidly changing political climate and our friends and neighbors face persecution under the current administration.

Pathway at BIJAEM

The Evergreen Echo

On March 5, 2025, I met with Carol Reitz, Katy Curtis, and Lilly Kodama at the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial (BIJAEM). My interest in Bainbridge Island and the Japanese American Community there had been piqued a few months before, after a coworker of mine, Theresa Song, had mentioned her involvement in BIJAC, the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Community. At first, I meant only to report on one of their Mochi Tsuki festivals or to do a simple overview of the community, but the more I untangled the thread of the community’s history, the more I realized how important BIJAC’s story was.

BIJAC’s history serves as a cautionary tale for our political climate and aggressive administration today. I needed to get their story right, and it started at the BIJAEM. At this site, about 83 years ago, 227 Japanese Americans were forced from their homes and shipped by ferry to concentration camps under Executive Order 9066.

On December 7, 1941, the attack on Pearl Harbor marked the start of the United States’ involvement in World War II. It also started a wave of fear and unrest throughout the country, leading to an overwhelming prejudice against Japanese Americans. “Most of us had no ties to Japan,” Lilly Kodama, a survivor, explained. “We had never been there. We had never even seen it.” Similar to the reactionary racism and prejudice against Arab Americans following 9/11, the discrimination against Japanese Americans had no true basis in fact, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order only created more harm and prejudice against an already vulnerable community.

Over the course of my afternoon with different members of BIJAC, we walked the same steps as the incarcerated Japanese American citizens did on March 30, 1942. As we walked, Lilly Kodama shared her memories of that day and her days in the incarceration camp. We moved to different placards at the site, taking in images of the survivors. A few times we would stop so Carol Reitz, the President of BIJAC, and Katy Curtis, the Vice President, could explain some of the history of the images we saw. With each step, there was a sense of heartbreak.

I pictured crowds of people walking this same path. I wondered what they were thinking, how they felt. They were carrying only what fit on their backs, but also the weight of the administration’s discrimination upon them, the weight of fear of what might be done next—in my own community, the Queer and Trans community, that weight looms heavy too.

At some moments the parallels between the persecution of Japanese Americans in 1942 and the persecution of Hispanic, Black, Queer, and Trans people today were beyond startling. I thought of the Japanese Americans in concentration camps in 1942 and the Hispanic/Latino Americans in ICE detention centers today. Each step was heavier than the last leading to the ferry dock where Japanese Americans stepped off the island into uncertainty on that spring morning some 80 years prior.  

On a large stone wall, near the bottom of the Memorial pathway, Nidoto Nai Yoni is written in Japanese and English. Translated below, the wall reads: Let It Not Happen Again. In the afternoon sun, the letters were dark against the stone, the words were clear and sharp. As I stopped to take a photo, I felt its meaning wash over me. The mission of BIJAC and BIJAEMA (Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial Association) is to honor the history of WWII and the 120,000 Japanese individuals forcibly removed from their homes. On their website, BIJAEMA states, “The Memorial stands as an unwavering testament to the events of March 30, 1942, serving as a poignant reminder of the past.” The past should be a lens into the future and a tool we can learn from, so we do not repeat our mistakes.

“Let it not happen again”: BIJAEM site dedication and history of Japanese American exclusion.

The Evergreen Echo

As we continued to walk on, something that Reitz said at the start of the tour rung through my mind. “We want to be clear that this is not Japanese history,” she said, “this is American history.” The Executive Order that led to the incarceration of over a hundred thousand people did not happen on far off shores, or another country—it happened here. It began in the Puget Sound, on the Island, and it also began in the state where I grew up, California, on the edge of Death Valley, where the Manzanar War Relocation Center is located. Manzanar became one of the first concentration camps under the Executive Order.

View from ferry window

The Evergreen Echo

At the end of our tour, Reitz kindly drove me back to the ferry dock where I would take a boat back home. The irony was not lost on me. After learning of so many people taken away on a boat, I was now taking another to return safely back to my cozy studio apartment. I remember relaying to Reitz that it was scary and sad. “It feels like it is happening all over again.” I told her. “It is.” She replied solemnly. I wondered what could be done. Nidoto Nai Yoni, I thought. Let it not happen again. I needed to share their story.

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 [To Be Continued]