This summer, Dr. Stacey Camp is participating in Tadaima! A Community Virtual Pilgrimage, which is a virtual pilgrimage to commemorate and remember Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II. Due to the COVID-19 global pandemic, the annual pilgrimages to WWII sites of Japanese American incarceration were cancelled this year. These pilgrimages provide important educational and community-building opportunities for descendants of the camps, the Japanese American community as a whole, and the wider public. Recognizing the profound significance of these pilgrimages, the National Park Service and the Japanese American Memorial Pilgrimages (JAMP) are co-hosting this virtual pilgrimage in collaboration with numerous partner organizations.
Tadaima! will run continuously from June 13 to August 16, 2020 and each week will focus on a theme, from immigration in the 1800s to redress in the 1980s. In addition to the ten War Relocation Authority sites, the virtual pilgrimage will explore the incarceration of the Japanese diaspora under different types of detention in the United States, Canada, and across the world. This virtual pilgrimage is a collaborative undertaking that brings together representatives from many different parts of the Nikkei community as well as scholars, artists, and educators committed to actively memorializing the history of Japanese American incarceration during WWII.
Dr. Camp’s research activities are intimately tied to understanding the Japanese American incarceration experience. Since 2009, Dr. Camp has been excavating and studying the remains of North Idaho’s Kooskia Internment Camp, a WWII Japanese American incarceration camp. Dr. Camp is the Principal Investigator for the Kooskia Internment Camp Archaeological Project, for which more information can be found at www.internmentarchaeology.org. Recently, Dr. Camp and Dr. Ethan Watrall were awarded a National Parks Service Japanese American Confinement Sites program grant to build the Internment Archaeology Digital Archive (IADA). This open digital archive will host, preserve, and provide broad public access to digitized collections of archaeological materials, archival documents, oral histories, and ephemera that speak to the experiences of Japanese Americans internment during WWII in the United States.
Tadaima! A Community Virtual Pilgrimage is free and open to the public. To learn more and register for the pilgrimage, visit www.jampilgrimages.com and follow JAMPilgrimages on Facebook.