The farmhouse of Mukai Farm & Garden — a historic landmark adorned with vintage artifacts and meticulous exhibits detailing a once-thriving Japanese American presence on Vashon — was filled last Sunday with islanders who had come not only to remember America’s past but also, perhaps, to prepare for its future.

The event on Feb. 23 marked Mukai’s annual observance of the Day of Remembrance, commemorating the 83rd anniversary of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066. The order, signed on Feb. 19, 1942, authorized the forcible removal and imprisonment of 127,000 persons of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast — 80,000 of whom were American citizens.

The order resulted, on Vashon, in more than 100 Japanese American islanders being forced to evacuate at gunpoint on May 16, 1942 — all of whom were subsequently incarcerated in concentration camps scattered through multiple states. Of the 132 islanders of Japanese ancestry who were either imprisoned or voluntarily exiled themselves away from the West Coast, only 40 returned after the war, according to local historians.

The crowd that shoehorned into the Mukai farmhouse’s living room on Sunday, sending organizers scurrying to find more folding chairs, numbered about 60 people — the largest gathering ever for a Day of Remembrance event, according to Mukai board member Kay Longhi.

All had come to see a screening of a film by Frank Abe, “Conscience and the Constitution,” documenting the story of 63 Japanese Americans men who refused the draft while at the Heart Mountain concentration camp — saying that they were ready to fight, but not before their rights as citizens were restored and their families were released from cruel incarceration.

The film — filled with rarely seen archival footage and searing interviews that detailed the enormous costs of the dissidents’ decision to resist the draft — was made in 2000.

The film was introduced by a beloved islander and former Mukai board member, Joe Okimoto —who in 1942 was imprisoned, at the age of three, with his family for three years in a sprawling prison camp built on a Native American reservation in the Arizona desert. The camp, Poston, held a population of more than 17,000.

Joe Okimoto, at Mukai Farm & Garden. (Jim Diers Photo)

Okimoto, in introducing the film, leaned into the theme of Abe’s film — resolve and resistance — to urge attendees to stand up to violations of civil liberties and human rights he said were now being carried out in immigration and other policies of President Donald Trump’s administration.

“[The Day of Remembrance] commemoration has always carried the hope that by remembering this past error, America would not allow this to happen again to anyone,” said Okimoto. “Unfortunately, it is happening again — we are in that dark chapter of history today in 2025. And the scene is eerily similar — there is chaos, confusion and a great deal of fear in both the targeted group and society at large. Of course, the targeted groups today are immigrants and other minorities.”

Okimoto urged attendees not to give into despair and withdraw, as he admitted he, too, had been tempted to do — but rather, to stand up for the rights of others.

“On a community level, we know that in 1942, the Japanese American community did not have the support of collective voices protesting the unconstitutional actions of the Roosevelt administration,” he said. “There was no effective opposition to the executive order. Today, we must become the voice of the opposition protesting the inhumane and lawless treatment of immigrants and other minorities and the destruction of the rule of law. We must find ways to resist and become the opposition.”

Comments by several attendees, in a discussion following the film, echoed Okimoto’s resolve. One islander wept as she questioned whether she would would have been as brave as the 63 men documented in the film.

“It’s one thing to sacrifice yourself, and another to sacrifice your family,” she said.

Another islander detailed the experience of her uncle, an underground fighter during World War II who had been sent to Auschwitz. She said she had learned from his example that “if you don’t take a stand, you are part of it.”

Janie Starr, an islander who is active in Indivisible Vashon’s immigrant refugee’s rights group, urged those in attendance to stand up for the rights of others.

“Somebody recently said, just do one thing,” Starr said. “And it can be a very small thing — and I don’t know if it makes a difference, but I deeply believe that not doing something makes a difference.”

Read more about the film at tinyurl.com/3tynesxk and read a recently-published profile of Joe Okimoto at tinyurl.com/5a2f4bmh.