A crowd of nearly 100 people visited Ober Park on Sunday, May 19 to commemorate the Day of Exile — a time of anguish, trauma and betrayal of Vashon’s residents of Japanese ancestry.

But the commemoration was also a time of healing and looking forward, through the honoring of artists and authors and the beginning of a campaign to place a sculpture marking the expulsion of island residents at Ober Park.

Ober Park was the site where, on May 16, 1942, armed soldiers rounded up 111 residents of Vashon-Maury Island of Japanese ancestry, forcibly deporting those residents off the island and ultimately into concentration camps across the western U.S.

Told to bring only what they could carry, many of those rounded up at Ober Park wore multiple layers of clothing, shuttled to a ferry on the north end on a hot May day, said Rita Brogan, former Friends of Mukai nonprofit president, to the crowd at the commemoration.

From there, a sweltering train took them to the Pinedale Assembly Center, in the middle of the desert near Fresno, California, and afterward the prisoners were taken to more permanent camps.

This incarceration of Japanese Americans was, according to the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, a decision made out of “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership” — not out of legitimate military or security concerns. The detainment shattered the Vashon Japanese American community, and only about a third returned to the island after the war.

Islander Dr. Joe Okimoto was one of those who were unconstitutionally uprooted and forced away from home.

“We are commemorating this event with the hope that such gross injustice will never be repeated,” Okimoto said.

Arriving in Seattle to crowds of spectators — some sympathetic, some curious, and some hateful — Vashon’s Japanese Americans did not know where or why they were going, he said.

“On the long train ride, some might have feared … they would be taken off the train in a desolate area, lined up, and shot,” Okimoto said.

Okimoto was only three years old when his family was taken from San Diego ,and ultimately spent three and a half years at the Poston, Arizona detention camp, a barbed-wire prison with 18,000 other prisoners under the harsh Arizona sun.

Okimoto also read excerpts from the poetry of previous Vashon Poet Laureate Lonny Kaneko, an islander who was imprisoned in the camps and who died in 2017.

“All of us Japanese Americans choked on the trauma of imprisonment,” Okimoto said, “and continue to thirst for answers as to why it had to happen. It all happened in broad daylight and too many voices of good people were silent. And look what is happening today in broad daylight … Are we living in an era of hatred and racism similar to what I faced in 1942? And will we all be silent again?”

Vashon High School student Sam Bosanko read from the recollections of Eddie Owada, who had to drop out of school to work at age 15 after the FBI arrested their family’s father. And Vashon artist and author Miya Sukune read from the recollections of Tillie Sakai Katsura, a 17-year-old on the Day of Exile.

“We saw our friends, who came to say goodbye, get smaller and smaller until we couldn’t see them anymore,” Sukune read, recounting Tillie’s memory sailing away from Vashon on a ferry with her family.

Today, Tillie is 100-years-old, and the suitcase that her younger sister carried to their detention is on display at the Mukai Farm & Garden.

Sukune recently published a graphic novel titled “Searching for Saito,” which chronicles the story of Rinzo Saito, a Japanese immigrant who lived in Seattle from 1912 to 1969. She spoke about both her work and the broader artistic and creative expression of Japanese Americans during the incarceration after the ceremony at the Vashon Library. (A free PDF of the novel can be found at SearchingforSaito.com.)

Mary Raybourn read recollections of Mary Matsuda Gruenewald, who was preparing to graduate from Vashon High School when armed guards took her to the ferry and to a landing in Seattle, where spectators cursed and spat at her and the other Japanese Americans — and a vigilante group bore shotguns.

Seventy-four years later in 2017, at the age of 92, Gruenewald returned to Vashon High School in a wheelchair and a cap and gown to receive her diploma.

To close the ceremony, island historian Bruce Haulman and Koshin Cain, abbot of the Puget Sound Zen Center, held a blessing and bell ceremony — reading the surnames of each of the 30 households who were exiled and imprisoned, and striking a bell for each one.

The event was co-organized by Mukai Farm and Garden, the Vashon Heritage Museum, the Vashon Park District, the Vashon Library, the Puget Sound Zen Center and the Vashon-Maury Island Land Trust.

The ceremony also marked the start of a campaign to install a sculpture at Ober Park commemorating the Japanese Americans who were brought there in 1942 before their mass incarceration, and the campaign got its first check — for $500 — right after the ceremony’s close.

The sculpture will include an educational component and come with curriculum for seventh grade students on the island too, according to organizers.

This article, which has been corrected, previously incorrectly identified Rita Brogan as the current president of the Friends of Mukai organization. Brogan is in fact the former president; the current president of the Friends of Mukai is Riya Kyo.

Alex Bruell photo Vashon artist and author Miya Sukune recently published a graphic novel titled “Searching for Saito,” based on the real life of Rinzo Saito, a Japanese immigrant who lived in Seattle from 1912 to 1969. She gave a talk about the book at the Vashon Library on Sunday.

“Searching for Saito,” by Miya Sukune, is based on the real life of Rinzo Saito, a Japanese immigrant who lived in Seattle from 1912 to 1969.

Alex Bruell photos Rita Brogan holds up the first check received for the campaign to install a sculpture at Ober Park commemorating the Japanese Americans who were brought there in 1942 before their mass incarceration.

Koshin Cain, abbot of the Puget Sound Zen Center, rings a bell at Ober Park for each of the 30 Japanese American households exiled and imprisoned in 1942 during a blessing and ceremony.