Manzanar Pilgrimage keynote speaker announced
Event to be held April 27
On March 28, the Manzanar Committee announced that attorney Don Tamaki will be the keynote speaker at the 55th Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage, which will be held at the Manzanar National Historic Site on Saturday, April 27, 2023, at 12:00 PM PDT (see map below).
Tamaki, Senior Counsel of the Bay Area law firm, Minami Tamaki LLP, is best-known as Co-Counsel for Fred Korematsu during his Coram Nobis court case in which he appealed his 1944 conviction for violating the order that forcibly removed Japanese/
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Japanese American from the West Coast and incarcerated them in American concentration camps and other confinement sites.
Tamaki helped lead a successful effort to get Korematsu’s conviction vacated in U.S.District Court in 1984.
Tamaki also co-founded the Asian Law Alliance in San Jose, and has served as the Executive Director of the Asian Law Caucus in San Francisco.
In 2012-13, he co-represented the California State Bar in its successful petition to the California Supreme Court to admit the first undocumented immigrant to the State Bar, Sergio Garcia. Other states have followed this ground-breaking decision, including Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Wyoming.
Tamaki also co-founded Stop Repeating History, to educate the public on the dangers of unchecked presidential power, drawing parallels between the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II and the Trump administration’s policies targeting minority groups based on race or religion.
In 2021, Tamaki was appointed by California Governor Gavin Newsom to serve on the ninemember California Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation
Proposals for African Americans to study the cumulative historic and present-day impact of 246 years of enslavement, 90 years of Jim Crow oppression, and 60 years of segregation and its vestiges, and to recommend to the Legislature what California should do to address these harms.
“We’re honored to have Don Tamaki as our keynote speaker on this 55th anniversary of the first community-wide Pilgrimage,” said Manzanar Committee Co-Chair Bruce Embrey. “Don’s tireless activism over the years, his leading role in the coram nobis cases, and most recently, his role on the California Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans makes him uniquely qualified to speak at our Pilgrimage.”
Embrey also emphasized the importance of the Manzanar Pilgrimage.
“As our country grapples with many of the same social and political issues that led to the forced removal and incarceration of our families, we need to remember the sacrifices our families made to hold America accountable,” he said.
The 2024 Manzanar At Dusk program, will follow the afternoon Pilgrimage program at 5 p.m., at Lone Pine High School gymnasium.
For more information, call (323) 662-5102, or send e-mail to info@manzanarcommittee.org.