The site at Fort Sill, Oklahoma was used as a concentration camp for Japanese Americans during WWII.
Buddhist Monks standing in solidarity with those currently held in concentration camps just as Japanese citizens and Buddhist monks were during WWII.
#CloseTheCamps
Posted by Indigenous Rising Media on Saturday, July 20, 2019
Buddhists joined with hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday to protest the detention of migrant children at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. The Trump administration announced in June that Fort Sill, a former concentration camp for Japenese Americans during WWII, would be used to house migrant children. According to local media, the protestors blocked one of the entrances to the site for more than an hour.
Soto Zen Buddhist priest Duncan Ryuken Williams organized a Buddhist memorial service at the demonstration and called on Buddhist leaders to join the protest in solidarity with Tsuru for Solidary, a grassroots group of Japenese Americans with ties to the internment. More than two dozen Buddhist priests showed up to the protest, reports The Oklahoman.
In one video on social media, a group of Buddhists at the protest chants the Heart Sutra. Soto Zen Buddhist priest Grace Schireson posted a video of protestors chanting “close the camps.”
Williams is the author of American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War, a book about the Internment of Japanese Americans in WWII, released earlier this year. Williams has written about the parallels between WWII’s Japanese American internment and the detention of migrants today for Lion’s Roar.
According to NBC, 40,900 migrant children were taken into custody between January 1 and April 30, 2019.
