In July 2025, in a big grassy park in Dublin, California, 500 plus people are gathered, holding signs that say, “Resist,” “We Did This Already,” “Japanese Americans stand with immigrant communities” “Hands Off Our Immigrant Neighbors” and “ICE out of Dublin.”
It’s a demonstration against I.C.E., organized by Tsuru for Solidarity and other Japanese American advocacy groups, people who remember all too well what happened to them, their parents and grandparents after World War Two began: hundreds of thousands of Japanese and Japanese Americans living in the U.S. were rounded up and put into concentration camps for four years, the duration of the war.
Across the street from the park, alone on a traffic island, stand three supporters for President Donald Trump, carrying American flags and wearing MAGA hats. They don’t interact very much with the protesters.
One of the speakers, a Latino, an American citizen, describes how I.C.E. picked him up and incarcerated him, offering no proof that he had done anything wrong.
Another speaker, a Japanese American, tells the crowd, “It’s outrageous. They are using the Alien Enemies Act that was used to target our own Issei immigrants with community raids in 1941 as legal justification to round up and abduct immigrant families across the country.”
Tak Tamura and a Japanese American woman young enough to be his great granddaughter, steady a giant poster board with black and white photos of the various camps. Tak points to stark photos of the barracks and dust of the Tule Lake Camp, telling passersby that this is where he, his parents and grandparents were interned for the four years of the war. Tak is in his 80s but still spry enough to fit into his field jacket from when he served in the Army during the war.
One of the passersby, Yammy Yamamguchi, a big boned man also in his 80s, dressed in a colorful Hawaiian shirt, stops to look at the internment camp photos. When he and Tak recognize each other, Tak leaves the young woman to hold the poster by herself and races around the other poster-holders, hugs Yammy, then clenches him by his shoulders, studying his face
“Yammy! What are you doing here? I haven’t seen you in decades!”
“Just checkin’ to see if you still fit into your uniform!”
Tak and Yammy became close serving together in World War Two as part of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team (RCT), an infantry battalion primarily composed of Nisei, American-born citizens of Japanese descent. More than half of the unit were, like Yammy, from Hawaii, and the rest were, like Tak, from the mainland.
In the military, the 442nd faced prejudice and discrimination. No one wanted to fight with these men. Most of them were uninspiringly small in stature and, they looked like “foreigners.”
The 442nd, including Tak and Yammy, proved them wrong. The 442nd fought in Europe and became the highest decorated battalion in U.S. military history, a testament to the courage and valor of Japanese Americans during World War Two.
Tak and Yammy know all too well what is at stake today.