Irei
National Monument for the WWII Japanese American Incarceration
The Irei: National Monument for the WWII Japanese American Incarceration is a multi-faceted project that seeks to address the attempted erasure of those individuals of Japanese ancestry who experienced wartime incarceration by memorializing their names.
This is the first time a comprehensive list of the over 125,000 persons of Japanese ancestry who were unjustly imprisoned in U.S. Army, Department of Justice, and War Relocation Authority (WRA) camps has been successfully compiled - and thus the first time it has been possible to properly memorialize each incarceree as distinct individuals instead of a generalized community. By placing their names front and center, the Irei National Monument Project seeks to expand and re-envision what a monument is through three distinct, but interlinking elements: a sacred book of names as monument (Ireichō), a website monument (Ireizō), and light sculpture monuments (Ireihi).
"We are drawing on Japanese and Japanese American cultural traditions of honoring elders and ancestors, not simply through building monuments of remembrance, but monuments to repair the racial karma of America."
Duncan Ryūken Williams
Irei Monument Director/
Soto Zen Buddhist priest/
USC Shinso Ito Center Director
Soto Zen Buddhist priest/
USC Shinso Ito Center Director
Ireichō
The Book of Names
The idea of a book as a monument is inspired by the Japanese tradition of Kakochō (literally, "The Book of the Past"), a book of names typically placed on a Buddhist temple altar. This book is brought out for memorial services, when the names of those to be remembered are chanted. Following a ceremonial installation on September 24, 2022 at the Japanese American National Museum (JANM), the Ireichō monument will be on display at the museum until December 2024. The public is invited to view and acknowledge the names in the Ireichō by placing a Japanese hanko (stamp) underneath the name of each individual in the book. After the display at JANM is concluded, during 2025-2026, the goal of honoring the 125,000+ names will continue as the Ireichō goes on a national tour until every single individual is acknowledged.
Ireizō
The Online Archive
The Ireizō is an interactive and searchable website monument hosted by the Irei Project that serves as an online archive of all of the people incarcerated in the wartime camps. On it, additional information about each name can be viewed such as the camps where they were incarcerated, revealing aspects of their lives that extend far beyond their names. Full rosters of all temporary detention stations as well as internment and concentration camps is also available. After a beta version of the Ireizō website - www.ireizo.org - launched in conjunction with the release of the first edition of the Ireicho, the online archive was officially launched on Feb. 19, 2024. As a part of the launch, we have partnered with Densho to pair each name with photographs, camp newspapers, and other WWII-era materials in their vast digital repository. In April 2024, we will partner with Ancestry to provide those exploring family history on that platform with our authoritative names list in a portion of their website freely accessible to the public. In summer 2024, we will launch an international campaign to record the names and camps on the plaques of every individual in the project, a partnership with Densho and the Japanese American Memorial Pilgrimages. In 2025, we will partner with the WWII Camp Wall project in Torrance, CA and provide them with our authoritative names list to build ten walls of names per WRA camp and an eleventh wall of names of those who were incarcerated in non-WRA camps.
Ireihi
The Light Sculpture
The Ireihi are sculptural pieces that unite traditional Japanese cultural notions of memorial monuments with site specific installations. Engineered by a creative team of artists, architects, and designers, and coordinated in partnership with the Japanese American Confinement Sites Consortium, these sculptural installations will be on display at Amache, Jerome, Heart Mountain, Manzanar, Minidoka, Poston, Rohwer, and Tule Lake starting in 2026. Also in summer 2026, JANM will also unveil their Ireihi sculpture as part of its relaunch of renovated campus and core permanent exhibition.
ABOUT THE NAME
The name of the project—Irei: National Monument for the WWII Japanese American Incarceration—was inspired by the Ireitō, a monument built by incarcerees at the Manzanar concentration camp to remember those who had died while incarcerated. The Ireitō was formally dedicated by Reverend Shinjo Nagatomi, whose calligraphy I-REI-TO (Consoling Spirits Tower) reflects his belief that reciting the names of the departed and chanting sutras in front of the tower would bring comfort to the spirits of the departed and those left behind.
MAKING OF THE MONUMENT
The Irei Project is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the memory of the over 125,000 persons of Japanese ancestry incarcerated in America’s concentration and internment camps during WWII. The Irei Monument is based on the compilation of the names of those incarcerated in the wartime camps. A team of researchers led by project director Duncan Ryuken Williams is responsible for ensuring the comprehensiveness and accuracy of the names. All monuments have been conceived under the guidance of the project's creative director Sunyoung Lee, together with a team of artists and designers.
The Ireichō book monument's production team included Book designers: Jon Sueda and Chris Hamamoto, Text designer: Berton Hasebe, Data designers: Chez Bryan Ong and Eric Ong, Calligrapher: Shumyo Kojima, Bookbinder: John DeMerritt, Ceramicist: John Hasegawa. The compilation of the names involved the assistance of nearly a hundred individuals. They cannot all be listed here, but the key personnel who spent thousands of hours transcribing, researching, and editing the names include: Julie Abo, Frederick D. Kakinami Cloyd, Mikka Gee Conway, Jesse Hendler, Willitte Hisami Herman, Susan Kamei, Karen Kano, Skye Oyama, Desiree Perez, Shoichi Shingu, Yukari Swanson, Ann Yamamoto, Mikoto Yoshida, and Roland Yoshida. Major institutional collaborators included Densho (especially Geoff Froh and Dana Hoshide), the Japanese American National Museum, the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai‘i, the Manzanar National Historic Site (especially Patricia Biggs), and the New Mexico JACL (especially Shelley Takeuchi). Individuals with whom we collaborated and from whom we adapted previously produced camp rosters include Grant Din, Russell Endo, Saara Kekki, Dennis Neumann, Hayley Johnson/Sarah Simms, and Priscilla Wegars.
The Ireizō production team is led by Chez Bryan Ong and Eric Ong of Spoon + Fork Studio.
The Ireihi production team is led by Plus and Greater Than (Traci Sym, Daniel S. Meyers, David Beauvais).
GRATITUDE TO FUNDERS
Funding for the making of the Irei Monuments has come primarily from the Mellon Foundation and the USC Ito Center. The initiative to enhance the Ireizō through a collaboration with Densho is supplemented by support from the Japanese American Confinement Sites (JACS) Grant Program.