Niki G, a member of the Biblio Lotus Team, had the opportunity to talk with Duncan Ryūken Williams, the project lead for the Irei: Monument for the WWII Japanese American Incarceration. Duncan is the Professor of Religion and East Asian Languages & Cultures and the Director of the University of Southern California Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture. He has also been ordained since 1993 as a Buddhist priest in the Soto Zen tradition. Duncan is also an author and editor, and his latest book is American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War.
The Ireichō Book of Names is the first comprehensive list of the more than 125,000 persons of Japanese ancestry who were incarcerated in U.S. Army, Department of Justice, Wartime Civil Control Administration, and War Relocation Authority camps during World War II. The book was on display in September 2022 at the Japanese American National Museum (JANM), located in Los Angeles, California.
Since then, thousands of visitors have gone to acknowledge each incarceree by placing a stamp under each name. Camp survivors, their descendants, and friends have gone to the museum to verify that the names are correctly displayed and to pay their respects. The Ireichō is now traveling across the United States throughout 2025 and 2026 for additional stamping opportunities to acknowledge the incarcerees.
Niki
Can you give us some background information about the project?
Duncan
I had written a book that was published in 2019, American Sutra. It's about Buddhism and the Japanese American experience in World War II and during the 17 years it took to write it, I worked in the National Archives and interviewed camp survivors. I was very curious about all the names of the clergy and other people who were in the different camps, and I started to make lists of individuals in the ten war relocation camps and other camps created by the Department of Justice. I was working with a group called Tsuru for Solidarity in 2019 and it dawned on me and the organizers that there was no comprehensive list of names of everyone who had been in the camps. The Smithsonian and the Japanese American National Museum (JANM) and institutions that are thought to be reliable sources for understanding the World War II incarceration gave wildly different numbers - sometimes 110,000, 120,000 or 125,000. They are all a guestimate because nobody had ever made a list before, even though in the 1980s, the Civil Liberties Act had been signed by Ronald Reagan with checks going out to those who experienced incarceration through the Office of Redress Administration (ORA), the staffers of which I interviewed but who did not have a master list of names of everyone who was incarcerated.
So in 2019, I began the project to create a comprehensive names list and led a team to go into the National Archives and look at these documents. I also talked to incarcerees who had their own directories of the blocks they lived in. We started compiling and collecting thousands of camp rosters and directories, train transfer lists, etc. and after two and a half years we came to a point where we thought we had a comprehensive list that was about 99% there but that was still potentially missing people and more research needed to be done. We would need the help of the public to locate more camp survivors and descendants and to let us know if anybody was missing or if somebody's name was misspelled. We took the 125,000+ names and put them in a Book of Names and invited the public to come and acknowledge every name at least once. We have a small Japanese style hanko or stamp that makes a little mark next to each name.
And so that became the project.
As of July 2025, around 84,000 people in the book have been acknowledged from folks who have visited the Japanese American National Museum and who participated in the first part of the national tour. We've added 1000+ people to the book. A lot of the government rosters that we used from the National Archives have misspellings because the clerical typists at that time were not that familiar with Japanese names. Our project has included repairing and correcting historical records and trying get accurate information to honor all those who have been incarcerated. We've sequenced the book by the Japanese tradition of honoring elders and organized them by date of birth. The first name in the book is a 97-year-old person and the last name is a baby born right before the final camp closed down.
Niki
I'm assuming more names will come to light as the exhibit travels throughout the country. Are you going to add all the additional names to the book?
Duncan
Yes. Periodically, we print an addendum to the book, and we print those names in the same format and design as the rest of the pages in the book. We've already had several rounds of these addendums, and we try to print them regularly so that if somebody wants to stamp a name that has been more recently discovered, they can.
The printed book is its own special project because as people stamp and acknowledge more names, it feels like it's gaining more significance and power. But our website has the most accurate and comprehensive list of names because it’s where we can almost immediately add or correct a name. We created the website project, called Voicing Refuge, in collaboration with Densho, which has the largest Japanese American oral history and photographic collection in the country. You learn about the person behind the name by clicking on the name, seeing the person’s photograph and all the camps the person went to and listening to the person’s history. We invite the public to submit additional recordings because interactivity is a key to our project. This is an online archive. And since many survivors and descendants can’t travel to stamp the names, it's a way that people who are too old and frail to come out to Los Angeles or join one of the national tour stops can still participate.
Niki
On the website, it mentions that the Book of Names is made from the soil samples collected from the sites. How did that come to be?
Duncan
I initiated a campaign where I asked camp survivors to go back to the camps where they had been incarcerated and collect a little bit of soil from that place and either hand it or mail it to me. In some places we didn't have remaining camp survivors, so we had descendants go to that site and retrieve some soil. I took a little bit of soil from each of the 75 different confinements sites including the 10 War Relocation Authority sites and mixed clay with that soil. Our ceramicist made thin, nicely polished ceramic book ends embedded into the paper at the front and at the back of the Book of Names. We invite the public to touch them, so that they can ground themselves to this history and be connected to all the different sites around the country.
Niki
Besides the Book of Names and the website, is the third component to the project a light sculpture?
Duncan
Yes. We call it a site installation instead of a light sculpture because not all the installations will feature light. These are still in the design and fabrication process, and I'm not allowed to say what these pieces are yet because we haven’t made a public announcement about them, but this third element of our project will happen in 2026 and will be installed at the former camp sites. We’ll invite the public to come and interact with them and the public’s participation with the installation is going to enhance or make the monument kind of activate and come alive.
Niki
The exhibit will be traveling to Arizona in late October and early November to commemorate the Poston and Gila River camps – it looks like they are already booked up with appointments and are at capacity?
Duncan
Our project going around the country has received a lot of attention. We are going to 21 places and out of that, there are only about seven places left that are still available for appointments. We’ll be at two Arizona sites. Poston, which is near Parker, Arizona, is a camp we're visiting on October 24th and 25th, in conjunction with the Poston Pilgrimage, which is the annual pilgrimage of the Poston Community Alliance. The other War Relocation Authority Camp in Arizona was Gila River, on Gila River Indian territory that we're visiting on November 1st and 2nd. We're working with the Chandler Museum, close to the camp and we're working with the Phoenix area Buddhist temples for people who are located there. On November 3rd, along with a contingent of camp survivors and descendants we'll be working with the Gila River Indian tribal community members and representatives to have a blessing and a ceremony with the Book of Names displayed at the site. I’m a Buddhist priest and I'll be in my robes officiating the ceremony and a memorial service to all the people who died at Gila River during World War II. We’ll be asking camp survivors to honor them by reading aloud as well as stamping their names. That won’t be open to the public.
Niki
Is the best way for the public to engage with this primarily through the website?
Duncan
Yes, though the public can still make appointments and come and visit with the book as well. We need the public to stamp the next names in the books that don’t have acknowledgement because there were people who died in camp and who never got married and others who don't have any living descendants. On our website, there are many names that people still need to recall and learn more about the person behind the name. The website is where the broadest possible public can engage with our project.
Niki
What should our audience or the public in general learn or take away from this exhibit?
Duncan
By featuring people's names, we can acknowledge the injustice. During World War II, our government targeted the Japanese American community and although the United States was also at war with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, there was no mass incarceration of all German or Italian Americans, just selective internment of a few German and Italian nationals. The Japanese American community experienced mass incarceration, and it didn't matter if you were a baby or an infirm grandmother, whether you were a Japanese immigrant or a U.S. citizen, as 2/3 of the incarcerated were U.S. citizens. People who had not committed crimes were targeted without due process. These people were all conflated together as a threat to national security and families were uprooted and didn’t know where they were going and for how long. Congress, on a bipartisan basis had determined that the mass incarceration was a violation of the Constitution and President Reagan had signed the bill for reparations.
This project is not only about acknowledging what happened during World War II but it’s also about how, as a contemporary community building monuments and memorials to this history, we must stay vigilant and not let history repeat itself.
