From one of the largest World War II incarceration camps, a father wrote, in Japanese, a poem for his newborn daughter.

“The world is in chaos. And the future is unknown. But she will bring the world together, as well as a family, in harmony.”

He named her Kyoko, meaning “harmony” and “cooperation.”

Kyoko Oda and her family are survivors of Tule Lake Segregation Center, a World War II concentration camp for Japanese Americans. While she does not remember much of Tule Lake, Oda says the residual trauma of such an experience persists even 80 years after the end of World War II.

“It’s on the back burner, then it comes to the front burner. And then I’m red hot, right?” Oda said.

She recites her father’s poem from memory, and the piece is one of many translations she’s done over the years. While studying at UCLA in the 1970s, Oda transcribed the Tule Lake stockade section of her father’s diary into English. The entries protested the injustices he endured at Tule Lake and were as detailed as to keep track of the daily quantities of food.

What began as a class assignment quickly sparked a lifelong passion to untangle and preserve her family’s history and fight the injustices her family endured.

Oda continues to voice her story as a survivor of Camp Tule Lake, even eight decades after the end of World War II. Most recently, she’s one of nine Japanese Americans highlighted in a digital feature by photojournalist Morgan Lieberman.

Oda says her story, with roots spanning across eight decades, intersects with new, modern contexts.

These days, Oda spends her time in the San Fernando Valley, surrounded by friends and family. A retired school teacher, she says she’s continuing to do “small things” for her community — collecting trash, donating anti-graffiti paint to go towards Little Tokyo.

Inspired by Ohtani

She takes some inspiration from her Dodger hero, Shohei Ohtani, who she says always practices humility and respect. The Japanese star has a strict “no litter” policy. Even when he chews sunflower seeds in the dugout, he discards them in a cup he keeps nearby.

Moved by the gesture, Oda attempted to start an initiative to have Japanese fans help clean up Dodger Stadium after games.

She’s also president of the Tuna Canyon Detention Station Coalition, a nonprofit whose mission is to illuminate the U.S. government’s incarceration of immigrants at Tuna Canyon during World War II. She recently helped organize a traveling exhibit to tell the story of Tuna Canyon Detention Station and the Japanese, German and Italian immigrants and others who were incarcerated there.

She says she’s made it her goal to “not be a bystander” so that such an injustice does not happen again.

Oda belongs to a generation of Japanese Americans born or raised in incarceration.

During World War II, more than 125,000 Japanese Americans, most of whom were residing along the West Coast, were incarcerated — an action prompted after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

Within hours of the attack, President Franklin D. Roosevelt invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which empowered the President to detain and deport Japanese, German, Italian and any U.S. residents deemed “alien enemies,” regardless of their citizenship status.

In February of the following year, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, designating military areas in the U.S. from which people could be excluded. The order led to the forced removal and incarceration of thousands of Japanese Americans from the West Coast.

Ten main incarceration camps were established mainly along the West Coast, including the 1,100-acre Camp Tule Lake in Northern California, where Oda was born.

In addition to the camps, 15 temporary detention centers were set up to process the arrival and transport of Japanese Americans, each arriving with only what they could carry. The Santa Anita Racetrack was one of these centers — holding approximately 19,000 people, with 8,500 residing in converted horse stalls within the racetrack.

In 1944, a unanimous Supreme Court ruling legally ended Japanese American incarceration. When the incarceration camps officially closed in 1946, each detainee was given $25 and a one-way ticket to their chosen destination. Countless were left in limbo, having lost their homes, businesses, friends and family, facing uncertain futures and fears of confronting post-war anti-Asian hostility.

In 1990, President George H.W. Bush signed an official letter of apology, acknowledging the injustice of internment, and each living survivor was given a $20,000 reparations check.

But the fear and anxiety stemming from incarceration would continue to resonate for decades across generations of Japanese Americans, among the children born into incarceration and even a new generation interested in preserving and untangling its history.

Making a connection

Last year, a personal project led photojournalist and MFA student Morgan Lieberman to Oda.

Based in Los Feliz, Lieberman, 30, was grappling with her own identity when she began researching World War II in 2023.

“It started off with me examining my own Jewish identity and thinking about the Holocaust. You know, I’ve kind of carried this grief around all my life,” Lieberman said.

“Then I started going down this rabbit hole of realizing the atrocity of Japanese incarceration camps and how so much of this history surrounded my own backyard.”

The project began as a profile of queer survivors of incarceration but quickly expanded to center on nine Japanese Americans, including Oda, who shared their stories through interviews, videos and original photos.

The project, titled “The Age of Incarceration,” was published in July by story studio Long Lead. But when she began the endeavor in late 2023, Lieberman couldn’t predict its contemporary implications.

“Putting out this project feels very urgent,” Lieberman said. “I think younger generations, especially with our access to social media, we have such a wealth of information about this déjà vu effect that is happening.”

Lieberman says she sees “history repeating itself” with the nationwide ICE deportations.

The stepped-up immigration enforcement, promised by President Donald Trump during his campaign to return to the Oval Office, is focused on arresting and deporting dangerous felons, according to administration officials, who say the effort is achieving that goal.

But Lieberman and other critics call the program inhumane and said raids are taking in people without criminal records, and in some cases, have even included U.S. citizens.

Kristen Hayashi, a director and curator at the Japanese American National Museum, says there are parallels between the ongoing detainments and deportations and those from eight decades ago.

“What I think’s the same is the hyperbole around ‘threats.’ Back then, they’re saying there’s a threat, and that’s why they need to do this roundup. But there’s really no evidence. That’s how it echoes,” Hayashi said. “There’s a lesson to be learned from this, the arbitrary rules of immigration.”

In light of the ongoing raids and the 80th anniversary of World War II and shadows of Japanese internment, Oda says she’s focusing on moving forward, keeping herself busy.

She’s working on Project Nozomi, a campaign effort with the San Fernando Valley Japanese American Community Center to raise money to improve and build new facilities for youth — a basketball court, classrooms and a cultural arts center for workshops and performances.

“When I realized what happened to my parents, and then now, I got confused and concerned,” she said. “I love this country. My hope is that we will be the America I believe in.”

“The Age of Incarceration” can be accessed at www.longlead.com.

Victoria Le is an intern with the Southern California News Group, through a partnership with the Asian American Journalists Association’s L.A. chapter (AAJA-LA).