Righting a wrong, name by name − the Irei monument honors Japanese Americans imprisoned by the US government during World War II
June Aochi Berk, now 92 years old, remembers the trepidation and fear she felt 80 years ago on Jan. 2, 1945. On that date, Berk and her family members were released by military order from the U.S. government detention facility in Rohwer, Ark., where they had been imprisoned for three years because of their Japanese heritage.
“We didn’t celebrate the end of our incarceration, because we were more concerned about our future. Since we had lost everything, we didn’t know what would become of us,” Berk recalls.
The Aochis were among the nearly 126,000 people of Japanese ancestry who had been forcibly removed from their West Coast homes and held in desolate inland locations under Executive Order 9066, issued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on Feb. 19, 1942.