Professor Williams will give a talk on “The Irei Project: A Buddhist-Inspired Monument to the WWII Japanese American Incarceration. In this talk, Duncan Ryuken Williams will first describe the history of monument-building by Japanese American internees and incarcerees confined in America’s concentration camps during WWII. Created under the leadership of Buddhist priests at Manzanar and Rohwer, the Ireito and Ireihi monuments – which still stand in the former camp cemeteries – were the most well-known memorials to the forced removal and injustice of incarceration. Williams will then speak about a contemporary national monument-building project that he directs called The Irei Project that is inspired by the wartime memorials. This event is open to all CSUN community members.

Duncan Williams Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures, USC

Presented by the Department of Religious Studies and the Academic Programming Fund of the College of Humanities