Another thing that initially surprised me was the fact that many of the Sophia University students had never heard of the incarceration camps or much about the Japanese American experience.

Being in the same space, walking on the same dirt grounds they did you could really feel the life that was lived there, the deaths that were mourned and all the in between.

Manzanar was a time to reflect on America’s painful history while also understanding that what happened in the past can happen again in the future.