Jun 2, 2007

Not just a former racetrack, yo


Recreation area at the Tanforan Assembly Center

Did you know that the site of the Tanforan mall in San Bruno also used to be a Japanese internment camp?

I didn't either.

That mall sucked anyway.

Anyway, today at the mall, internees and their children (some of them born at the Tanforan site during the internment period) held a reunion to hold testimony about their pasts and remind current generations "of the injustices that the internees experienced."


Thanks to the good folks at SFist for the heads up.

(Photo credit: Japanese Cultural and Community Center)

2 comments:

pins&needles said...

Wow, I didn't know that either. I live in a state where there's a small town that had an inernment camp, which is now a historical site that you can visit. Sorry, I can't remember what the name of the town is. Anyway, I found out that the actor for Dr. Sulu in Star Trek was kept there. This I found out from my roommate.

This is off-subject, but when she told me that she was talking to her co-workers about it, they didn't even know that the internment camps existed. I was highly disappointed that there are some people out there who still don't know about that part of American history.

Adobo said...

Which was one reason why I never shopped there. However, I believe they did erect a memorial at the mall's renovation in addition to a towering statue of Seabiscuit.