Asset

Date of ingest: 26 June 2026

Description: After President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 in February 1942 authorizing the incarceration of Japanese Americans in concentration camps, Maryknoll missioners who had worked with Japanese communities in Japan, Korea, and Los Angeles, California, accompanied them to the camps to minister to their spiritual and temporal needs. As its parishioners were forced into camps at Manzanar, California, Poston, Arizona, Tule Lake, California, Rohwer, Arkansas, Rivers, Arizona, Amache, Colorado, Heart Mountain, Wyoming, and Hunt, Idaho, Maryknoll’s Los Angeles parish grew by well over ten thousand miles. Pictured here with some of their students at the Manzanar incarceration camp are Maryknoll priest, Fr. Leo J. Steinbach, and Maryknoll Sisters Bernadette Yoshimochi and Susanna Hayashi. Fr. Steinbach was assigned as Chaplain to the Manzanar camp in California and started his pastoral work there on Thanksgiving Day 1942. His previous mission work with the Japanese people in Korea made him well qualified for work. He spent long hours teaching catechism and ministering to the detainees, attracting many to the Catholic Church. Sr. Bernadette and Sr. Susanna were both born in Japan. In May 1942 it was necessary for all Japanese people to either enter an incarceration camp or go far enough east to be out of the so-called danger areas of retaliation. Sisters Bernadette and Susanna could have returned to the safety and freedom of the Maryknoll Sisters Center at Maryknoll, New York. Instead, they chose to accompany their community to Manzanar. For the next three years, as prisoners themselves, they would minister to several hundred detainees. Maryknoll priests and Maryknoll Sisters inspired many individuals at Manzanar to join the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America (commonly known as Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers) and the Maryknoll Sisters of St. Dominic and become missioners including Sr. Ann Teresa Kamachi, M.M., Fr. Bryce T. Nishimura, M.M., Sr. Yae Ono, M.M., Fr. Thomas W. Takahaski, M.M., and Sr. Thecla (Mutusye) Tsuruda. In April 2026 Maryknoll participated in the 57th Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage: Vigilance is the Price of Democracy. Among the pilgrims was Maryknoll Sr. Joanne (Jaruko) Doi whose father and grandfather were interned at Manzanar.