On the corner of First Street and Rowan Avenue, among a post office, market, restaurants and other locally owned shops, students at the East L.A. Jiu Jitsu demonstrated their martial art skills Thursday and learned some history too.
Ron Mukai, whose family has lived in East L.A. since the 1920s, held a special class Thursday, marking the 80th anniversary of the day in 1945 when Japanese Americans incarcerated in U.S. internment camps during World War II were allowed to return home to the West Coast.
After leading his students in several exercises, the jiu jitsu black belt talked about his nonprofit and family's history. They had been held at Camp Heart Mountain in Wyoming by the War Relocation Authority, the U.S. civilian agency responsible for the relocation and detention of Japanese Americans.
The WRA established the Manzanar and Tule Lake camps in California, as well as detention centers in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Utah and Arkansas, among other states.
"When the U.S. was brought into World War II, from the age of eight to 11, my dad was interned in an internment camp," Mukai told CNS. "It pretty much shaped the rest of his life."
"He came out of camp very angry and I think his whole life was sort of a reaction to that moment. [He] was very driven for success," he added.
Mukai, who opened the East L.A. Jiu Jitsu in April 2022, offers classes to boys and girls as young as five up to 11, as well as teens and adults. As a resident with close ties with East L.A., he feels a responsibility to model good character and excellence to his students -- and part of that is helping them understand and learn lessons from the past.
"Unfortunately, a lot of kids these days don't have any awareness of things that have happened in the past, including the internment of the Japanese," Mukai told CNS.
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1942 by the Japanese military, President Theodore Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 with the intention of preventing espionage. The order led to the arrest and incarceration of Japanese people, immigrants and citizens.
Roosevelt rescinded the policy in December 1944, allowing Japanese Americans to return to the West Coast in January. The last internment camp closed in March 1946.
"When the interned Japanese Americans returned to the West Coast, very few of them retained their pre-war holdings," according to a case study published by the Harvard John F. Kennedy School of Government in 1990. "Their losses in income and property, according to later estimates, ranged in the hundreds of millions, in 1945 dollars -- and anywhere from $2 billion to $6 billion in 1983 dollars.
As he trains his students, Mukai incorporates the lessons he learned from his father to raise the next generation of East L.A. leaders.
"We're not victims," Mukai told CNS. "We're not raising victims here that feel sorry for themselves or have an excuse for not achieving their full potential."
Filipe Pimentel, an instructor who works for Mukai, told CNS they teach their students the foundations of jiu jitsu, and find ways to incorporate challenges they might face even off the mat.
"Every time they walk through the door we hope they keep the experience they learned and use it in their day to day life -- resilience and problem solving," Pimentel told CNS.
Mukai returned to Heart Mountain with his family in 1995. The barrack where his family slept was deconstructed and brought back to Los Angeles, where it stands on the second floor of the Japanese American Museum.
He recalled his father, Tomo, being interviewed by news crews. Mukai said his father "in typical Japanese fashion, was very stoic" when he spoke of his experience. It was afterward, returned from the camp, that his father felt the change.
"It was like those kinds of things where my dad grew up very much understanding the chip on his shoulder about racism that existed in the day," Mukai told CNS.
Mukai described his father as "driven" and "loyal" -- qualities that led him into staying in East L.A., a place that was very good to him.
The Mukai family owned a general store at Mednik Avenue and Third Street, the Belvedere Bottle Supply, an auto repair shop, a hot dog stand, and Tomic Insecticide, which is an existing tenant at a commercial center.
In 2003, the commercial center opened as part of the first completed project of the East LA Civic Center area's multimillion-dollar expansion and redevelopment project.
"On this 80th anniversary, we need to remember the lessons of history and continue to educate each generation," Mukai said. "This story needs to be included in the curriculum of high school and university history courses so students will be come more sensitized to this part of American history."
"Greater inclusion of the Japanese American incarceration episode in our schools can help ensure that such injustice never happens again to any minority and marginalized group," he added.