We commit to being the allies that our community needed during WWII.

As we close this Thanksgiving week, we hold deep gratitude and solidarity with all who are working to seek justice for children. This season invites us to reflect not only on what we’re thankful for, but also on the shared responsibility we carry during a time of urgent challenges. Your steadfast commitment reminds us that hope is nurtured through collective action and community care. We’re honored to stand alongside you as we continue this work together.

In September, the Foundation for Child Development launched a year-long blog series, SPARK (Stories of Power, Agency, Resilience, and Power), featuring authors from academia, advocacy, organizing, and beyond. Each month, a new blog shares what it means to meet this moment with courage, clarity, creativity, and conviction as the authors work to protect and support children in immigrant families. This month, we thank Mike Ishii, the executive director at Tsuru for Solidarity, for the time and effort that goes into sharing his and his elders’ story.

A Solidarity Moment Rooted in Historical Lessons

By: Mike Ishii, Executive Director, Tsuru for Solidarity

Child detention is a trauma that Japanese American elders know too well. Elders from my community, including my mother, who were just children in 1942, were forcibly removed along with 125,000 other Japanese Americans and Japanese immigrants and incarcerated in U.S. concentration camps.

So, when the first Trump administration separated children from their parents at the border in 2018, caging them, and turning a blind eye to abuses, we had to act.

In 2019, I, along with a multigenerational group of Japanese Americans—elders who were interned during World War II and their descendants—blocked the gates of the Fort Sill detention center in Lawton, Oklahoma, where 1,600 immigrant children were being detained. The U.S. government had used the same place as an internment camp for our people during World War II, where over 90 Buddhist priests were imprisoned, and 2 Japanese American immigrants were executed by Fort Sill guards.

Blocking the gates of Fort Sill as an act of civil disobedience was one of the genesis points of our organization, Tsuru for Solidarity.

Our work has embraced non-violent direct action and civil disobedience to interrupt the repetition of our history. It is paired with cross-community solidarity, healing, and repair organizing that creates the connective tissue of resilience and strength for personal, community, and societal transformation.

Solidarity as a Practice of Protection

Our solidarity work is rooted in shared intersectional histories of forced removal, mass incarceration, separation of families, deportation, and state violence. We believe solidarity also embraces and follows the leadership of impacted communities at the front lines. Deep relational commitment allows us to access collective strength and build new community bonds that support healing from multigenerational trauma rooted in state violence. From our own historical legacy, we commit to “being the allies that our community needed during WWII.” We stand in solidarity with other targeted communities because no one should fight alone, and when we stand together and fight back, we win.

In the first blog, series curators Vivian Tseng, FCD President and CEO, and Hirokazu Yoshikawa, University Professor in the Department of Applied Psychology at NYU Steinhardt, shared their vision and the motivation behind this series.

The second edition, authored by Mary Ignatius of Parent Voices California, and published in October, highlights the ways a grassroots organization focused on childcare advocacy has expanded its focus to serve the immediate needs of its community, providing information, services, and safe spaces for immigrant families and their children when they need it most.

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Protecting & Supporting Immigrant Children & their Families in Early Learning Spaces

The programs that millions of immigrant families and communities rely on are under attack. Providers, advocates, and community members who support immigrant students and families can make a big difference through intentional, informed, and collective efforts. This resource, curated by Mom's Rising, provides a list of national resources to create safe spaces and to protect children and families.

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