Cherry Blossom Festival 2018
The 18th Annual Cherry Blossom Festival brought a celebration of spring and friendship to El Camino College on April 5. Poetry readings, refreshments and performances from ECC dance students as well as from the Taiko Center of Los Angeles were part of the festivities. The Dr. Nadine Ishitani Hata Memorial Cherry Blossom Festival is named after the college's former Vice President of Academic Affairs, who passed away in 2005. Dr. Hata was an internationally known scholar who was extremely involved in academia and community work. She was a leader in bringing the cherry trees to the campus 18 years ago, one of the many programs she supported during her 34-year career at El Camino College. Under Dr. Hata's leadership, the Cherry Blossom Festival has become a college tradition – a celebration of spring and friendship.
Also part of the spring celebration is the exhibition, "Concentration Camps U.S.A.," which runs through April 30 in the El Camino College Schauerman Library. This display of selected materials on the Nikkei, or Japanese-American, gulag and diaspora during World War II, is from the Archives and Special Collections Department of California State University, Dominguez Hills. Headed by CSUDH, a consortium of 20 California universities created the CSU Japanese American History and Digitization Project to support the digitization and online access of archival collections accumulated at CSU libraries throughout the state. The digitization project is a unique and growing research resource, providing students and scholars with an opportunity to study primary sources and to explore civil liberties issues relating to the Nikkei incarceration during World War II and how those issues reverberate today. The project is supported by grants from the National Parks Service, National Endowment for the Humanities, Haynes Foundation, California Civil Liberties Public Education Fund, and the National Historical Records and Publications Commission.
"Concentration Camps U.S.A." also includes watercolors by CSUDH Professor Emeritus Don Hata. The retired professor's paintings are based largely on his memories as a child in the U.S. War Relocation Authority camp at Gila, Arizona. "In Honor of the Manzanar Fishing Club," depicts the true story of internees who would sneak out of the camp to hike high into the Eastern Sierra and savor a bit of freedom while fishing for trout. Check the Library webpage for operating hours: http://www.elcamino.edu/library/library_ser/.