Activists seek to secure Japanese immigrants’ ‘sacred’ land

By ALEJANDRA MOLINA
Religion News Service

Activists and historians in the Orange County city of Huntington Beach are rallying to preserve ‘sacred’ land that Japanese immigrants acquired before California enacted the Alien Land Law in 1913 that barred Asian immigrants from owning land. It’s called Historic Wintersburg and efforts to preserve this 4.5-acre landscape have been reignited after a fire destroyed two of the six buildings on the land. “There’s a saying, ‘Out of sight, out of mind,’” Nancy Kyoko Oda said. “People sometimes don’t want to recognize this great loss of human liberty. … They take away your church. They take away your home, your business, everything that you have.”