BIO
Marge spent her formative years incarcerated near Death Valley at Manzanar, one of 10 major US concentration camps for those of Japanese ancestry during WWII. Born in Los Angeles, she is a birthright U.S. citizen, like two-thirds of the 120,000 Japanese who were unlawfully imprisoned. Marge’s family was relocated to Colorado after their release from Manzanar at the end of WWII. Her activism began soon after an early marriage and the birth of two children. Haunted by her own memories of imprisonment and the reluctance of incarcerees to even speak about atrocities in camp, Marge began her own research to find a more accurate accounting of the forced removal. In 1975, she organized the first formal pilgrimage to Amache Concentration Camp in southeastern Colorado, a first step in healing from the PTSD then unknowingly suffered by camp survivors.
Her activism has taken Marge to revolutionary Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, Hawai’i, Tohono O’odham land at the U.S. southern border, the Navajo Nation, and to the Lakota, Nakota, and Dakota nations. Marge regularly speaks on the incarceration and other social issues at schools, universities, and justice organizations while being actively involved with the Asian community across the U.S.
For more than 30 years, Marge has co-produced La Lucha Sigue (The Struggle Continues), a radio program on Latin America and the Caribbean that airs on KGNU 88.5 FM/1390 AM. Her participation in annual pilgrimages, as well as restoration and preservation of Amache, recently culminated in its designation as a National Historic Site.