Work describing Buddhists' faith during confinement wins Grawemeyer Award

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Dec 10, 2021, 09:57 ET

LOUISVILLE, Ky., Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- A scholar who explained how Japanese American Buddhists adhered to their faith even after being forced into World War II detention camps has won the 2022 Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion.

Duncan Ryuken Williams, a religion professor who directs the Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture at the University of Southern California, won the prize for ideas he set forth in "American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War." Harvard University Press published the book in 2019.

After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government forcibly relocated more than 125,000 people of Japanese ancestry and imprisoned them in detention camps on U.S. soil. Two-thirds were practicing Buddhists.

Some were sent to live in former fairgrounds where stables were hastily converted into living quarters. Others were crowded into dwellings of tarpaper-roofed, Army-style bunkers. Many lost their homes, farms and businesses along with their possessions.

As Williams reviewed diaries and other records of their stay in the camps, he learned Buddhists continued to worship despite their confinement. One family celebrated Buddha's birthday by pouring coffee over a carrot carved in his likeness when they could not perform the traditional ritual of pouring tea over a Buddha statue.

"Their imprisonment became a way to discover freedom, a liberation that the Buddha himself attained only after embarking on a spiritual journey filled with obstacles and hardships," he said.

The Buddhists' steadfast devotion to their faith while living in such conditions showed it was possible to be both Buddhist and American and helped launch a less sectarian form of the religion in the United States, Williams found.

"Williams' work opens the way for a discussion that values religious inclusion over exclusion," said Tyler Mayfield, who directs the Grawemeyer religion award. "He shows how Japanese Americans living in a time of great adversity broadened our nation's vision of religious freedom."

The University of Louisville and Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary jointly give the religion prize.

Recipients of next year's Grawemeyer Awards were named this week pending formal approval by university and seminary trustees. The $100,000 prizes also honor seminal ideas in music, world order, psychology and education. Winners will visit Louisville in April to accept their awards and give free talks on the winning ideas.

SOURCE University of Louisville