Manzanar became an icon that inspired a grass-roots movement to preserve the site and remember the sacrifices of 120,313 Japanese Americans confined by their own government. Buddhist minister Sentoku Mayed and Christian minister Shoichi Wakahiro first returned on Memorial Day 1946, and for the next 30 years they made pilgrimages to honor Manzanar’s dead. During the 1960s civil rights struggles, younger Japanese Americans broke their elders’ silence and shame about the camps, and in December 1969, 150 people joined the first organized pilgrimage. Since then, the annual Manzanar Pilgrimage has drawn hundreds of people of all ages and backgrounds for remembrance, speeches, a memorial service, and a traditional ondo dance, while visits to the cemetery also serve as personal acts of reflection, worship, remembrance, or protest, often accompanied by offerings. Sue Kunitomi Embry, who arrived at Manzanar in May 1942 at age 19 and worked in camp as a teacher’s aid, camouflage-net weaver, reporter, and managing editor of the Manzanar Free Press, later became a leading voice about the camps and, through the Manzanar Committee, organized the pilgrimage for 37 years and worked to preserve the site and its stories to protect human and civil rights for all.