Guadalupe Buddhist Church celebrates its centennial, but not forgetting the trauma of the concentration camps.

“Today says a lot about what the Issei (first-generation Japanese-American) and Nisei (second-generation) went through before, during and after the war,” said Mike Furukawa, Buddhist temple president. “We, the Sansei (third generation) are trying to carry on for them.”

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At the centennial celebration Saturday, members of the Buddhist church held a moment of silence for the Issei, for the parents and grandparents who gave birth to the church and quietly suffered so that their children might prosper.

As Shin Buddhism moves forward into its second century on American soil, we must neither forget nor ignore the scars inflicted by a government that treated its own citizens as enemies simply because they were Japanese.