There was a sense of shock, and a measure of weariness, when I arrived at Monterey Park one year ago. A very American mourning ritual was taking place in the largely Asian American city. Only three days prior to my arrival, a mass shooting had taken place on January 21, 2023, where eleven people were murdered and nine were wounded.
It was silent when I arrived. The sun had just set. Incense smoke rose and spread throughout the crowd. According to some volunteers, the smoke represented those who had died. In the center of the vigil, which was located at city hall, an American flag looked limp. Near it was a podium where pastors prayed for the safety of Monterey Park’s residents and by extension, I felt, for Americans all over.
Smoke and fire is what I remember most from the vigil. Incense smoke stuck to my nose and clothes, and I couldn’t help but look at the little candles in people’s palms. There were murmurs of amens and pastors delivering speeches, with one saying “We have been tempted by other things beyond God’s vision of human flourishing.” Later in the vigil, there were shouts for a doctor as one attendee had fainted.
An argument also broke out between a man who held a sign which stated “The problem is guns!” and a few vigil attendees who insisted there was a time and place for such protests. Some attendees, very tender in grief, wanted to spend the vigil to simply rest and process what had happened.
“I’m still trying to process everything. It’s kind of weird, I guess, you know. And in a lot of ways, it feels like your brain is kind of scrambled,” said attendee Ken Haraikawa.
It makes one wonder: has there ever been a time and place in our nation for true rest? Will our vigils, processions, shootings and violence ever cease, or even just come to a trickle rather than a torrent for one day? National debates manifested at the vigil through little conflicts and questions such as these, with issues surrounding gun control, mental health and the presidency localized to the Monterey Park situation.
A few people at the end of the vigil shook their heads at one Asian American woman evangelizing for Trump’s presidency. And there were prayers, curiously enough, for politicians. One caught my attention.
“We pray for our state leaders, for Senator Susan Rubio, Assembly Member Mike Bowen, and their teams. For our national leaders, Congressmen Judy Chu, Senator Feinstein, all the way up to the Vice President, President of the United States,” said Jason Ashimoto, a pastor from the Evergreen Baptist Church.
He continued, “God, will you give them grace? Give them wisdom and discernment in order to lead us, in order to heal us. In order to find us a better future. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”
I felt peculiar, because in the history of America, what has the Presidency done for Asian Americans? Was the Presidency not the branch that issued an executive order to incarcerate Japanese Americans? Was this not the same government that banned Chinese immigrants, colonized Filipinos, and initiated endless wars in countries like Vietnam and denied bombings in Laos? What could politicians or a government built upon these foundations do for the Monterey Park community? More gun laws? Regulation? Appeals to morality? A visit by Kamala Harris?
The fact of the matter is, the Monterey Park mass shooting is novel. Novel, not in the fact that it is a mass shooting, but in the fact that it occurred in a largely Asian American community and that the shooting was perpetrated by an elderly, Asian American man (when most mass shootings are done by white young men).
Does this fact matter? Is it a petty dissolution of the Monterey incident into identity politics? No, this fact matters because it attests to one truth: American carnage comes for all, and immigrants, newly wedded to the American project, can be especially vulnerable to its excesses and ills.
“This is probably not the story that they had imagined coming to this country,” said attendee Siwaraya Rochanahusdin.
As she spelled her name out for me (“‘S’ as in Sam. ‘I’ like ice. ‘W’ like water. ‘A’ like apple. ‘R’ like Roger. ‘A’ like apple. ‘Y’ like yellow. ‘A’ like apple”), her voice broke down, and we took a pause to center ourselves and cry.
This was a rawness apparent, I felt, to all attendees. The mere question of “How are you feeling?” would at times garner chuckles, silence, or tears from those I talked to. That same rawness struck me, an Asian American, as I tip-toed the line between community member and journalist.
This was the state of people then: confusion and shock. And perhaps, in this shock, residents felt subsuming their loved ones into the national debate of gun control – where their family members could become nameless numbers, another case study to simply cite – would be too soon, a glossing over of their loss by treating it as a commonplace American phenomenon. The vigil, in a certain way, was a resistance against the namelessness and invisibility historically imposed upon Asian Americans in American discourse.
So, as a remembrance, these are the names that we should know, people who fell within our American house: 65-year-old My Nhan, 72-year-old Ming Wei Ma, 70-year-old Diana Tom, 57-year-old Xiujuan Yu, 63-year-old Lilian Li, 68-year-old Valentino Alvero, 67-year-old Muoi Ung, 62-year-old Hong Jian, 72-year-old Yu Kao, 76-year-old Chia Yau, and 64-year-old Wen Yu.
As the vigil came to an end, people disbursed, and Ashimoto said some last words:
“Thank you again for coming to this and looking to each other for strength,” he finished.