Bay Area photo exhibit recreates the Japanese American internment experience of WWII
Satsuki Ina remembers the day, when she was walking through the Smithsonian and came face to face of an archival photo of her father in a jail cell at the Tule Lake Internment Camp.
"And even though the picture of my dad is a little blurred, I recognized him right away," said Ina. "I didn't know he was in jail, and I was shocked and saddened."
Her father was one of 120,000 Japanese Americans who were rounded up and sent to one of ten internment camps built across the country after the United States entered World War II. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, sealing the fate of Japanese Americans living on the West Coast.
Years, later Ina was able to stand inside her father's actual cell.
"I just took some time to reflect on what it must have been like for him to be separated from his family, not knowing how long he's going to be gone or where he was going to be sent to," said Ina, who was born at Tule Lake while in the camp.
Her pilgrimage to the internment camp was part of a photo project by Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Paul Kitagaki Jr., who has retold the Japanese American experience by recreating historical photos.
The project began when he discovered a photo of his own family taken by famed documentary photographer Dorothea Lange.
"The historic pictures were taken by Dorothea [Lange] who is one of my idols. It is my grandparents, my aunt, and my dad. He is 14," said Kitagaki Jr. "I look at my dad. He is wearing these jeans with these rolled-up cuffs on his jeans, and he's just sitting there really looking like what the heck is going on?"
The historic photo was taken inside a building in Oakland, where several Japanese Americans were waiting to get transported to the Tanforan Assembly Center in San Bruno, before being taken to one of the camps. Kitagaki's family would be sent to Topaz, Utah.
For his photo project, he snapped a stoic photo of his aunt and father outside of the same building in Oakland where they waited to board a bus.
"Just standing in that same spot and just thinking back to 1942, their whole life had been blown up, and you know they pretty much lost everything," said Kitagaki Jr.
The condensed photo exhibit called, "Gambatte! Legacy of an Enduring Spirit" is currently on display at the Japanese Society of Educational Information, or J-Sei, in Emeryville through May 2nd.
The full exhibit features more than 61 pairs of photos and has toured the country since 2012. Kitagaki Jr. began curating and shooting the photos in 2005.
One of the more iconic pairings of photos includes a historic image of three Boy Scouts at the Heart Mountain Internment Camp in Wyoming. It took him three years to locate the boys in the original photo and he eventually found all of them in Southern California.
"I love the symbolism of this one. They are Boy Scouts, they are saluting the flag every morning and lowering the flag, showing respect to the United States of America, and here they are locked behind barbed wire," said Kitagaki Jr. "It is just a shameful part of American history."
It is a part of history Ina has written about in a book titled "The Poet and the Silk: A Memoir of Love, Imprisonment and Protest," which documents her family's journey. Ina, a professor emeritus at California State University of Sacramento and Bay Area resident, travels the country speaking about the links of the Japanese American experience to what is happening today with other immigrant groups.
"It is the same rationale that's being used today to do a mass roundup and detention of asylum-seekers and other immigrants," said Ina.
Her goal is to keep telling her story, hoping that history does not repeat itself.
The Gambatte! exhibit will be on display at J-Sei through May 2nd, with a meet-and-greet with photographer Paul Kitagaki Jr. on March 1st. The exhibit is also on display at San Diego State University.
