My mother first learned to play the koto as a nine-year-old child incarcerated with her family in Topaz Camp in Utah during WWII.
I was surprised when I learned this, as I hadn’t known that there was Japanese music in the camps. The War Relocation Authority (WRA) certainly did not encourage it:
“The WRA does not intend to promote ideals and cultures of nations with which we are at war…So long as patriotic music is not played, Japanese music may be played in the center but it will not be sponsored by the government…”
(Manzanar Free Press, Sept. 19, 1942)
I was able to find only one photo to prove there was an active group of musicians playing Japanese music in Topaz.
In May 2023 Kent Nakamoto contacted me about a koto and shamisen that had belonged to his mother, Tama Nakata Nakamoto. Tama and her family had also been in Topaz; Tama was 20 years old at the time. She had taken koto and shamisen lessons in Topaz from the same teacher as my mother—a woman named Haruko Suwada, who had taught both instruments before the War in San Francisco. Unlike my mother, Tama had studied with Suwada-sensei before the War.