Featuring: “Venturing Out”

“Like wild horses of Utah, we were driven away west and east…”

–Tamesuke “Senba” Harada, 1889-1968

Kikuchi family (mother, daughter, son) having a tempura dinner at a diningroom table in Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1966; Ito and Junzo Hibino in suits and hats, standing in front of a Beacon St. building, Boston, 1944; Kiyo Takahashi with friends on a street in Chicago, 1945. — 1: Grace Fujii Kikuchi at home with her children in Michigan, 1960s. Ann Arbor News. Grace was one of the organizers of the preschools in Tanforan and Topaz. She resettled in Michigan in 1943, married, and raised her family there, never returning to the West Coast to live. 2: Ito and Junzo Hibino on Beacon St., Boston, 1944. Courtesy of Jean Hibino. Junzo wrote “Letter to a Nisei Son” and resettled in Boston in 1944. He died there in 1945. 3: Kiyo Takahashi with friends in Chicago, 1945. Kiyo resettled in Chicago in 1944, but when the War ended and the West Coast reopened to Japanese Americans, she returned to join her family. Courtesy of the Takahashi/Sasaki families.

The forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans, followed by resettlement throughout the country, away from the West Coast, was in fact part of a master plan: the dispersal of the Japanese American community–otherwise called “Americanization.” The erasure of a culture, if not in body, then in spirit.

In some cases, it was remarkably successful–a door firmly shut between generations, a language, forgotten; in others, not so much. Physical communities proved easier to destroy than the irrepressible web of relationships that bind a community together.

Read “Venturing Out,” excerpts from a letter written by a Nisei woman en route to resettlement.

The Topaz Stories Team

Media Coverage:
Watch Topaz survivors tell their stories (abc4 news, 4/22/2022)
Listen to the “In the Hive” podcast with interviews with Ann Dion, Jonathan Hirabayashi, and Topaz survivors Jeanie Kashima and Joseph Nishimura (KCPW, 4/28/2022)
Read How a Utah exhibit about Topaz Camp looks to find empathy in ‘an ugly stain on American history (ksl.com, 4/22/2022)
Read “Topaz Stories rise from the dust,” (Department of Culture & Community Engagement, 4/2022)
Listen to KQED Forum, Day of Remembrance interview with Ruth Sasaki, 2/15/2022
Listen to Max Chang and Ruth Sasaki interviewed (KRCL RadioActive, 2/9/2022
Read On Topaz Stories and ‘Authentic Voice’, the Discover Nikkei interview with Ruth Sasaki (10/14/2022)
Listen to Remembering the Japanese American Incarceration, the Topaz Stories podcast with Ruth Sasaki and Jonathan Hirabayashi (6/2/2021)

Featuring: “Venturing Out”

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