Happy New Year!
Three announcements to kick off the new year:
The Topaz Stories 2024 Exhibit at J-Sei has been extended, and will be viewable from January 6-31, 2025 on Mondays and Thursdays from 10 am to 4 pm. Drop-ins are welcome. If you are a group and would like to schedule a visit and guide, please email jill@j-sei.org.
The Zoom recordings for five of our recent programs have been uploaded to the J-Sei YouTube channel. Regretfully, we experienced audio issues over Zoom for “WWII Friends and Allies,” so the recording of this program is not available.
Congratulations to Shanna Farrell, Roger Eardley-Pryor, and Amanda Tewes of the U.C. Berkeley Oral History Center! In December their project, “Japanese American Intergenerational Narratives” was awarded the Oral History Association’s Mason Multi-Media Award for “outstanding oral history projects, collections, exhibits, and multimedia presentations for the public.”
The project consists of (currently) 23 oral history interviews and four podcasts:
- Episode 1: “‘It’s Happening Now:’ Japanese American Activism”
- Episode 2: “‘A Place Like This:’ The Memory of Incarceration”
- Episode 3: “‘Between Worlds:’ Japanese American Identity and Belonging”
- Episode 4: “‘Origami as Metaphor:’ Creative Expression, Memorialization, and Healing”
Among those interviewed were two Topaz Stories storytellers, Jean Hibino and Ruth Sasaki.
The Topaz Stories Team
Contact us if you have a Topaz Story to share.
Follow us on Instagram @topazstories
Media Coverage:
Read ‘Topaz Stories’ exhibit travels Utah showing human side of WWII internment (KSL.com, May 24, 2024)
Read ‘Topaz Stories’ mines the history of a Japanese American internment camp (ParkRecord, May 18, 2024)
Read Remembering Japanese American Internment–Day of Remembrance (Rosie the Riveter Trust blog, March 24, 2024)
Read Internee’s story told with ‘Topaz Collages’ (Wheel of Dharma, Vol. 5, Issue 3, March 2023).
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)