This week we are honored to bring you an excerpt from a memoir written by Keisho Okayama, a Los Angeles artist who was a young boy in Topaz. Many thanks to Keisho’s widow, Lauren Okayama, and Fletcher Coleman, Asst. Prof. of Art History at the University of Texas, Arlington, who shared Keisho’s life story with us.
Keisho was two years old when his family moved from Japan to Watsonville, where his father became the minister of the Watsonville Buddhist Church. In 1939 his father became the executive secretary of the San Francisco Buddhist Church, so the Okayama family was caught up in the forced removal to Tanforan and Topaz.
Keisho wrote his memoir, “Ancestry,” while he was in high school–only a few years after the events he wrote about had transpired. From the voice of a teenager, we get a detailed account of one future artist’s memories of Tanforan and Topaz.
Read “Portrait of an Artist” on our Topaz Stories website.
An exhibit including several of Keisho’s works is currently on display at The Gallery at UTA, University of Texas at Arlington, Feb. 4-March 29, 2025: “Solace in Painting: Reflecting on a Tumultuous Century.”
The Topaz Stories Team
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Media Coverage:
Watch “Utah Historians Run Exhibit on Japanese American Internment,” abc4 News, 2/19/2025).
Read “Utah Once Said ‘Never Again’–Do We Mean It? Deseret News, (2/26/2025).
Read “Topaz Stories Exhibition: A Way to Remember the Past.” SUU News, 2/7/2025.
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)