New Home (Japanese concentration camps in the U.S.)

This series is about the Japanese concentration camps that were built in the Western parts of America to incarcerate 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry (more than 60% of them were U.S. citizens) in remote and harsh areas during World War II. It was the result of the wartime hysteria caused by the attack on Pearl Harbor.

After president Roosevelt ordered the incarceration on Feb 19th, 1942, people of Japanese ancestry received short notices of a few days up to two weeks to pack up things that they could carry in suitcases for so called “evacuation”. They had to shut down businesses, quit jobs, sell properties and just leave everything that they couldn’t sell or carry. Many of the properties were looted or torn down during the three years of incarceration and even after they were released to their hometowns, the anti-Japanese sentiment went on for decades, resulting unprecedented racial discrimination against them.  

When I first learned about this history, what shocked me wasn’t the incarceration itself, but the fact that it happened in this country that was pursuing freedom, equal rights and democracy as the most fundamental values of the society. As a first-generation immigrant with a son born in the U.S., it was painful to imagine the emotion that the prisoners must have had when they had to bring their U.S. born children to the prisons without being able to explain how it could happen in this country. It also reminded me of the racial and religious antagonism that we’ve witnessed in recent history and made me realize how radically our view to this world can change when war and terror affect our life, resonating that bitter history can always be repeated if not properly told.  

Surprisingly many of the sites still exist throughout the country since the camps were built in such remote and harsh areas where no one would try to build anything. By capturing the surrounding landscapes that are beautiful and terrifying at the same time, I wanted to convey the contradictory emotions that I had at the site as well as the emotions that the prisoners must have had during the transportation and on the first day upon arrival. I also tried to capture the decades-old remnants of the camps to bring the long-lasting memories that were a bitter part of recent American history.