Role Playing: Mock Trial
Japanese American students at UC Berkeley put themselves on trial to discuss racial discrimination and their position in American society in the 1930s.
Incarcerated
Kay Yamashita witnessed how Camp Administrators set up surveys and tools to segregate "loyal" from "disloyal" based on cultural traits and social affiliation. This process can be understood as a state process of racial state of exception which generates a "racial friend/ racial enemy" distinction and subverts constitutional rights.
An Issei Woman
Tomi patented a pregnancy girdle design, and opened a dry cleaning and alterations business in Oakland and supported her children to go to college.
The Body
This exhibit includes Stories related to bodies-- backs, teeth, face, abdomen. What does the experience of the body tell us about the larger story or containment, resettlement, memory and home?
Removed
The Yamashita family was removed from their neighborhood and confined in incarceration camps. This exhibit explores the days leading up to removal and detention at Tanforan Racetracks through Kiyo's diary entries and fingerprinting alien registration papers.
A Tailor in Oakland
Kishiro Yamashita had a tailoring business in Oakland, California in the early 1900s. His life's trajectory from rural Naegi Japan to a growing U.S. city was influenced by an expanding Japanese empire, laws of primogeniture, and a multiethnic Oakland with a growing community of Japanese immigrant workers and families.