Memories of Japanese-American Concentration

Art exhibit exposes U.S. concentration catastrophe

No art exhibit has ever brought together the history and stories of all 10 Japanese-American concentration camps from the 1940s—until now. 

Senior Lecturer Renee Billingslea in the Department of Art and Art History created the photo documentation project “Ten Japanese-American Concentration Camps.” The project opened at the Triton Museum of Art in Santa Clara on Feb. 7. 

A large, open room with cream-colored walls and a wooden floor houses the exhibit.

Along the walls of the main room are contemporary portraits of the landscapes where the 10 concentration camps throughout the United States used to be. 

Inside each portrait is a piece of a historical photograph stitched into the picture to match the landscape.

In the print depicting a Califfornian concentration camp in Manzanar, snow-capped mountains and an empty plot of land are the modern landscape that was once home to rows and rows of buildings that housed Japanese Americans. 

By placing the contemporary landscapes side by side with the historic photographs, Billingslea is able to push boundaries with these prints, allowing the viewers to simultaneously feel like they’re in the past and in the present.

Below each of the portraits is a bowl filled with dirt or sand, giving the visitor a physical connection to the history and landscape depicted in the artwork.

Billingslea initially found the inspiration for this project while conducting research in the Farm Security Administration file in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

One of the photographs she stumbled across depicted two Japanese women standing at a counter in a dining hall serving hot dogs, chips and other food with chopsticks. 

The photo was taken in Salinas, Calif. in May of 1942. 

Shortly after returning from Washington, D.C., Billingslea heard a story on NPR of a young woman who described a dish her grandmother passed down to her called “Weenie Royale.” 

The dish was one her grandmother commonly cooked and ate while incarcerated in a Japanese-American internment camp during World War II. 

Realizing the connection between the hot dogs in the historic photograph and the “weenie” recipe from the NPR story allowed Billingslea to see the cultural control the government had over Japanese Americans during World War II. 

When Japanese Americans were incarcerated under Executive Order 9066, which President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law in February 1943, approximately 120,000 adults and children of Japanese descent were sent to the concentration camps.

These 10 concentration camps were located across seven states, which included Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Utah and Wyoming. 

As Billingslea traveled to all of these locations, she became more aware of the climate and surroundings of the camps, whether it be the 106 degree heat in Arizona or wind and dust at other camps.  She continued to ponder how it must have felt for the Japanese Americans who lived there.

“The scars on the land were still very apparent,” Billingslea said in an interview, referring to the buildings the government tried to clean up and the trauma that the Japanese Americans experienced.

The project was funded by the Center of Arts and Humanities, through which Billingslea received a grant for the project. 

“Recognizing that I’m very much an outsider doing this work . . . I think in a way allowed me to do the work, because I don’t carry the trauma that a lot of Japanese Americans [have],” Billingslea said.

Through this exhibit, Billingslea hopes to remind us that we all have the responsibility to remember our agency and prevent this brutal chapter in American history from repeating itself.

By unearthing history through artistic expression, Billingslea teaches us how to grow from the scars of our nation’s past.