As part of the WWII Japanese American internment of about 120,000 civilians, two of the larger camps were at Gila River and at Poston in Arizona. Several of the families of those who were interned still live in Arizona, some here in Tucson. Well known Tucson educator the late Dr. Hank Oyama and his mother were interned at Poston Relocaiton Center.

Text of Brandon’s gallery chat available here at: http://aaww.org/state-erasure-arizona/

Excerpts about his interned family members:

“My grandfather, Midori Shimoda, was born on an island off the coast of Hiroshima and immigrated to the United States when he was eight.

He was incarcerated in Salt Lake City under suspicion of blowing up a uranium mill in southern Utah. He was incarcerated in a Department of Justice prison at Fort Missoula, Montana, under suspicion of being a spy for Japan. Both suspicions were formed, in part, by the anxiety that was produced by even the specter of a Japanese man in the minds of his white accusers.

His brother, my great-uncle Makeo, was incarcerated in Heart Mountain, Wyoming. His sister-in-law, my great-aunt Joy was incarcerated in Poston, in western Arizona. She was four when the United States deemed her an enemy of the state and considered it a military necessity to remove her, with her family, from her home in California, and incarcerate her in the middle of the desert.

On behalf of my great-aunt Joy, my great-uncle Makeo, and my grandfather Midori, I want to share with you some things I have been learning about Arizona’s place, and the place of Arizona, in the mass incarceration of Japanese and Japanese Americans.”