Birds of Incarceration
On an air-conditioned bus to Tule Lake, we fold shimmering sheets of colored paper into delicate, mystical birds. The weight of the shared ritual makes my fingers fumble. It’s been decades since I made origami with my immigrant mother, and I feel pressure to reprise...
Japanese American Activation
After a sometimes rousing, mostly solemn, and often tear-filled memorial ceremony brimming with Japanese and Japanese American influences, a scene unfurled that, to common understanding, may have seemed very un-Japanese. It happened beside an old jail nested in a much larger prison, the Tule Lake...
The Optics of Race
We have a monument to Confederate soldiers in my city, and our mayor wants it gone. I do, too. It sits in a cemetery where Bruce Lee and many of Seattle’s founding families are buried. Lakeview is even more meaningful to me because it’s where...
Japanese American Exclusion
When the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial was little more than a clearing in a forest on Puget Sound, among its first visitors was a cacophonous murder of crows. On March 30, 2002, about 750 people came to mark the 60th anniversary of the...