The Japanese Internment

Koho Yamamoto is a Japanese-American artist and above is one of her works on display at The Interchurch Center's gallery which is curated by my friend Frank.  The exhibit is called From Topaz to Soho: The Spirited Art of Koho Yamamoto.  The art begins in 1944 when she was 22 and living in a detention center in Topaz, Utah.  Many are done in the Sumi-e style which is what she taught for 37 years at her school  in Soho. 

Koho Yamamoto's work is part of the show: "The Japanese American Internment Project ... if they came for me today".  The show will be on tour for two years.

On February 19, 1942 President Franklin Roosevelt interned in camps 120,000 Japanese-Americans of whom 80,000 were native born.  The government also coerced Latin American countries to deport their Japanese citizens.  2,300 were sent to America and imprisoned here.  Homes and businesses were lost. 
In 1980 President Jimmy Carter's commission on the internment found that the relocation was not done out of military necessity but out of racism, war hysteria, and the failure of political leadership.
In August 1988 President Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act which paid the survivors $20,000 each.