What do we do with the prison camps buried in our backyard?
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Historic Photo of Prison Camp #10/ Catalina Federal Honor Camp outside Tucson, Arizona. Photo Courtesy of Coronado National Forest.
View of Prison Camp #10/ Catalina Federal Honor Camp remains outside Tucson, Arizona, 2020. Photo Courtesy of Bill Gillespie.
Landscapes of Japanese American Incarceration.
Landscapes of Japanese American Incarceration.
About
Seeing Memory looks and listens to the landscapes of Japanese American incarceration during World War II.
Building on the work of archaeologists, historians, community members, and descendants of former inmates, Seeing Memory explores understudied sites of Japanese American Incarceration. These sites offer lessons about how absence can be its own form of evidence; what were once the foundations of prison barracks are now campgrounds, active military bases, hiking trails, or soccer fields. Even so, much remains, if we can learn where and how to look.
Seeing Memory brings together drone imagery, photography, audio interviews, and community archives from understudied sites of Japanese American incarceration.
Our sites include Department of Justice, Immigration & Naturalization Services, and U.S. Army internment camps that stretch across Alaska, Arizona, New Mexico, Montana, and Idaho.
The memories imbued in these landscapes cross racial, historical, and geographic lines. They demonstrate the limits of citizenship and show that injustice does not occur in a vacuum.
It is time to reckon with the past in order to better listen to its echoes in the present. Join Us.
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Seeing Memory, 2022.
Contact
We want to hear from you.
Do you have memories of these sites? Questions about our methods or the histories we’re working with? Are you familiar with one of these sites, but call it by a different name? We would love to hear from you. Please fill out the form below. We’re looking forward to the conversations ahead!