Coming Home: Memories of Japanese American Resettlement (exhibition)

Exhibition organized by the Japanese American National Museum and curated by Darcie Iki and Jim Gatewood that explored the obstacles—such as housing and employment shortages and discrimination—that Japanese Americans faced after they left the confines of America's concentration camps. The exhibit opened on August 14, 1998, and ran until February 7, 1999. The exhibit explored the process of rebuilding community as well as the individual struggle to come to terms with the larger "camp" experience.

Among the featured storylines was that of artist Estelle Ishigo, who with her husband Arthur, lived in a series of Los Angeles area government run trailer parks after leaving Heart Mountain. Ishigo's sketches and paintings of trailer park life as well as a home movie of the Lomita camp were featured. Another section focused on the Atomettes, a Nisei girls club formed at the West Los Angeles United Methodist Church in 1946, which featured home movies and photographs and an official scrapbook. Toru Saito's story of resettlement after leaving the Topaz, Utah, concentration camp included his personal pilgrimage back to the site.

Authored by Brian Niiya , Densho

For More Information

Coming Home: Memories of Japanese American Resettlement at Japanese American National Museum website. http://www.janm.org/exhibits/cominghome/ .

"'Coming Home' Exhibit Takes Look at Postwar Resettlement to West Coast." Rafu Shimpo , Aug. 21, 1998.

Iki, Darcie C., and Arthur A. Hansen. "The REgenerations Project: A Comparative Collaboration in Community Oral History." In Common Ground: The Japanese American National Museum and the Culture of Collaborations . Edited by Akemi Kikumura-Yano, Lane Ryo Hirabayashi, and James A. Hirabayashi. Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2005. 131–39.

Last updated Sept. 10, 2022, 9 p.m..