Echoes Unearthed

Dean Terasaki’s photomontages are based on an archive of letters unearthed by chance from the F.M. Hall building in Denver. These handwritten requests, sent to T.K. Pharmacy by Japanese Americans incarcerated in the WWII-era War Relocation Authority camps, speak now to both loss and resilience.

The pharmacy—owned by Terasaki’s uncles—was one of the few Japanese American businesses still operating during the war. It became a lifeline for those seeking small necessities during a time of extraordinary duress.

Terasaki’s project is deeply personal. As the grandchild of immigrants, he navigates the spaces between written history and unspoken memory. He photographs the former WRA incarceration sites with the intent of returning the letters to the landscapes where they were written. These montages, from his ‘Veiled Inscriptions’ project, give form to narratives lost—the farms that thrived on coerced labor yet conceal untold stories, the elders who quietly carried their forced dislocation, the young men who proved their citizenship on distant battlefields for a country that denied them their civil rights.

The letters matter not only for what they request—hair dye, skin lotion, dignity—but for what they reveal: the enduring mystery of survival and the urgent reminder of the fragility of human rights in times of social upheaval.

Letters courtesy of the T.K. Pharmacy Collection, Densho

The reconstructed guard tower at the Amache i.c.s. near Granada, Colorado. While the War Relocation Authority was a civilian branch of the government and controlled the daily routine inside the camp, the military had authority of the area immediately outside of the incarceration camps starting at the barbed wire.

Executive Order 9066, signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, gave broad domestic authority to the Western Military Command. It was immediately used to restrict the rights of ethnic Japanese living in America. One woman, facing forced relocation on very short notice, was rebuffed as she tried to sell her fine china. “Why buy what I can walk in and just take for free tomorrow?” said her neighbor. The woman stood on her porch and shattered the dishes one by one.

There are many requests for hair dye in the T.K. Pharmacy letter archive. Black hair is valued in my culture, and there were many parents of young children – all of whom were incarcerated. The hair dye requests are really asking for a measure of dignity – a longing for life on the outside. In Japanese culture, the koi fish symbolizes the ideas of perseverance and longevity.

The photograph used in this montage was exposed in about 1997 at the Gila River incarceration site, which is on land owned by the Gila River Indian Community and the ancestral land of the Akimel O’odham, O’odham Jewed and Hohokam people. This is one of the earliest artworks from Terasaki’s Veiled Inscriptions project included in this exhibition.

The rocks and concrete are at the edge of a fish pond at the Gila River incarceration site. Gardens with ponds were constructed at many of the sites. Many of the incarcerees were farmers in their previous lives, and there were leftover construction materials. Fish ponds were often built near the mess hall for a block of barracks. People would have to wait in line for food, and a fish pond was a way to at least imagine that it was pleasant.

The children’s playground is part of the heavily restored Manzanar National Historic Site. The playground is by the Manzanar incarceration camp’s orphanage – the orphanage itself is near the middle of the site. Orphans with as little as one- sixteenth Japanese ancestry were forcibly removed to this site. Children born out of wedlock at Manzanar were taken from their mothers and placed in the orphanage. During WWII, no ethnic Japanese American was ever found guilty of a crime of espionage.

This is a heartbreaking letter asking for medicine for an infant. A child has broken out with pimples and a high fever. Medicine was in extremely short supply and, for good reason, the military had priority. There is a phrase that was oft repeated among the incarcerees: shigata ga nai (SHE-gah-tah gah Nah-ee). Literally it means nothing can be done. In Japanese culture, though, the meaning is to persevere by putting forth your best effort. How would you respond if your child was suffering and there was no medicine?

The incarceration was only part of the trauma. The forced relocation meant that homes and businesses were sold for pennies on the dollar or lost completely. Huge family rifts happened because of camp politics as well as the infamous loyalty questionnaire. The parents of once- isolated farm families were horrified that their children chose to dine with friends instead of family. Some have argued that parental demands for academic achieve- ment came from a belief that “They can’t take education away from you.”

Discarded nails left on the ground after the lumber was reclaimed from Utah’s Topaz i.c.s. Topaz was built in the dry Bonneville Lake bed. The incarcerated people were expected to grow their own food, but the lake bed’s soil would not support crops. It took almost two years of soil management before large scale agriculture began. Food was shipped to Topaz from Arizona’s large incarceration camps.

This letter includes very specific shipping and labeling instructions in an effort to avoid attention to what was being requested – cases of sake. Sake was contraband for a period of time. Incarcerees who worked outside of the camps were able to find ways around the restrictions, and sake was in high demand. Beyond relieving boredom, sake represents the idea that life went on. There were wedding and funerals. Women gave birth and people passed on. Army recruits left for training and separated families were reunited.

The smokestack at the hospital for the Heart Mountain i.c.s. Near Cody, Wyoming. Families were displaced from the relatively temperate West Coast and often did not have warm clothing to protect them during winters in the high deserts of the Western U.S.

A recruiting letter from the University of Colorado’s College of Pharmacy and a snapshot of the artist’s father, Sam, provide the content in this montage. Beyond its sense of humor, Terasaki sees this as commentary about the Japanese American National Guard soldiers in Hawaii having their weapons taken away immediately after the December 7, 1941 attacks. Sam’s fellow soldiers from Hawaii’s 100th Battalion trained with brooms and shovels after their weapons were taken away after the December 7, Pearl Harbor attack.

This snapshot is of the artist’s father, Sam, and grandfather, Masayemon, likely taken in the fall of 1944, just before Sam left for basic training to join the famous 442d Regiment. Sam would eventually be a buck sergeant in charge of a weapons squad in the 100th Battalion. He saw combat in the famed 442d breakthrough assault of the German Gothic Line in Italy.

The F. M. Hall building at 2700 Larimer St. in Denver, Colorado. This building was T. K. Pharmacy from prior to WWII until the early 1960’s. Dr. Thomas Kobayashi had his medical practice on the second floor where he served the nearby Japanese American neighborhood. The pharmacy was on the ground floor. The artist’s father worked there.