Tessaku
Tessaku was the name of a short-lived magazine published at the Tule Lake concentration camp during World War II. It also means “barbed wire.” This series brings to light stories of the Japanese American internment, illuminating those that haven’t been told with intimate and honest conversation. Tessaku brings the consequences of racial hysteria to the foreground, as we enter into a cultural and political era where lessons of the past must be remembered.
Stories from this series
Robert Tanaka - Part 2
June 29, 2017 • Emiko Tsuchida
Read Part 1 >> Bob, can I go back? Do you remember your experience going from Watsonville to the assembly center? And then from the assembly center to Tule Lake? Oh when we first moved we went to Davis. I would spend my junior year over in Davis. And that’s when Executive 9066 came. And so [a friend] Mr. Kearney had a dairy farm there. He says look we got to get you down to the train, so I’ll drive …
Robert Tanaka - Part 1
June 28, 2017 • Emiko Tsuchida
When I got married and had a family, that’s when it sort of hit me, what my parents went through. And they never let on that they were panicking because of what was happening to the Japanese people. They were very stoic, strong people. — Robert Tanaka Robert has the kind of serene, light-hearted personality that draws you in. With a touch of dry humor, he’s able to tap into deep emotions that periodically surface through tears and a shaky …
Tomiko Tommy Miyahara - Part 2
June 14, 2017 • Emiko Tsuchida
Read Part 1 >> Did Tommy have to work in camp? So Tommy had been working ever since she arrived and she harvested sugar beets. There was a sugar beet shortage which sounds ridiculous but it was really important because the men were all responding to the draft so the farm labor was down, and farmers in that region were in a crisis. So I think the idea was kind of like a prison labor camp, where they have these …
Tomiko Tommy Miyahara - Part 1
June 13, 2017 • Emiko Tsuchida
“Her life experience was very American. She worked the land, she was always dirty, she’d been working since she was eight. It was that blue-collar kind of work ethic. I felt she was very American.” —Tomiko Tommy Miyahara I met Tommy’s granddaughter, Carly Perera, in San Francisco. It was our first time meeting in person yet our lives overlapped in coincidental ways. We both were raised in San Jose and were both working on projects to reclaim an unspoken past, …
Masao Tom Inada - Part 2
May 25, 2017 • Emiko Tsuchida
Read Part 1 >> Okay, I see. So then you landed in the Philippines. Yeah. When we were in the Philippines, maybe about two or three weeks later, the war with Japan ended. So the very next day, myself and another desk sergeant who I knew, both of us were flown to Tokyo to the Major Willoughby’s headquarters, to translate newspapers. And that’s another part that, when I got to Tokyo and was stationed at the Dai-Ichi building, I noticed …
Masao Tom Inada - Part 1
May 24, 2017 • Emiko Tsuchida
That’s the reason I’ve always just got to think to myself, I don’t know what it is but everything happens to me by chance or coincidence. And I get spared. -- Masao Tom Inada Tom Inada believes that someone’s been looking out for him. Despite a myriad of blight situations he might have found himself in–jobless, a replacement in the highest casualty battalion in WWII or not meeting the right kind of woman who would become his wife–Tom seemed to …
