She was the first baby born at the Topaz Concentration Camp in central Utah. The hospital was not completed yet, so her mother gave birth on a laundry room floor less than two weeks after their arrival in September 1942. A wooden food crate improvised for a crib. Her father was so grateful to the Nikkei doctor, Dr. Eugenia Fujita, that they named the baby after her.
Eugenia “Jeanie” Kashima began a series of Topaz collages during COVID isolation. Her mother, Amy Oishi Takaki, had passed away at age 104 in 2020. Kashima had created art quilts but wanted an artistic way to use th…