An extraordinary art exhibit entitled "The Tag Project" was taking place at the San Jose Contemporary Art Institute. Artist Wendy Murayama recruited hundreds of assistants to write names on ID tags of over 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, mostly US citizens, who were shipped off to internment camps at the beginning of WWII.
The 120,000 tags were strung together into ten towering bundles hung from the Institute ceiling. The internee tags were segregated by the ten relocation camps scattered across the US during WWII.
My two sisters, Yuki and Emi, at ages 10 and 5 respectively were two of those internees. I asked them if they would be interested in seeing the exhibit.
In the back of my mind, I thought it would be interesting if we could find their tags and other family members amongst the 120,000 tags on exhibit.
You never know, we could get lucky.
After seeing the Tag Exhibit, we drove over to Japan Town to visit the Japanese-Ameican Museum and tour around J-Town, which I haven't seen since my college days, nearly 40 years ago. It was a literal trip down Memory Lane.
Fortunately, Japan-Town has flourished over the decades and still intact. This neighborhood consists of museums, shops and art galleries, restaurants, residential, and the San Jose Buddhist Church.
To view the album of my trip to San Jose, click on "Wendy Murayama Ex. Order 9066 Tag Exhibit and San Jose Japan-Town" below photo:
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| From Wendy Maruyama Exec. Order 9066 Tag Project and San Jose Japan Town |
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