Charity Fest: Prejudice and Pride, The Faces of Executive Order 9066 by Julie Sotomura

The process of collecting guest posts for Charity Fest has been a learning experience in itself.  It’s incredible the variety of ways people have been moved to give back.  Better yet, look at the variety of ways professional photographers are using their cameras, their skillset and their influence to create awareness for each different project.  

Julie Sotomura was moved to make a difference in the community.  Her efforts to increase awareness of a very dark day in the history of civil rights in America had an impact on the people who were fortunate enough to see her exhibit, her subjects were moved by the experience and in the end, the project had a profound efffect on helping Julie reconnect with her heritage.    

One day last fall I was speaking to a lovely, bright young woman in her early 20s and the subject of the Japanese American internment during WWII came up. She looked confused and then admitted that she had never heard of that dark time in America’s history. It was in that moment that my personal project, “Prejudice and Pride, The Faces of Executive Order 9066″ was born.
 
A quick history: In the aftermath of the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which set into motion the incarceration of 120,000 individuals of Japanese ancestry, a majority of whom were U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents.
 
I was inspired to develop a photo exhibit which included a present-day photograph of an individual who had been interned, combined with an archival image of that person in camp and a brief biography describing that individual’s life before, during and after internment. This exhibit, which was a group show, became a traveling exhibit, moving throughout the state to schools, libraries and galleries and was shown at the Washington State Capitol in Olympia in commemoration of the Day of Remembrance, the day that EO9066 was signed.

 
My intention was to foster communication and education in the community and promote healing old wounds and replacing them with hope and compassion. As Mary Matsuda Gruenewald, pictured above, put it, “This is not my story, this is our story. This is happening again, right now, with a different face.” At the opening of the show, several of the photo subjects told me that they had finally expressed emotions that had been suppressed for a long time, and felt a sense of release that they had not experienced in over 60 years.

 
This project was only possible through the support and talents of many volunteers, a grant from the City of Seattle Neighborhood Matching Funds and a generous in-kind donation from one of my vendors.

 The biggest surprise of this project was that while I was hoping to make a difference in the community, the community made a difference in me. I formed a deep relationship to the Japanese American community that I never had before, and renewed a connection to my heritage.