Carolina Martinez, Artist and Educator
email: 68.carolina@gmail.com
The Portland Japanese Internment Project
My mission with this project is to reach the public and to teach about the effects of racism, wartime hysteria, and to hopefully impact people to examine their assumptions about others based on race, ethnicity, and culture.
I have written and illustrated a book about the Portland Japanese Internment experience. I have researched using primary sources, historically accurate internet sources from the Japanese Perspective, as well as from the Oregon perspective, talked with the Oregon Nikkei Society, and found historically accurate images to add to the text of my book. And the paintings of Henry Sugimoto and Roger Shimomura inspired much of my work doing the illustrations.
In my heart, I see the importance of... bringing to the forefront the voices and back stories of those not spoken of, or minimized in history books and public media.
I started this project remembering two incredible families in my life--the Higashiuchis, of whom my precious Aunt Joan was a mere child when she suffered through the internment with her parents and uncles, and the Dobashis, of which March Dobashi was our auto mechanic and owner of Yamato Auto Repair, as I grew up in San Francisco in the 1970s. Mr. Dobashi has always remained in my fond memory because of his humor, his gentleness with me, his incredible artistry with my parents' car, and the dramatic stories he recounted to us about his experiences in Tule Lake Internment Camp.
The Portland Japanese Internment Camp project started out in May 2011, when I realized there were relatively no resources in my school district to teach about the Japanese Internment experience or the Japanese community of Portland before World War II. As a third grade class, my students have participated in the yearly musical play by Ralph Nelson about the history of Portland. Ralph has taught the children about the different periods of history, and the people of Portland, but has had to condense the history because of the play, to 2 hours. In those two hours, he wrote a wonderful song and lines that get to a piece of the heart of the situation of the Japanese Internment--"I am an American too." To add to what Ralph taught and continues to teach the yearly new groups of third graders, I decided I would produce in a handmade book a resource I could use to teach my third graders about it, in a developmentally appropriate way.
What has resulted is artwork and text where I created characters and a family. This family went through this period of history, and survived and thrived despite the incredibly horrible human rights abuses the US government put them and the actual Japanese through, that went through the camps. My book is filled with detailed drawings, mock documents, some historical photos, and maps. My text tries to lovingly, respectfully tell the story of this family through the eyes of the protagonist's granddaughter Konoko. She describes her grandfather's immigration, life as a farm worker, marriage, experiences of joy as well as racism, the childhood of her mother and uncles, as well as her own. At the time the book takes place, she is about nine years old. And the book follows her and her grandparents (maternal and paternal), her mother's brothers and their families, and the joys they celebrate, as well as injustices they bear before, during, and after internment.
On my Facebook page, and on this page of my art website, you see a sampling of the work that the book contains. Along the way, to accompany the detailed illustrations in marker, pencil, and colored pencil, is the text, mostly spoken in Konoko's voice. At times, to illustrate the many aspects of camp life, there are the illustrations with captions, to give a fuller picture of daily and seasonal life at Minidoka, where these Japanese (Issei, Nissei, and Sansei generations)spent three years of their lives. I also dedicate a page to the 442nd Regiment of the Army, wholly composed of Nissei who served their country in the name of protecting democracy and human rights for all, rights they themselves did not have the privilege of, at that time.
My book also shows the joys of life pre-World War II, before hysteria and racism towards Japanese grew to an intolerable level, and issues of life living under the Asian Exclusion Laws and living with racism in day-to-day life, despite the prosperity many earned through hard work. And I talk about what became of the family, and how they prospered even though racism continues to this day.
Samples from Chapter 2: Minidoka
THE TRIP TO RELOCATE at MINIDOKA INTERNMENT CAMP
 map of the trip by train |
luggage and baggage |
MAP OF MINIDOKA WAR RELOCATION AUTHORITY PROPERTY
REGISTERING AND STARTING OUT...
 registering at the main entrance |
 the first hours |
OUR FOOD
 animals raised and vegetables grown |
 results of the canning of the vegetables and fruit |
 Men who worked at the Tofu Plant the internees started |
 the root cellar stored vegetables that could be stored after harvests at the farm |
THE BASICS OF LIFE
 an apartment internees furnished with things they made and things from home |
 the showers and the dust |
 the laundry |
ENTERTAINMENTS SOMEWHAT DISTRACTED FROM THE FORCED CONFINEMENT
 Extravaganza shows |
 Lion Dance |
 Music was an uplifting part of life |
ENJOYING THE WILDLIFE AROUND THE AREA
 animals from the wildlife refuge |
GARDENING AND THE JOYS OF IT
 school victory garden |
 Barrack community garden |
 prized dahlias |
 garden belonging to a family, with their homemade garden chair |
 traditional Japanese ornamental rock garden by main entrance |
 Bonsai tree a family brought with them from home |
BEING CONFINED AND WATCHED
 guards watched our every move, even through our windows, from high above in the guard towers, day and night |
 soldiers watch from guard towers |
 signs to tell us the limits and point out our confinement |
A TIME FOR CELEBRATIONS
 Christmas |
 Obon |
 Girl's Day |
 Boy's Day |
TIME SPENT IN NATURE
 fishing in the North Canal side of Minidoka |
 scout hiking trip with family |
 a family swims at Wilson Lake |
the COOPERATIVE STORES that provided goods and services
that the War Relocation Authority did not
 fish market, dry-goods store, telegram service, and beauty shop |
 optical shop, shoe repair, barber shop, and mail order catalog service |
 radio, watch, and flower shops |
 bus service |
THE HOSPITAL AT MINIDOKA
 the pharmacy at the hospital |
 laboratory technician |
 occupational therapy and pleasure activities at the hospital |
SCHOOL
 nursery school |
 Boy's Day art project at elementary school |
 Hunt High School |
THE MINIDOKA IRRIGATOR, THE CAMP NEWSPAPER
 all kinds of news and weather |
WHEN WE WERE "RELEASED" in 1945
 getting on the train to Portland, Oregon |
 the "document" that shows our train assignment |
Facebook Link for this project:
