Giant Robot Store and GR2 News
About two years ago while sitting in his kitchen, I heard my dad say, "I'd like to go to Manzanar one day." As a kid from age 8-11 he and his family were forcibly uprooted from Coastal Central California and...
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Japanese dolls returned after “safekeeping” while the owner was in a WWII Internment Camp. Aside from the greatness of getting the heirloom dolls back, it’s amazing to see the greatness of these dolls. The details are amazing. The story is about the reuniting of two childhood friends after 70 years and it’s a nice read. (Sacbee – Friends) Photos by Paul Kitagaki Jr.
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Andy Frazer is normally an unassuming software professional down in California’s Silicon Valley. But due to a passion for photography and a series of interconnected events, he has taken up a very special cause and turned it into a project centering on Japanese-American World War II internees. Frazer, a Caucasian man, became interested in internees in 2006 after photographing San Jose’s annual Day of Remembrance event, which commemorates Roosevelt’s 1942 executive internment Order 9066. After meeting numerous internees at the Day of Remembrance, Frazer began to learn more about the wartime internment, and developed a strong interest in internees’ lives and stories both during and after the war. The result is his web-based story archive and image gallery called Kioku: Portraits of Japanese-American Internment. Employing visual style similar to that of Richard Avedon’s “In the American West”, Frazer has compiled a striking set of portraits of Japanese-American internees as they are today. But some of their faces seem to reflect how they felt as younger men and women unjustly imprisoned by their own government. At the link, you’ll be able to learn more about the project, and read in interview with Frazer. (Nichi Bei Weekly – Wartime Internee Portrait Project) And the pictures and stories in Kioku: Portraits of Japanese-American Internment can be seen and read here.
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“’Drama in the Delta’ is a non-profit, educational 3D role-playing video game that puts the player into the experiences of two Arkansas concentration camps where the U.S. government interned 15,000 Japanese-Americans during World War II.” If there is an internet rule that says you can make a video game out of any topic or scenario, this certainly qualifies. Collaborators from the University of San Diego’s Department of Theatre and Dance and the San Diego Supercomputer Center are developing a video game called “Drama in the Delta”, which is intended to be an immersive first-player role-playing experience recreating what it was like to be an internee at the Rohwer and Jerome Relocation Centers in Arkansas in 1944. When the game is completed in 2013, you’ll be able to play as a number of characters, including one of four teenaged Nisei girls. In our estimation, this is a pretty daring, ambitious and touchy construct for a video game. But you can actually judge for yourself, as the 292MB prototype is available right now for Windows-only download. In fact, we’d be interested to know what internees themselves think about this project and actual game play. (Chronicle of Higher Education – Arkansas Nisei RPG) And here is the official website: Drama in the Delta.
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