Life After Wartime: An Online Image Gallery of Japanese-American Internees

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.