Signal Booster: MC Weekly Spotlights ‘Shadows from the Past’

In February 1942, racism and wartime paranoia led President Franklin Roosevelt to sign Executive Order 9066. This ordered the rounding up of anyone with even 1/16th Japanese ancestry. Of the 120,000 who were transported and walled up in ten camps throughout the West, many were Californians. This sad history can be explored in “Shadows from the Past: Sansei Artists and the American Concentration Camps,” an exhibit at the Monterey Art Museum, on view through Jan. 9, 2022.

As reported by the Monterey County Weekly writer Agata Popeda, some 3,500 Japanese and Japanese-American people in Monterey County were forcibly removed from their land and their homes to internment camps. And though Monterey was more welcoming to returning internees than other parts of the country, it wasn’t until 2018 that the Monterey County Board of Supervisors issued a formal apology to members of the Japanese-American community.

“Shadows from the Past: Sansei Artists and the American Concentration Camps” features eight Japanese-American artists who are sansei—the third generation descended from Japanese immigrants. As woodworker Wendy Maruyama notes, “even though 80 years seems like a long time, it happened not that long ago.” Several of the artists use different motifs to invoke cages. And fabric artist Na Omi Judy Shintani previously exhibited a piece about detained children on our southern border; it goes without saying the subject has great relevance to this show.

Read more: “Reflecting 75 years later, eight artists interpret the lasting legacy of Japanese internment”