50 OBJECTS: Letting Things Speak

A close friend documents biographical stories of heritage - the work always reveals profound sensitivity to the subject. 50 OBJECTS examines the “biography of objects that have survived a traumatic period... Material objects have a special resonance for Americans of Japanese ancestry. When an entire racial group was banned from the West Coast during World War II, an ocean of objects was lost forever.”

“Our goal was to take things that remain and excavate their stories while some memory is still alive. What is the biography of objects that have survived a traumatic period? How do things carry memory? How do they tell the stories of people’s lives? We hoped to put a face on objects and animate the inanimate. In recovering these stories, we hope to honor the people who lived them. ”

“BAG BY THE DOOR”

“In the early months of 1942, six-year-old Amy Iwasaki would wake up each morning and go to the front door to see if her father’s packed bag was still there.Her father had bought a leather satchel just big enough to hold belongings for a short trip. It loomed large in Amy’s life.

Genichiro had packed the bag and placed it by the door of their home in East Hollywood in case the FBI came to take him away. He was not guilty of anything other than being an immigrant from Japan, but in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, he was a potential spy in the eyes of the U.S. government.

“I woke up each morning afraid that he was gone,” Amy told a government commission some 40 years later.

The trauma of not knowing if her father would be taken away while she was asleep became a permanent childhood memory.”