PORTFOLIO
DESIGN PROJECTS, TEACHING ACTIVITIES, STUDENT WORK, AND PUBLICATIONS
VALENTINA ROZAS-KRAUSE Ph.D. IN ARCHITECTURE University of California, Berkeley, 2020 MASTER IN URBAN PLANNING Pontificia Universidad Catรณlica de Chile, 2011 PROFESSIONAL DEGREE IN ARCHITECTURE (M.Arch equivalent) Pontificia Universidad Catรณlica de Chile, 2011 B. Arch Pontificia Universidad Catรณlica de Chile, 2009
01
Project:
Patio 29 Memorial Architects:
Valentina Rozas-Krause Ignacio García Arturo Torres Liliana De Simone Daphne Agosín Competition Result:
First Place Collaborators:
John Saffery Marcelo Morales Rodrigo Rubilar Location:
General Cemetery, Recoleta, Santiago de Chile Client:
National Monuments Council (CMN) Area:
3600 m2 [plot size] 550 m2 [built area] Date of Design:
2008-2009 Date of Construction:
2010
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Description:
Patio 29, located on the northern end of the General Cemetery, is a place where bodies of victims of State repression were hidden. However, Patio 29 also became one of the first places of resistance against the regime, thanks to its being a sheltered public space. The project sought to protect the original state of the site-monument, while at the same time framing, differentiating and highlighting Patio 29 with respect to its surroundings. Forming a large “L� that touches the East and North of the monument, the memorial is configured as a platform. It is the only projected material intervention. It was decided not to intervene the inside of the polygon of the Patio, contrasting the site through the frame and thus taking advantage of its own symbolic eloquence. The narrowest part of the memorial, in the North-South direction, the memorial is a simple walkway; in the East-West direction, however, it gains amplitude and height due to the lowering of the ground and the distance from the street, which transform the plinth into a stage and a stand. Towards the North end, the memorial transforms into a great staircase, which, due to the positioning of its pieces, becomes a place to stop. In front of the South face of Patio 29, the plinth is vertically cut, which allows for two ways to approach the monument: the seats, spaces for reflection and rest, and the voids, placed to allow mourners to leave their offerings. Finally, the square with the sound sculptures is the only place that maintains the natural ground level. Its aural sculptures and benches make it a place for users’ actions, both with respect with the music as well as during potential cultural activities. The whole memorial is made up by 3032 equal pieces of precast concrete, especially made for Patio 29. The pieces, which measure 78 cm by 28 cm and are 15 cm tall, are parallel in their long sides and angular in their width. The angles of the piece are a geometric solution that responds to the angles of the perimeter of the plot. The surface of the pieces is made up by a faceted mesh produced through a CNC system, which in the full horizontal plane of the memorial, resembles a slightly rough sea. Therefore, the Patio 29 Memorial is a monumental plinth made up by a single piece, but at the same time it is a simple urbanized sidewalk with a material quality that differentiates it from its surroundings, contrasting with and highlighting the monument that it frames.
HOW CAN WE DEMOCRATIZE OUR PUBLIC SPACE?
VALENTINA ROZAS-KRAUSE 03
RESISTING ETERNITY (Jochen & Esther Gerz) Registration of the harburg-hamburg project (hamburg 1986-1991): We invited the citizens of Hamburg, and visitors to the city, to add their names to ours. By doing this, we make a commitment to remain vigilant. (‌) One day the column will have disappeared completely, and the site of the
Hamburg monument against fascism will be empty. In the end, only we will be able to rise against injustice.� In this way, trust in the spaces of memory to evoke memories is subverted, thus the giving back the imperative of memory to communities and individual citizens.
ABUSES OF MEMORY (Tzvetan Todorov)
"Confronted with the excess of memory, it is necessary to discern between testimonial pasts and fair pasts; in other words, between singular and collective memory" (Todorov, 2000)
COUNTER-MONUMENT (Hoheisel, Gerz, Radermacher) The counter-monument movement emerges in 1980s Germany as a an alternative position to the State's self-representation, each of its works questioning the impulse to erect monuments to remember the crimes of Nazism. They are not spaces for mourn-
ing but for provocation, they are not permanent but instead mutate and disappear, they are not pedagogically static and require interaction, they are not destined to remain pristine but to be violated and un-sanctified.
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PRODUCING INTERDISCIPLINARY FIELDS "MEMOPOLIS" Building on the experience of Patio 29, MEMOPOLIS was created. It is a group doing research and action on urban topics which is based in Santiago de Chile.
OPERATIONS TO SUBVERT THE COMPETITION 1. To make it transparent 2. To open it up to public discussion 3. To collaborate with the other contestants 4. To take the specific case to a general discussion about memory in space 5. To research the historical dimension of space 6. To constantly re-state the project's operations
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02 Project:
Citizens’ Park National Stadium Architects:
Teodoro Fernandez Danilo Martic Valentina Rozas-Krause Nicole Rochette Competition Result:
First Place Location:
Ñuñoa, Santiago de Chile Client:
National Sports Institute [Instituto Nacional de Deportes] Plot size:
64 hectares [158 acres] Built area:
50 hectares [124 acres], first phase 49 acres Date of Design:
2011-2013 Years of Construction:
2013-2014 [first phase]
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Description:
The original incompleteness of the main National Stadium construction is the chance that this project aims to capitalize on through the National Stadium Cultural Space intervention. The third floor of the National Stadium, originally planned for elite Chilean athletes, was never finished and over the years was turned into a technical level, which nowadays only electricians and maintenance technicians can access. The discovery of over 4000 m2 of unused space on the third floor of the stadium prompts the question: How to materialize the past in a place for the masses? The project is referred to as cultural space, not museum, because it is a broader, more heterogeneous, and more multi-functional programmatic structure than a traditional museum. The two parts that make up the project, the National Stadium Museum and the Contemporary Creation Gallery, constitute a set that differs from an ecumenical museum. The intervention proposed by the National Stadium Cultural Space is conservationist because it maintains the spatial continuity of the stadium’s third floor and reveals its reinforced concrete structure. This recovers the stadium’s own spatial condition and constructs a continuous circular circuit on its third level. The circuit monumentalizes and desacralizes space in a single movement. On the one hand, the reinforced concrete structure within the stadium becomes the object of the exhibition, but at the same time is reduced to become a canvas to support new interventions. VALENTINA ROZAS-KRAUSE 07
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03 Project:
Les Corts Women’s Prision Memorial Architect
Valentina Rozas-Krause Landscape Archiect:
Pablo Alfaro Artist:
Fernando Sánchez Castillo Collaborators:
Germán Labrador Rosa Martínez Competition Result:
Third Place
Client/Competition:
City Council of Barcelona Location:
Barcelona, Spain Area:
3,000 m2 [32,000 sq. ft] Date of Design:
2017-2018
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01 04
Project:
Public Park Paseo del Mar, Muelle Barón Architects/ Landscape Archiects:
Pablo Alfaro, Tom Leader (TLS), Valentina RozasKrause Competition Result:
First Honorable Mention Client/Competition:
Ministerio de Vivienda y Urbanismo, Gobierno de Chile Location:
Valparaíso, Chile Area:
20,000 m2 [4,9 acres] Date of Design:
2018-2019
VALENTINA ROZAS-KRAUSE 12
MERVAL VIA TRONCAL
FAJA DEPORTIVA + ESTACIONAMIENTOS SUBTE.
ZOCALO BOULEVARD PASEO MIRADOR
FAJA ECOLOGICA
CICLOVIA
AV. ERRAZURIZ
PARQUE BUFFER
PEATONAL BRASIL
AV. BRASIL SOLO BUS
CORTE 1/750
PASEO DEL MAR
PASEO MIRADOR LA BARONESA
BODEGAS
PLAYA BARONESA
CRUCE
REFUERZO ESTRUCTURAL GALPON
NAVE NORTE COMERCIAL restoranes, tiendas, oficinas en 2 niveles
CENTRO DEPORTIVO SESC piscina cubierta y salas multiuso PISCINA PUBLICA OY
GOS
JUE
E SD
A
CH
CAN
YY
E VOL
IN ON ERT
olimpica + toboganes
TE SKA
PU
KET
BAS
A
NAVE SUR FERIA LIBRE
UE
GU LA
DE
Q
R PA
extension de la feria de Av. Argentina
MERCADO LA BARONESA Mercado Gourmet y de Artesanias
AREA ESTACIONAMIENTOS SUBTERRANEOS en 2 etapas AS
DE
DE
ER
L
BO
T FU
E
QU
CH
R PA
N CA
PL
EX
V DA
A AN
ESPACIO DE EVENTOS ESTACION BARON Centro de Eventos Masivos
S
MA
AS
O
TR EA
L DE
L PA
FIT
AN
NAVE SUR FERIA LIBRE
NAVE CENTRAL 3 PROGRAMAS
NAVE NORTE COMERCIAL
la galeria se mantiene abierta y se incluten persianas para cierre nocturno
la ilustracion muestra el tramo central del Merccado La Baronesa
se ilustra la relacion entre los restoranes de 2 niveles (tipo Mercado Central)
PASEO MIRADOR LA BARONESA la losa permite reforzar por completo la bodega S.B.
igihoc
CORTE S/ESC VISTA VUELO DE PAJARO DE LA EXPLANADA DEL MAR Y EL ACUARIO
VALENTINA ROZAS-KRAUSE 13
EL PASEO DEL MAR Y EL ANFITEATRO DE LAS PALMAS A LA IZQUIERDA
VISTA VUELO DE PAJARO GENERAL
FAJA DEPORTIVA CON EL SKATEPARK EN PRIMER PLANO
VISTA DEL PASEO DEL MAR AL ATARDDECER
JUEGOS DE AGUA JUNTO AL HUMEDAL ECOLOGICO
NOCHE DE AÑO NUEVO EN EL PASEO MIRADOR “LA BARONESA”
LA GRAN EXPLANADA VERDE METROPOLITANA VISTA DESDE EL PASEO MIRADOR
igihoc VALENTINA ROZAS-KRAUSE 14
05 Project:
Cloud Pavilions Architect:
Valentina Rozas-Krause Landscape Archiects:
TLS Landscape Architecture (park) Result:
Currently under construction Client:
TLS Landscape Architecture
苏州新区大运河公园 苏州新区大运河公园 苏州，中国 苏州，中国
苏州新区大运河公园 苏州，中国
Grand Canal, Grand Canal, Suzhou, ChinaSuzhou, China
Location:
Grand Canal, Suzhou, China
景观设计单位: 景观设计单位:
Heshan Park, China
景观设计单位:
TLS景观设计事务所 TLS景观设计事务所
TLS景观设计事务所
TOM LEADER STUDIO, INC. TOM LEADER STUDIO, INC. 1015 CAMELIA ST. 1015 CAMELIA ST. BERKELEY, CA 94710 BERKELEY, CA 94710
TOM LEADER STUDIO, INC. 1015 CAMELIA ST. BERKELEY, CA 94710
当地设计研究院: 当地设计研究院:
Area:
当地设计研究院:
5,400 sq. ft [pavilions] [in a 7,4-acre park]
地图及照明设计师： 地图及照明设计师：
地图及照明设计师：
发行至: 发行至: 描述: 描述:
日期: 日期:
发行至:
一期90%扩初图纸
Date of Design:
年
一期90%扩初图纸
月
日
月
日
一期100%扩初图纸
年
一期100%扩初图纸
年
月
日
年
月
日
描述:
日期:
一期90%扩初图纸
年
月
日
一期100%扩初图纸
年
月
日
何山活动场云亭 人视图 仅供作为最终效果参考 实际材质，尺寸参考详图 何山活动场云亭 人视图 仅供作为最终效果参考 实际材质，尺寸参考详图
2018
云亭透视图 比例尺
云亭透视图
云亭右立面 云亭透视图
比例尺
比例尺
云亭右立面
何山活动场云亭 透视图 仅供作为最终效果参考 实际材质，尺寸参考详图 云亭右立面
比例尺
比例尺
比例尺
何山活动场云亭 轴侧图 仅供作为最终效果参考 实际材质，尺寸参考详图 云亭轴侧图
云
比例尺
比
苏州新区大运河公园 苏州，中国
Grand Canal, Suzhou, China
内部柱子 景观设计单位:
简单钢柱 凸起处联结
简单钢柱 凸起处联结
ETFE膜细节图
TLS景观设计事务所
ETFE膜细节图
简单钢柱 凸起处联结
上半部分钢管
ETFE膜细节图
TOM LEADER STUDIO, INC. 1015 CAMELIA ST. BERKELEY, CA 94710 当地设计研究院:
简单钢柱 凹陷处联结
简单钢柱 凹陷处联结
简单钢柱 凹陷处联结
ETFE 膜 地图及照明设计师：
简单钢柱 基础
简单钢柱 基础
水平向钢箍
简单钢柱 基础
发行至: 描述:
日期:
简单垂直向钢柱
云亭剖面 云亭右立面
比例尺
一期90%扩初图纸
年
月
日
一期100%扩初图纸
年
月
日
云亭剖面 比例尺
云亭正立面 云亭剖面 比例尺
云亭正立面 比例尺
云亭正立面 图纸名称： 图纸名称：
比例尺
比例尺
比例尺
何山公园 1号云亭 剖立面图 何山公园 1号云亭 剖立面图
HESHAN PAVILION SECTION DETAILS HESHAN PAVILION SECTION DETAILS
图纸名称：
云
云亭轴测图 何山公园 2号云亭 剖立面图 比例尺
比例
HESHAN PAVILION SECTION DETAILS 项目编号： 比例：如图所示
项目编号：
比例：如图所示 图纸：
图纸：
图纸编号：
B8.31
名称：
名称：
图纸编号：
B8.31
项目编号：
比例：如图所示 图纸：
@ 版权TLS 景观设计 2017
@ 版权TLS 景观设计 2017
名称：
图纸编号：
B8.32
@ 版权TLS 景观设计 2017
VALENTINA ROZAS-KRAUSE 15
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06 Project:
National Stadium Cultural Space Architectural and Curatorial Project:
Valentina Rozas-Krause Location:
Ñuñoa, Santiago de Chile Area:
4000 m2 [43,000 sq. ft] Date of Design:
2010-2011
VALENTINA ROZAS-KRAUSE 17
Description:
The original incompleteness of the main National Stadium construction is the chance that this project aims to capitalize on through the National Stadium Cultural Space intervention. The third floor of the National Stadium, originally planned for elite Chilean athletes, was never finished and over the years was turned into a technical level, which nowadays only electricians and maintenance technicians can access. The discovery of over 4000 m2 of unused space on the third floor of the stadium prompts the question: How to materialize the past in a place for the masses? The project is referred to as cultural space, not museum, because it is a broader, more heterogeneous, and more multi-functional programmatic structure than a traditional museum. The two parts that make up the project, the National Stadium Museum and the Contemporary Creation Gallery, constitute a set that differs from an ecumenical museum. The intervention proposed by the National Stadium Cultural Space is conservationist because it maintains the spatial continuity of the stadium’s third floor and reveals its reinforced concrete structure. This recovers the stadium’s own spatial condition and constructs a continuous circular circuit on its third level. The circuit monumentalizes and desacralizes space in a single movement. On the one hand, the reinforced concrete structure within the stadium becomes the object of the exhibition, but at the same time is reduced to become a canvas to support new interventions. In spite of the conservation value introduced by the project, the National Stadium Cultural Space constructs the polarity between conservatism and adventurousness, by introducing on its Eastern end a completely contemporary glass cube which contrasts with the existing structure of the building. Thus, the dialectic between the traditional museum and the contemporary gallery is not evaded but materialized through two spaces which are at the same time opposed and continuous: the ellipse and the cube. The ellipse represents the continuous circuit created on the third level of the stadium, the location of the exhibition about the building itself; in other words, the staging of the past. On the other hand, the cube symbolizes the future, as its structure enters the stadium destroying what is already there, opposing its bright, glassy materiality to the opaque structure of the building. This is a place for contemporary art with all its questions, mutations, and instabilities. Seemingly opposed, these two spaces are intimately related and depend on one another. The glass cube not only constructs the entrance to the National Stadium Cultural Space, but also points to it, like a big highway billboard. This is a museum which will exhibit the history, memory, and future of the National Stadium as a work of architecture, engineering, and urban planning. However, as it is a museum about the building, not only the actual built structure is important, but also the National Stadium’s utopias, unfulfilled plans, landmark moments, victories, and defeats. The National Stadium, a 64-hectare plot of land, thus becomes a lens that makes it possible to understand the last 73 years of the history of Santiago and the country.
AESTHETICISM OF POLITICS (Walter Benjamin)
Through the term ‘aestheticization of politics’, Benjamin (1989) refers to any physical or virtual attempt to represent something that is not political for political ends, such as mass participation, nationalistic narrative, or the justification of war.
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“ TO EXTEND AND DISSEMINATE NEW FIELDS FOR ACTION AND KNOWLEDGE” "NATIONAL STADIUM - OPEN FILE" is a curatorial project which intends to account for the visual history of the premises as a way to understand the social, political, and cultural history of our country. The project involves two dimensions: a web platform and a photography exhibition, in order to disseminate and expand the results of the photographic research on the National Stadium. Its is intended to complement the “NATIONAL STADIUM CULTURAL SPACE”.
"TO SEEK ALTERNATIVE PUBLIC SPACES" The project resumes a practice started with Patio 29, seeking alternative public spaces and rediscovering obsolete spaces in the city.
PALAIS DE TOKYO | LACATON & VASSAL Lacaton & Vassal's room for the Palais de Tokyo constitutes a new kind of space that they create within it, an interior-exterior which is as public as the public square.
SPATIAL CONTROVERSIES The project for the National Stadium is part of a network of spatial controversies: 1. Play vs Duel 2. Future vs past 3. Modernity vs Memorial 4. Obsolescence vs Innovation 5. Functionalism vs Memorial Aesthetics 6. Private memory vs stadium for the masses
“MAN DOES NOT REMEMBER THE PAST; HE IS ALWAYS RECONSTRUCTING IT ” (Lucien Febvre, 1992:15)
PRESENT PASTS (Andreas Huyssen) Present Pasts is the term coined by Andreas Huyssen (2002) to refer to the resurfacing of memory from the 1980s onwards. “If in the West the consciousness of time of the (high) modernity sought to ensure the future, it may be argued that the consciousness of time of the late XXth century involves the no less risky task of taking responsibility for the past” (2002: 22).
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07
Graduate Research Studio:
Berlin: The Guilt Environment Instructors of Record:
Lauren Kroiz (History of Art) & Andrew M. Shanken (Architecture) Graduate Student Instructor:
Valentina Rozas-Krause University:
College of Environmental Design, University of California, Berkeley Number of Students: Semester:
12
Spring 2020
Description:
Since the city’s reunification in 1989, Berlin has intertwined its urban renewal with landscapes of reconciliation and commemoration. The “New Berlin” that politicians and city authorities imagined in the 1990s, after the Wende (or Fall of the Berlin Wall), was to be forged by international investment, materialized in high-profile commissions to “starchitects,” alongside preservation and memorialization of the city’s past, often seen through the seemingly inevitable lens of the Holocaust, and more recently Colonialism. Yet the relationship between developing a European metropolis and preserving sites of memory is troubled: projects throughout the city reveal how these ideas are reshuffled under the pressures of tourism, apology, foreign investment, and local activism. This makes Berlin the archetype of the contemporary guilt environment. This studio invites students to analyze, criticize, represent, and reimagine the form that memory and commemoration take in Berlin by asking how existing landscapes work and what new commemorative interventions might be necessary?
TEACHING ACTIVITIES VALENTINA ROZAS-KRAUSE 20
Samples of Group Master Plans:
08
Undergraduate Urban Studio:
Santiago: Repurposing an Inner-City Highway Instructors of Record:
Valentina Rozas-Krause Genaro Cuadros University:
School of Architecture, Universidad Diego Portales Number of Students: Semester:
25
Spring 2014
Student Evaluations:
100% of enrolled students recommended the studio and the instructors. Images:
Samples of student work Description:
In late 2013 the city of Santiago announced an open idea competition to reimagine a new purpose for one of Santiago’s inner-city highways, Autopista Central. Genaro Cuadros and I led a studio to examine the multiple urban impacts of a highway reconversion. Students worked in groups during the first weeks of the semester to observe and study the site(s), which led to a presentation of different master plan strategies. After that, individual students chose a site and developed an urban/architectural intervention based on their previous study. Interventions ranged from parks, plazas, new office buildings and affordable housing, to cultural centers.
VALENTINA ROZAS-KRAUSE 21
Samples of Group Master Plans:
VALENTINA ROZAS-KRAUSE 22
Sample I of Individual Final Review:
VALENTINA ROZAS-KRAUSE 23
10.5000
8.0000
9.0000
2.0000
10.0000
Eje Boucheff
Parque O'Higgins
6.0000
Caletera Poniente
PLANTA PARQUE PLACA PEDRO MONTT NIVEL +5,0_ESC. 1:250
3.5
Autopista Central
9.0000
6.0000
Salida Norte-Sur
3.0000
5.0000
6.0000
2.0000
San Ignacio de Loyola
Caletera Oriente
Metro Linea 2
SECTOR PARQUE O’HIGGINS
B
Sample II of Individual Final Review:
05_ ESTRATEGIA 1:250
IMÁGENES OBJETIVO
PARQUE PLACA PEDRO MONTT ESQUEMAS DE EMPLAZAMIENTO DE LA PLACA
C’
03_ ESTRATEGIA 1:1000 03_ ESTRATEGIA ESTRATEGIA1:1000 PLACA
07_ PROYECTO DETONANTE
113e / 125 / 201e / 261e / 302 / 115
Acceso Estacionamiento Subterraneo
PARQUE PLACA PEDRO MONTT
ESTRATEGIA PLACA
PLAZAS
ESTACIONAMIENTO
ROL DE LA PIEZA EN EL MASTER PLAN
La ubiación del parque placa Pedro Montt genera DOS PLAZAS de acceso, una hacia el centro de justicia, siendo esta la principal y una hacia el barrio residencial con un carcater más familiar.
Para descongestionar la calle Pedro Montt, teniendo en cuenta que es un eje principal del proyecto, se proyectan ESTACIONAMIENTOS SUBTERRANEOS. De esta forma poder sacar flujo de autos de esa vía jerárquica.
ANILLOS TEMÁTICOS_PEDRO MONTT / FRANKLIN
ROL DE LA PIEZA EN EL MASTER PLAN
PIEZA DETONANTE_USO DE SUELO ESTRATEGIA DE DISEÑO _ PLACA PARQUE PEDRO MONTT
INICIO DEL PAR VIAL SAN IGNACIO INICIO DEL PAR VIAL SAN IGNACIO TERMINO DE PAR VIAL CLUB HÍPICO TERMINO DE PAR VIAL CLUB HÍPICO ZONA DE REMATE DEL MASTER PLAN
PIEZA DETONANTE_USO DE SUELO
Par Vial San Par Ignacio Vial San Ignacio
ANILLO TEMÁTICO PARQUE O’HIGGINS / AV. MATTA ANILLO TEMÁTICO PARQUE O’HIGGINS / AV. MATTA
Par Vial Club Par Vial Hípico Club Hípico
ANILLOS TEMÁTICOS_PEDRO MONTT / FRANKLIN
Av. Rondizzoni Av. Rondizzoni
Av. Pedro Montt
FLUJOS _ CICLOVÍAS
FLUJOS _ RECORRDIOS
TRASPASO DE LA MANZANA
TRANSPORTE DE PUBLICO
En el nivel de las plazas de acceso se desarrollan dos flujos que traspasan la manzana. Se PIEZA DETONANTE_ÁREAS busca generar un TRASPASO transversal a esta HOMOGENEAS para conectar el barrio con la autopista y de
MOVILIDAD_ Mediante el trasporte público.
esta forma con el resto de Santiago (mediante el Transporte público)
PIEZA DETONANTE_ÁREAS HOMOGENEAS PROGRAMA
ÁREAS VERDES _ VEGETACIÓN
VACIOS
05_ESTRATEGIA ESTRATEGIA1:250 1:250 05_
PERMANENCIAS _ MOBILIARIO URBANO
B
PARQUEPLACA PLACAPEDRO PEDROMONTT MONTT PARQUE ESQUEMAS EMPLAZAMIENTO PLACA ESQUEMAS DEDE EMPLAZAMIENTO DEDE LALA PLACA
Av. Pedro Centenario Av. Montt Av. Centenario Isabel Riquelme
ZONA DE REMATE DEL MASTER PLAN
PLANTA PARQUE PLACA PEDRO MONTT NIVEL +5,0_ESC. 1:250
AXONOMÉTRICA EXPLOTADA_ CAPAS
113e / 125 / 113e201e / 125 / / 261e / 201e302 / 261e / 115/ 302 / 115
Acceso Acceso Estacionamiento Estacionamiento Subterraneo Subterraneo
PLANTA ESTACIONAMIENTO (BASE ESTRUCTURAL)_ ESC. 1:500
Isabel Riquelme
NORMATIVA_PIEZA DETONANTE
PROBLEMÁTICA_PIEZA DETONANTE
NORMATIVA_PIEZA DETONANTE
PROBLEMÁTICA_PIEZA DETONANTE
ZONAS ESPECIALES Y DE CONSERVACIÓN_PLAN REGULADOR DE SANTIAGO
USUARIO DE LA PIEZA _ FLUJOS
EDIFICACIONES
Áreas verdes o Espacios Públicos
Comercio
Vivienda Talleres
Equipamiento Justicia Públicos Áreas verdes ode Espacios
Recintos ComercioMilitares
Vivienda Talleres + Talleres
Equipamiento de Justicia Vivienda + Comercio
Recintos Militares
Recintos Vivienda +Educacionales Talleres
Terrenos estacionamientos o Vivienda baldios, + Comercio inmuebles abandonados o en mal estado
Recintos Educacionales
Terrenos baldios, estacionamientos o inmuebles abandonados o en mal estado
La ubiación del parque placa Pedro Montt genera DOS PLAZAS de acceso, una hacia el La ubiación del parque placa Pedro Montt genera DOS PLAZAS de acceso, una hacia el centro de justicia, siendo esta la principal y una hacia el barrio residencial con un carcater más centro de justicia, siendo esta la principal y una hacia el barrio residencial con un carcater más familiar. familiar.
Isabel Riquelme
Zonas de Comercio predominante. FLUJOS _ RECORRDIOS FLUJOS _ RECORRDIOS
PROGRAMA PROGRAMA
Zonas de de esparcimiento Comercio predominante. Zonas y espacio público
Zonas de en deterioro Zonas escala barrial y vivienda
Zonas de esparcimiento y espacio público
Zonas de escala barrial y vivienda
IMÁGEN DE PROYECTO
Diferencia de grano y discontinuidad del trazado.
Multiplicidad de flujos de personas durante la semana y el fin de semana. Alto indice de población flotante. Deterioro y desconexión de las áreas verdes y espacios públicos existentes. Los espacios públicos se utilizan también de formas para lo cual no fueron proyectados. Deterioro y desconexión de las áreas verdes y espacios públicos existentes. Los espacios públicos se utilizan tambiéndesactivados de formas para lo cual no fueron proyectados. Bordes y deteriorados a ambos lados de la autopista. No son atingentes a la escala y programas del lugar. Bordes desactivados y deteriorados a ambos lados de la autopista. No son atingentes a la escala y programas del lugar.
PEDRO MONTT
PROYECTO DETONANTE
ZOOM CORTE B-B’_ESC. 1:100 BARRIO FRANKLIN BARRIO FRANKLIN
PROGRAMA EXISTENTE + PROPUESTO
ESTRATEGIA GENERAL_ ESPACIO PÚBLICO / VIALIDAD / PROGRMÁTICA
PEDRO MONTT
PROYECTO DETONANTE
ESTRATEGIA GENERAL_ ESPACIO PÚBLICO / VIALIDAD / PROGRMÁTICA VIALIDAD
PROGRAMA EXISTENTE + PROPUESTO
C
CONEXIÓN DEL ESPACIO PÚBLICO
IMÁGEN DE PROYECTO IMÁGEN DE PROYECTO
CONEXIÓN DEL ESPACIO PÚBLICO
VIAS PRINCIPALES PAR VIAL
PROGRAMA DE SALUD VIVIENDA
VIAS SECUNDARIAS PRINCIPALES PAR VÍAS VIAL CONEXIONES DE PAR VÍAL CON AUTOPISTA VÍAS SECUNDARIAS CONEXIONES DE PAR VIAS TERCIARIAS VÍAL CON AUTOPISTA CONEXIÓN VIAS SECUNDARIAS VIAS TERCIARIAS CONEXIÓN PUNTOS DEVIAS CRUCE SECUNDARIAS
OFICINAS PROGRAMA DE SALUD
PLACA
CENTRO OFICINASCULTURAL
PL AZAS DE ACCESO Y BOULEVARD COMERCIAL
COMERCIO CENTRO CULTURAL PROGRAMA COMERCIO JUDICIAL EDUCACIONAL PROGRAMA JUDICIAL
PUNTOS DE CRUCE
ESTADIO MILITAR EDUCACIONAL
Sector B Sector E
Sector D
ESTADIO MILITAR
SUELOS BLANDOS_SITIOS ERIZOS Y EDIFICACIONES EN DETERIORO Sector B
ESTRATEGIA ESPECÍFICA PLACA DETONANTE_ TRAMA SEGÚN CONTEXTO
SUELOS BLANDOS_SITIOS ERIZOS Y EDIFICACIONES EN DETERIORO
ESTRATEGIA ESPECÍFICA PLACA DETONANTE_ TRAMA SEGÚN CONTEXTO
EDIFICACIONES
Alto flujo. El ususario predominante es hacia los tribunales de Altojusticia. flujo. ElTrabaususajadores del área de rio predominante es justicia (abogados) hacia los tribunales de justicia. Trabajadores del área de justicia (abogados)
EDIFICACIONES
La familia y residentes como usuarios, dado por el Lacarácter familia y residencial de esa como zona. residentes usuarios, dado por el carácter residencial de esa zona.
Diferencia de grano y discontinuidad del trazado.
Multiplicidad de flujos de personas durante la semana y el fin de semana. Alto indice de población flotante.
PERMANENCIAS _ MOBILIARIO URBANO PERMANENCIAS _ MOBILIARIO URBANO
TRABAJO DE PAVIMENTOS
bajo los findes de semana. El usuario son familias Sector de flujo muy residentes del de bajo los findes sector y las visitas a semana. El usuario la penitenciaría. son familias residentes del sector y las visitas a la penitenciaría.
MOVILIDAD_ Mediante el trasporte público. MOVILIDAD_ Mediante el trasporte público.
PLANTA ESTACIONAMIENTO (BASE ESTRUCTURAL)_ ESC. 1:500 PLANTA ESTACIONAMIENTO (BASE ESTRUCTURAL)_ ESC. 1:500
TRABAJO DE PAVIMENTOS
ZONA PONIENTE Sector de flujo muy
Usuario general, en general personas que van a Franklin. Alto flujo.general, en Usuario general personas que van a Franklin. Alto flujo.
PLACA
ZONA ORIENTE
TRANSPORTE DE PUBLICO TRANSPORTE DE PUBLICO
C
VIVIENDA
Sector D
ÁREAS VERDES _ VEGETACIÓN ÁREAS VERDES _ VEGETACIÓN
VACIOS VACIOS
AXONOMÉTRICA EXPLOTADA_ CAPAS AXONOMÉTRICA EXPLOTADA_ CAPAS
ZONA PONIENTE
VIALIDAD
Sector E
TRASPASO DE LA MANZANA TRASPASO DE LA MANZANA
En el nivel de las plazas de acceso se desarrollan dos flujos que traspasan la manzana. Se En el nivel de las plazas de acceso se desarrollan dos flujos que traspasan la manzana. Se busca generar un TRASPASO transversal a esta para conectar el barrio con la autopista y de busca generar un TRASPASO transversal a esta para conectar el barrio con la autopista y de esta forma con el resto de Santiago (mediante el Transporte público) esta forma con el resto de Santiago (mediante el Transporte público)
Zonas en deterioro
ESTRATEGIA DE DISEÑO _ PLACA PARQUE PEDRO MONTT ESTRATEGIA DE DISEÑO _ PLACA PARQUE PEDRO MONTT FLUJOS _ CICLOVÍAS FLUJOS _ CICLOVÍAS
Av. Pedro Centenario Av. Montt Av. Centenario Isabel Riquelme
Para descongestionar la calle Pedro Montt, teniendo en cuenta que es un eje principal del Para descongestionar la calle Pedro Montt, teniendo en cuenta que es un eje principal del proyecto, se proyectan ESTACIONAMIENTOS SUBTERRANEOS. De esta forma poder proyecto, se proyectan ESTACIONAMIENTOS SUBTERRANEOS. De esta forma poder sacar flujo de autos de esa vía jerárquica. sacar flujo de autos de esa vía jerárquica.
PLACA
SECTORES DE LA PIEZA_BARRIO FRANKLIN Y PEDRO MONTT
Vivienda
TRAMA SEGÚN CONTEXTO
PROGRAMA EN NIVEL 0,0 SEGUN TRAMA
PROGRAMA EN NIVEL +5,0 SEGUN TRAMA
PLACA ESPÁCIO PÚBLICO
PROGRAMAS DETONANTES / EDIFICIOS > CENTRO CULTURAL Y OFICINAS
ESPACIO PÚBLICO
TRAMA SEGÚN CONTEXTO
PROGRAMA EN NIVEL 0,0 SEGUN TRAMA
PROGRAMA EN NIVEL +5,0 SEGUN TRAMA
PLACA ESPÁCIO PÚBLICO
PROGRAMAS DETONANTES / EDIFICIOS > CENTRO CULTURAL Y OFICINAS
ESPACIO PÚBLICO COMERCIO
B’
PL AZAS DE ACCESO Y BOULEVARD COMERCIAL
Inmuebles de conservación histórica. Inmuebles consolidados. Inmuebles de conservación histórica.
ESTACIONAMIENTO ESTACIONAMIENTO
PLAZAS PLAZAS
ZONA ORIENTE
SEMANASEMANA
Zona especial Zona de conservación histórica Zona especial
SECTORES DE LA PIEZA_BARRIO FRANKLIN YInmuebles PEDROconsolidados. MONTT Zona de conservación histórica
Av. Rondizzoni Av. Pedro Montt
USUARIO DE LA PIEZA _ FLUJOS
FINES DE FINES SEMANA DE SEMANA
ZONAS ESPECIALES Y DE CONSERVACIÓN_PLAN REGULADOR DE SANTIAGO
Av. Rondizzoni
TRABAJO DE PAVIMENTOS
Los límites de la pieza estan dados principalmente por los pares viales en sentido Oriente-Poniente. Hacia el Sur por Los límites de la pieza estan dados princila Av. Isabel Riquelme, límite tambíen palmente por los pares viales en sentide la comuna de Santiago con Pedro do Oriente-Poniente. Hacia el Sur por Aguirre Cerda. Y hacía el norte por el la Av. Isabel Riquelme, límite tambíen acceso sur del Parque O’Higgins en de la comuna de Santiago con Pedro la calle Rondizzoni y Ñuble. Aguirre Cerda. Y hacía el norte por el acceso sur del Parque O’Higgins en la calle Rondizzoni y Ñuble.
PL AZAS DE ACCESO Y BOULEVARD COMERCIAL
ANILLO TEMÁTICO PEDRO MONTT / FRANKLIN ANILLO TEMÁTICO PEDRO MONTT / FRANKLIN
Par Vial Club Par Vial Hípico Club Hípico
LÍMITES DE LA PIEZA_PARES VIALES
Par Vial San Par Ignacio Vial San Ignacio
C’
LÍMITES DE LA PIEZA_PARES VIALES
ZOOM CORTE B-B’_ESC. 1:100
COMERCIO PROGRAMA CULTURAL PROGRAMA PROGRAMA CULTURAL RELACIONADO CON BICICLETAS
CORTE B-B’ PARQUE PLACA PEDRO MONTT_ESC. 1:250
PROGRAMA RELACIONADO CON BICICLETAS OFICINAS
Sectores no consolidados
OFICINAS RÓTULA : ANFITEATRO Y PLAZA FLEXIBLE
Sectores no consolidados
RÓTULA : ANFITEATRO Y PLAZA FLEXIBLE CIRCULACIONES
JERARQUIA VIAL_SEGUN PRCS
+ 23,9 m + 21,2 m + 18,5 m
B’ CIRCULACIONES
JERARQUIA VIAL_SEGUN PRCS
+ 15,8 m + 13,1 m + 10,4 m
CORTES OBEJTIVO_ RELACIONES PROGRAMÁTICAS EN LA PLACA
+ 7,7 m
CORTES OBEJTIVO_ RELACIONES PROGRAMÁTICAS EN LA PLACA
+ 5,0 m
Vías colectoras comunales Vías colectoras comunales intercomunales Vías intercomunales
CORTE A-A’_ESCALA 1:250
CORTE A-A’_ESCALA 1:250
CORTE B-B’ PARQUE PLACA PEDRO MONTT_ESC. 1:250
+ 23,9 m + 21,2 m + 18,5 m + 15,8 m + 13,1 m + 10,4 m + 7,7 m
+ 5,0 m
VALENTINA ROZAS-KRAUSE 24
09
Undergraduate required course:
Introduction to Urbanism and Landscape Instructor of Record:
Valentina Rozas-Krause University:
School of Architecture, Universidad Diego Portales Number of Students:
Spring semester, c.70 Fall Semester, c.30 Semester:
Taught every semester between 2012-2014 Student Evaluations:
Teaching Award 2012-2014 [for outstanding student evaluation] Images:
Student field trips & exam Description:
Course designed on the basis of seven «classic» urban studies texts (Byrne, D. (2009). Diarios de Bicicleta; Le Corbusier (1924) La Ciudad del Futuro y Le Corbusier y Sert, J. L. (1942). La Carta de Atenas. CIAM IV 1933; Jacobs, J. (1961). Muerte y vida de las grandes ciudades; Gorelik, A. (1998). La grilla y el parque. Espacio público y cultura urbana en Buenos Aires, 1887-1936.; Choay, F. (1992). Alegoría del patrimonio; Venturi R., Scott Brown, D., Izenour, S. (1977). Aprendiendo de Las Vegas: el simbolismo olvidado de la forma arquitectónica.) which are applied to seven field studies in emblematic places of Santiago.
VALENTINA ROZAS-KRAUSE 25
10
Diploma graduate course:
Cultural Management of Heritage Instructors of Record:
Valentina Rozas-Krause Mauricio Rojas University:
Anthropology Department, Universidad Alberto Hurtado Number of Students:
Fall 2012, 16 Fall 2013, 22 Semester:
Fall 2012-2013 Description:
Diploma Course in the Cultural Management of Heritage: Module 2” [“Diplomado en Gestión Cultural del Patrimonio: Módulo 2”]. Anthropology Department. Faculty of Social Sciences. Universidad Alberto Hurtado. Lecturer of the second module of a total of four, with historian Mauricio Rojas, aimed at examining past and contemporary theories of heritage management.
VALENTINA ROZAS-KRAUSE 26
11
Undergraduate elective course:
Urban History of Three Contemporary Cities: Berlin, Buenos Aires and Santiago Inatructors of Record:
Valentina Rozas-Krause Rodrigo Millรกn University:
School of Architecture, Universidad Diego Portales Number of Students:
27
Semester:
Fall Semester 2011 Student Evaluations:
98% of enrolled students recommended the course and the instructors. Description:
Based on three case studies: Berlin, Buenos Aires and Santiago, the course discussed the development of memorialization. From the creation of monuments to the heroes of the nation-state, to the emergence of systematic horror after WWII, the course analyzed the relationship between monuments and urban planning, city and memory, as well as architecture and heritage. The combination of methods drawn from urban history and the analysis of contemporary cases, helped to introduce the hypothesis of the course: the past is not a burden for planning and architecture, but an opportunity to guide design. Thus, the course aimed at transforming the contemplative and static notion of monumentalization and heritage into an active component to strengthen democracy, as well as to built reflexive and dynamic cities.
VALENTINA ROZAS-KRAUSE 27
Apology and Commemoration: Memorializing the World War II Japanese American Incarceration at the Tanforan Assembly Center Author(s): Valentina Rozas-Krause Source: History and Memory, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Fall/Winter 2018), pp. 40-78 Published by: Indiana University Press Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/histmemo.30.2.03 Accessed: 29-08-2018 18:12 UTC REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/histmemo.30.2.03?seq=1&cid=pdfreference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms
Indiana University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to History and Memory
This content downloaded from 24.7.83.100 on Wed, 29 Aug 2018 18:12:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Apology and Commemoration Memorializing the World War II Japanese American Incarceration at the Tanforan Assembly Center Valentina Rozas-Krause A series of on-site historic plaques and a photographic exhibition at a nearby train station serve as background to study the development of a new memorial to remember the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans at the Tanforan Assembly Center in San Bruno, California. The design and iconography of the future Tanforan memorial are analyzed alongside the motivations of the main actors that have shaped it: a group of memory activists, a transit agency and a shopping mall developer. The article concludes that these past and future commemorative interventions reveal the relationship between an unsettled memorial landscape and the Japanese American community’s ongoing demands for apology. Keywords: memorialization; Japanese American incarceration; commemoration; apology
Two young Japanese American sisters stand next to their family’s suitcases amid a landscaped parking lot. Tags with registration numbers hang from the girls’ spotless Sunday school attire. Japanese maple trees create a shield from a sprawling shopping mall on the one side, and a curved wall and rock garden separate the sisters from the nearby BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) station on the other side. The bronze sculpture of these two girls, based on one of Dorothea Lange’s photographs of Japanese American relocation and incarceration during World War II, is the heart of a memorial designed to mark and remember the Tanforan Assembly Center, a temporary confinement camp for Japanese Americans located in 40 40
History & Memory, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Fall/Winter 2018) DOI: 10.2979/histmemo.30.2.03 This content downloaded from 24.7.83.100 on Wed, 29 Aug 2018 18:12:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Apology and Commemoration
Fig. 1. Design proposal for the Tanforan Assembly Center Plaza, December 2016. Design by Harold Kobayashi/Royston Hanamoto Alley & Abey (RHAA). Courtesy of RHAA Landscape Architects.
San Bruno, California (figure 1).1 Where the Tanforan Assembly Center once stood, there is now a shopping center called “The Shops at Tanforan.� Originally built as a racetrack, Tanforan was damaged in a fire in 1964 and the shopping center was developed on top of its remains a few years later. The Tanforan memorial has not yet been built, but it exists in plans, drawings, models, meeting minutes, fundraising events, commemorations, newspaper articles and online blogs. Following these traces and the community, state and corporate actors behind them, this article analyzes a memorial in the making. Within the large body of academic work dedicated to the Japanese American incarceration, Alice Yang Murray, Karen L. Ishizuka and Ingrid Gessner have significantly contributed to the analysis of the redress movement and the consequences of the incarcerations.2 In particular, Yang Murray and Gessner have explored the material manifestations of these memories and the controversies surrounding Japanese American confinement sites. Following their work, this article focuses on the relationship between redress and memorial markings. By analyzing the process of memorializing a temporary detention center, this article fills a void in the existing literature on the memories of Japanese American incarceration. Overlooked because of the absence of physical remains on the site, History & Memory, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Fall/Winter 2018) This content downloaded from 24.7.83.100 on Wed, 29 Aug 2018 18:12:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
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Valentina Rozas-Krause its short wartime use and its abrupt reconstruction, Tanforan, like other temporary incarceration camps, presents an opportunity to reconstruct the different stages of wartime relocation and imprisonment of persons of Japanese ancestry. In February 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which authorized the Secretary of War to prescribe military areas from which any person could be excluded. While Executive Order 9066 did not explicitly mention civilians of any ethnicity, it cleared the way for the incarceration of Japanese and Japanese American, German and Italian citizens. Based on racial prejudice, approximately 120,000 Japanese and Japanese American citizens were removed from the West Coast and incarcerated, while deportation was not enforced for German and Italian American citizens. In April 1942, the Wartime Civil Control Administration (WCCA) of the US Army converted a popular racetrack in the Bay Area, the Tanforan Racetrack, into an assembly center. The Tanforan Assembly Center was one of the fifteen assembly centers that were used to house Japanese and Japanese American citizens during the first months following Executive Order 9066. Unlike the permanent rural Japanese incarceration camps in Manzanar, Topaz or Tule Lake, the assembly centers were temporary and semi-integrated into the local suburban fabric. Tanforan housed 8,033 Japanese Americans from April to October 1942, until the prisoners were relocated to permanent incarceration camps in Utah and Arizona.3 In 1983, the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, appointed by President Jimmy Carter, concluded that there had been no military justification for the deportation of Japanese and Japanese American citizens during World War II. Following the Commission’s recommendations, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, a federal law that consisted of an official government apology, redress payment for surviving victims and the creation of a public educational fund.
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History & Memory, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Fall/Winter 2018) This content downloaded from 24.7.83.100 on Wed, 29 Aug 2018 18:12:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Apology and Commemoration LANDMARKING TANFORAN Three plaques The memorialization of Tanforan started with grassroots community commemorations, the first of which was held outside the existing shopping mall in 1981.4 In 1980, following a petition by the Japanese American team of the Ethnic Minority Cultural Resources Survey, the former Tanforan Assembly Center was included in the California Register of Historical Landmarks together with eleven other temporary and permanent detention camps throughout the state.5 As the existing literature on Japanese American incarceration reveals, the Tanforan Assembly Center was not an isolated site; it was immersed in a much larger network of repressive spaces required to carry out Executive Order 9066.6 Assembly Centers like Tanforan were crucial intermediary spaces between the initial local registration and assembly points—bus stations, churches, parks and community centers in which persons of Japanese ancestry were registered, identified and assigned a family number—and the permanent incarceration camps located in underpopulated rural areas of California, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah and Arkansas.7 Inspired by the official recognition of the historic meaning of the sites that were once temporary detention camps, local chapters of Japanese American activists responded with requests to erect plaques and markers to signal the places that had once been so-called “assembly centers.”8 Tanforan was no exception, and in May 1980 the Tanforan Committee, a group of Bay Area Japanese American activists, proposed a historic plaque to remember the former temporary incarceration camp located in San Bruno. Submitted by Japanese American community leader Carole Hayashino, the application to the California Historical Landmarks Advisory Committee proposed the following wording for the plaque: TANFORAN DETENTION CAMP Tanforan was one of the fifteen temporary detention camps established during World War II to incarcerate 110,000 persons of Japanese ancestry, of whom the majority were American citizens. From April 25 through October 13, 1942, 8,033 San Francisco Bay Area residents lived in Tanforan behind barbed wire and guard towers
History & Memory, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Fall/Winter 2018) This content downloaded from 24.7.83.100 on Wed, 29 Aug 2018 18:12:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
43
Valentina Rozas-Krause without charge, trial or establishment of guilt. These camps are the reminder of how racism, economic and political exploitation and expediency can undermine the constitutional guarantee of United States citizens and aliens alike. May the injustices and humiliation suffered here never recur.9 Whether this was the exact wording on the plaque unveiled during the 1981 commemoration of the Day of Remembrance at the Tanforan Park Shopping Center is unclear because no records remain other than the above-cited version documented by the California Office of Historic Preservation.10 Nevertheless, its disappearance not long after its dedication might suggest that the blunt wording created some resistance. This first plaque conveys the magnitude of the injustices against people of Japanese ancestry through numbers. It relies on historical facts known to the community at the time, and its last sentence projects the plaque’s message into the future. Ben Takeshita, a former Tanforan internee, and guest speaker at the 1981 commemorative event, remembers that the original plaque was lost during renovations of the shopping mall.11 The lost plaque was replaced by a second one, located within the landscaped areas surrounding the shopping mall’s main entrance on El Camino Real. It read: TANFORAN RACETRACK JAPANESE ASSEMBLY CENTER Racetrack opened in 1899 and had racing seasons until it burned down in 1964. Many famous horses raced and won here. In 1942, Tanforan became a temporary assembly center for over 4000 persons of Japanese Ancestry who were to be interned for the duration of World War II. While the authorship of this second plaque remains unknown, it was present at the site during the late 1990s, as depicted by the National Park Service (NPS) publication Confinement and Ethnicity.12 The telegraphic style of the plaque’s wording conveys an uneasy straightforwardness. Both the title and the body of the text divide Tanforan’s history into two: the glory-days of the racetrack and the temporary incarceration of persons of Japanese ancestry. Unlike the first plaque, this second one has lost its historical accuracy; the number of internees is downplayed and the name of 44
History & Memory, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Fall/Winter 2018) This content downloaded from 24.7.83.100 on Wed, 29 Aug 2018 18:12:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Apology and Commemoration the assembly center has been changed from “Japanese American Assembly Center” to “Japanese Assembly Center.” More importantly, the second plaque incorporates the War Relocation Authority (WRA) and Wartime Civil Control Administration (WCCA) language to designate Tanforan as an assembly center. Raymond Y. Okamura, the author of the application to include Tanforan on the list of California Historical Landmarks, noted the need to resist the WRA euphemisms both in the application and in an article he later published.13 For example, the WRA and the WCCA used “non-alien” instead of “citizen,” “evacuation” and “internment” instead of “incarceration,” “residents” and “colonists” instead of “prisoners,” as well as “assembly center” instead of “temporary incarceration camp.” Okamura compared these expressions to the use of similar euphemisms by the Third Reich with reference to the “evacuation and emigration” of the Jewish population.14 While the first plaque had resisted the military euphemisms, the second one repeated them, thus inspiring the name of the current Tanforan memorial activists, who call themselves the Tanforan Assembly Center Memorial Committee (TACMC).15 More than three decades separate the creation of the TACMC from the Tanforan Committee, which has made a direct transmission of personal and group experiences challenging. Other than the participation of Ben Takeshita, there are no personal continuities between the two groups. After the second plaque also disappeared without explanation, it was replaced by a third historical marker in 2007, which was dedicated by a different Japanese American group of activists, the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California (JCCCNC), based in San Francisco.16 Facing the main entrance of the shopping mall, this plaque is surrounded by a commemorative rock garden. Between 2002 and 2005 the shopping mall was completely remodeled, which included new landscaped green areas and pathways connecting the El Camino Real parking lot to the renewed glass entrance of the mall.17 The new plaque speaks to these changes and shares the entrance of the shopping mall with a bronze statue of Seabiscuit, a famous horse of the racetrack years of Tanforan. Placed within a small patch of rocks, weeds, a block of unpolished granite, and decomposed granite, the current plaque at Tanforan states:
History & Memory, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Fall/Winter 2018) This content downloaded from 24.7.83.100 on Wed, 29 Aug 2018 18:12:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
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Valentina Rozas-Krause Tanforan Assembly Center Commemorative Garden This garden memorializes a time when this site, then the Tanforan Park Racetrack, was transformed into a temporary assembly center for persons of Japanese ancestry. On February 19, 1942, in the absence of charges or due process of law, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. This act set into motion the forced evacuation of 7800 San Francisco Bay Area Japanese Americans, who lived under armed guard for eight months in horse stalls and makeshift housing at the Tanforan Assembly Center. They, along with 120,000 other Japanese Americans residing in the western states, were later forcibly removed to, and confined in, government detention camps in the nation’s interior. May we honor this period of history by our remembrance and just action. The plaque reflects some of the wording and content of the first, 1981 plaque. Here too, numbers convey the dimension of the injustice suffered by Japanese Americans, but unlike the first plaque, this one names the perpetrators of these abuses: President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Executive Order 9066. While the first plaque objected to the use of WRA euphemisms like “assembly center,” the current plaque adopts the wartime rhetoric. Moreover, the memorial has been expanded beyond a mere plaque to incorporate a commemorative garden. Yet it is a contemplative garden, not meant to be used by the shopping mall’s visitors unless they cross the boundary of the landscaped area. Unlike the second plaque, the contrast between Tanforan’s past as racetrack and assembly center has been disentangled through the development of two separate interventions: the commemorative garden on one side of the shopping mall’s entrance and the bronze horse on the other. It is remarkable that between 1980 and 2007 three different historic plaques were dedicated and two were subsequently removed from the site of the former Tanforan Assembly Center. Historic plaques are meant to endure; yet these successive markers signal an unsettled memorial landscape that keeps on changing and requiring new interventions. The proposed Tanforan Memorial points toward a future expression of this memorialization process. Unsatisfied with the historical markers present at
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History & Memory, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Fall/Winter 2018) This content downloaded from 24.7.83.100 on Wed, 29 Aug 2018 18:12:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Apology and Commemoration the site, Japanese American activists have returned to Tanforan over and over again to think about the representation of the past anew. I interpret these memorizations as a sign of a yearning for an appropriate apology for the injustices inflicted upon the Japanese American community during World War II. Redress, Preservation and Apology The Tanforan plaques are not isolated cases: in fact, they belong to a history of commemoration of Japanese American incarceration which began in the late 1960s alongside the Civil Rights Movement. The preservation of the sites related to the internment of families of Japanese ancestry has focused on the incarceration camps, particularly on the sites that retain physical traces of the incarceration days. The first pilgrimage to the site of one of these camps in Manzanar organized by the Japanese American community was held in 1969.18 Its formal preservation followed: Manzanar was declared a California Historic Landmark in 1972, a National Historic Landmark in 1985, and eventually a National Historic Site on February 19, 1992.19 Public Law 102-248 not only declared Manzanar a National Historic Site but also created a “National Historic Landmark Theme Study� on Japanese American history on its premises.20 The NPS publication Confinement and Ethnicity, which is one of the outcomes of this law, is the most complete record of the physical traces of the incarceration. It identifies the incarceration camps and detention centers throughout the country, includes an assessment of their preservation status and notes the presence (or absence) of traces of the incarceration period.21 Given that its purpose is to identify and possibly nominate sites, it does not present an in-depth analysis of their wartime or postwar history. Only two pages of the 449-page NPS volume are dedicated to the Tanforan Assembly Center. Unlike other more prominently described sites, not much is left of the World War II use of the Tanforan racetrack. The book describes the second plaque and suggests that this historical marker is all that can be found on-site to memorialize the assembly center.22 Demanding an official apology alongside monetary reparations, which were achieved through the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, the redress movement was instrumental in combining calls for apology with commemorations of the incarceration years. The commemoration of sites of History & Memory, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Fall/Winter 2018) This content downloaded from 24.7.83.100 on Wed, 29 Aug 2018 18:12:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
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Valentina Rozas-Krause Japanese American incarceration infused the redress movement with concrete places to anchor its demands and boosted a community that built a shared identity around the memories of these sites.23 It was in the absence of an official apology that the first plaque was dedicated at Tanforan in 1981. Thus, Tanforan’s first historical marker was more than just a plaque; it was a demand for apology, justice, reparation and recognition. Plaques such as Tanforan’s, dedicated across California in former sites of temporary detention camps in Merced, Salinas Valley, Sacramento, Fresno and Stockton, played a significant role within the political climate of the late 1970s and early 1980s. As recorded by local newspapers, these plaques not only made the Japanese American community visible in these areas but also forged a collective identity and put pressure on local representatives to seek support at the national level for an official apology.24 Edwin Battistella, who has analyzed the narrative and structure of a wide range of apologies, cites the apology and redress movement of the Japanese American incarceration as an example of national apologies, which are made on behalf of a collective. Two American presidents have signed official apologies for the unlawful incarceration of Japanese Americans: Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. Further, Gerald Ford, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have expressed regret about wartime incarceration of Japanese American citizens. In such cases, it is the continuity of the office, the Presidency of the United States, that imbues a retroactive apology with meaning.25 The literature on national apologies has mostly focused on the relationship between national apologies and reconciliation, on whether apologies are necessary for political reconciliation or whether they could actually harm these processes.26 Apologies have mainly been analyzed as narratives and as political strategies, yet the form that apologies take in the built environment remains unexplored. While apologies are predominantly studied as a verbal phenomenon, the fact that five US presidents have had to recognize the nation’s wrongdoings against the Japanese American community suggests that words might not be enough. Indeed, the triad of memorial plaques at Tanforan indicates that demands for apology and acts of commemoration and landmarking are deeply entangled phenomena. Not only the first historical marker but also the two succeeding plaques can be analyzed through the framework of a culture of apology, which demonstrates that memorials are part of a global network of remorse politics that shapes their function 48
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Apology and Commemoration and meaning in particular ways. Even though these historical markers were created by the Japanese American community, they are inseparable from the effects of the 1988 official apology. While the first plaque was installed in the absence of an apology, the following two plaques were dedicated after the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 and reveal a dissatisfaction with the scope and impact of President Reagan’s official apology. In other words, the first plaque can be interpreted as a demand for apology, and the next two plaques as objections against unfulfilled apologies.
VISUALIZING TANFORAN Gambatte In April 2012, seventy years after the Tanforan Assembly Center opened, a photographic exhibition was inaugurated on the same site, which had then become the San Bruno BART station, under the title They Wore Their Best… The Japanese American Evacuation and After: Photographs by Dorothea Lange and Paul Kitagaki Jr.27 The exhibition, which was later expanded and renamed Gambatte! Legacy of an Enduring Spirit: Triumphing over Adversity, Japanese American WWII Incarceration Reflections Then and Now, is the product of more than twenty-five years of work by Sacramento photojournalist Paul Kitagaki Jr.28 Gambatte started with a personal story: back in the 1970s, Kitagaki’s uncle told him that Lange had photographed his family during incarceration. Decades later, Kitagaki found the photographs of his family in the National Archives in Washington, DC and started a quest to find out more about other individuals depicted in the WRA photographs.29 In the exhibition, each one of the historical photographs taken by Lange and other WRA photographers in 1942 is paired with a contemporary photograph of the same individuals taken by Kitagaki, depicted in the original settings in which they were first photographed. In addition, two texts entitled “Then” and “Now” provide a backstory to the individuals in the photographs. In March 2012, Richard Oba, a Bay Area Japanese American activist, supported by Don Delcollo and Esther Takeuchi, members of the Contra Costa chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), had approached the BART Board of Directors to stage the photographic exhibition in the San History & Memory, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Fall/Winter 2018) This content downloaded from 24.7.83.100 on Wed, 29 Aug 2018 18:12:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
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Valentina Rozas-Krause Bruno BART station, and a month later, only five years after the third historic plaque at Tanforan had been dedicated, Gambatte opened to the public.30 In the context of the exhibition, Oba created the TACMC, which he presided over for the next couple of years. Building memorialization upon memorialization, the photographic exhibition responds to a desire to represent Tanforan’s past in a way that the historic plaques had not been able to fully address. Tanforan reveals that memorialization is a long, arduous and unfinished process. Each attempt to install a plaque, exhibit a photograph or build a memorial at Tanforan has been confronted with its own incompleteness. This sense of incompleteness emerges out of the inability to write the final words about the past and to close the apologetic dialogue.31 Apologies are capable of defining a break in temporality: if they are successful, they divide historical events into “before” and “after.” In that sense, their effect is instantaneous: one party apologizes, the other party accepts or rejects the apology and the dialogue is closed. In those cases, where the apology occurs is not relevant because apologies are textual. Yet, when apologies become part of the built environment, as in the case of the memorial interventions at Tanforan, their temporality and spatiality change. Unlike apologies, memorials are built to outlast their creators. Thus, most memorials suffer from the impossibility of fixing their meaning.32 While the author of a memorial—whether a community, an architect, an artist or an institution—might have a clear narrative in mind, once the memorial is set up in a public space or a publicly used private space, its meaning shifts and becomes multiple—as diverse as the audiences that encounter it. Memorials stimulate the creation of a cacophonous dialogue which actors can join and exit. Like apologies, memorials are set up for failure because they cannot close an argument; thus, there is an inherent incompleteness about their message. As standing apologies, memorials can act as proxies to emerging needs to apologize for and reexamine the past, but they cannot close the dialogue. As part of the built environment, apologies gain spatiality: memorials literally provide space to hold a dialogue about the injustices of the past. In other words, built apologies add time and space to the apologetic dialogue, but the participants in the dialogue change as time passes. Time, and in particular human life cycles, have had a significant impact on Tanforan’s standing apologies. Gambatte was organized at a time of 50
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Apology and Commemoration a generational shift within the Japanese American community. The Issei (first-generation Japanese Americans) and Nisei (the second generation) most directly suffered from the internment. At the time of the exhibition’s opening, Oba argued that seven decades after the incarceration the photographs depicted an Issei generation that was all gone and a Nisei generation that was disappearing.33 The Nisei, who were children at the time of the incarceration, were in their seventies and eighties when the exhibition opened and were the only surviving witnesses of places like Tanforan, Tule Lake and Topaz. In accordance with Andrew M. Shanken’s argument that commemorations follow life cycles, it seems that in 2012 the imminent disappearance of the Nisei generation sparked the need to re-memorialize the incarceration of Japanese Americans at Tanforan.34 Historical Photographs A place without visible traces presents particular challenges when it comes to finding evidence to support narratives about the past. In 1947 the WCCA returned the racetrack to its original owners, who immediately started rebuilding it, while the barracks that had been built to house more than eight thousand internees were quickly repurposed off-site or demolished.35 After the racetrack caught fire in 1964, the whole plot was transformed into a sprawling shopping mall surrounded by extensive parking lots. Because the Tanforan Assembly Center was destroyed, alternative sources of historical evidence have become all the more important. The personal testimonies of surviving internees, the records of the WCCA and particularly the photographs of the WRA have played a significant role in building the site’s historical legitimacy. In April 1942, the WRA commissioned Dorothea Lange to register the “evacuation” and “relocation” of the population of Japanese ancestry from the Pacific Coast of the United States. Lange, a San Francisco based documentary photographer, had built herself a reputation in the emerging field by documenting rural poverty during the Great Depression for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Lange’s Depression photographs depicted the lives of black and immigrant farmworkers; likewise, her wartime work would challenge the overt racism against people of Japanese ancestry. Linda Gordon argues that Lange stood in clear opposition to the incarceration of families of Japanese ancestry, but she accepted the assignment from History & Memory, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Fall/Winter 2018) This content downloaded from 24.7.83.100 on Wed, 29 Aug 2018 18:12:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
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Valentina Rozas-Krause the WRA in order to produce a “public record” of the wartime injustices for the future. The strict guidelines under which Lange worked for the WRA censored out certain features central to the incarceration: she could not photograph the barbed wire, nor the watchtowers, nor the soldiers guarding the camps. Further, she could not depict any form of resistance within the camps.36 Lange’s work embodies one of the main tensions of the field of documentary photography: whether it provides evidence or serves as propaganda. Unable to resolve this paradox, though probably not seeking to do so, Lange’s photographs of the evacuation and incarceration of Japanese and Japanese American citizens function both as historical evidence and as illustrations of her critical point of view. Considering the political context and the WRA’s censorship, Lange’s photographs portrayed Japanese American resilience in a context of oppression. As Gordon argues, the internment photographs present respectability, Americanism, work ethic and good citizenship. For Gordon, this suggests an unsettling point of view, as if basic human rights had to be earned through good behavior.37 Even this veiled criticism, to portray Japanese Americans as hard-working instead of as an ethnic threat, was deemed unfitting for the image that the WRA wanted to project and the photographs were confiscated and hidden from the public in the National Archives. More than six decades later, in 2006, a selection of the over eight hundred photographs, including several of the Tanforan Assembly Center, was exhibited in the United States and distributed in the exhibition’s catalogue Impounded.38 However, this was not the first time that Lange’s photographs were shown to the public: Executive Order 9066, a previous exhibition and publication of the California Historical Society, had already displayed some of Lange’s work first in 1972, and then in 1992.39 It is not surprising that after these exhibitions, those seeking to evoke memories of Tanforan would turn to Lange’s photographs to represent the internment years. The role of the photographs as realistic depictions of the past stands in contrast with the textual abstraction of the incarceration that the disappearing Tanforan-plaques portrayed. To bring Lange’s photographs to the site of the former Tanforan detention center was necessary because the historic plaques lacked the realism of the photographs. Like many figurative memorials, the photographs of Gambatte satisfy the need for realism, the desire to see individuals and the demand to include historical evidence. Most works on the aesthetics of memorials distinguish between 52
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Apology and Commemoration realist figurative memorials and minimalist abstract memorials. Erika Doss, for example, claims that contemporary memorials have co-opted minimalist aesthetics to transmit notions of trauma and absence in an ambiguous manner, which excises the political dimension from the original minimalist art and transforms it into a vessel for modern nation-building.40 While this is helpful for unpacking officially orchestrated memorials, it does not explain why figurative representations have been persistent and often associated with bottom-up practices of memorialization.41 James E. Young argues that Holocaust survivors most often demand realism.42 In other words, the fact that Tanforan’s memorial activists would prefer the photographic exhibition to the plaques and later suggest that a lifesized bronze statue of two child internees should become the permanent marker for the former assembly center can be placed within a tradition of bottom-up figurative memorials. The photographs not only introduce figurative elements to remember the former assembly center but also act as historical evidence. Roland Barthes argues that photographs cannot be distinguished from their referent, from the objects, subjects or landscapes that they represent. In that regard, photographs are “like a child pointing his finger at something.”43 In this case, Lange’s photographs point toward a racetrack transformed into a detention camp, which can only be experienced through the record of a no longer existing site and time. Barthes’s reflections on photography emphasize the affective dimension of photography. Indeed, affect plays an important role in Lange’s photographs: her restrained critique combined with the use of natural lighting, as well as posed and quotidian postures, convey a sense of historical intimacy.44 We know that these photographs are the result of a particular viewpoint—Lange’s—yet they transmit an honesty in their depiction of the past which is shaped both by the Operator (the photographer and her tools) and by the Spectator (we, the viewers).45 In Gambatte, Kitagaki successfully unpacks Lange’s enigmatic photographs by tracking down the afterlives of the depicted individuals. Taken with a 1940s-inspired 4x5 format camera and black and white Polaroid film, Kitagaki’s photographs are subsidiary extensions to Lange’s melancholic aesthetic. Unlike the historical distance of the plaque and the abstraction of the rock garden, Gambatte is centered on the individuals who suffered the internment; in that regard, it is a memorial to the disappearing Nisei generation. Gambatte sparked positive reactions, not only within the Nisei History & Memory, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Fall/Winter 2018) This content downloaded from 24.7.83.100 on Wed, 29 Aug 2018 18:12:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
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Valentina Rozas-Krause generation, but also managed to engage new audiences with the past of Tanforan, as the media coverage of the exhibition reveals.46 Making the faces of internment dispossession visible and exposing the temporal urge to preserve disappearing memories, Gambatte argues that the stakes and actors of the apologetic dialogue have changed. The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 seems inadequate at a time when only a few members of the Nisei generation survive, yet the demand to see the wrongdoers atone for the past will not disappear with them. The three plaques and the photographic exhibition reveal how the ebbs and flows of Tanforan’s memorialization echo the changes within the Japanese American community. Yet, these different remembrances also reflect the transformation of the surrounding city. The discovery of Lange’s photographs changed the possibilities for remembering Tanforan, as did the opening of the San Bruno BART station in 2003, which provided an opportunity to reach a broad public as compared with the modest plaque and garden on the other side of the shopping mall. The BART station has made the shopping mall, which originally could be reached only by car, accessible to pedestrians as well. This shift is evidenced by the intent of the shopping mall’s new developers, Queensland Investment Corporation (QIC), to transform the BART back entrance of the shopping mall into its main entrance.47 As a result of these changes, the existing historic plaque has lost its visibility and the need has arisen for a more prominent form of memorialization.48
MEMORIALIZING TANFORAN The Photographs of the Mochida Sisters Gambatte’s success within the Japanese American community and in the local media led to the proposal of a new memorial.49 The photographic exhibition had been planned as a temporary intervention at the San Bruno BART station. Yet, once the photographs were installed, the newly created TACMC started to contemplate a permanent memorial. TACMC’s original organizer, Richard Oba, was inspired by his visit to the Merced Assembly Center Memorial in California.50 Similar to Tanforan, Merced had been transformed into an assembly center in 1942 and included in 54
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Apology and Commemoration the California Register of Historical Landmarks together with Tanforan and ten other assembly centers in 1980.51 Here, too, there were no visible material remains of the assembly center. A plaque was installed in the early 1980s, resulting from the joint effort of local Japanese American activists, the Department of Parks and Recreation and representatives of the local government. In 2008, Congressman Dennis Cardoza and the Livingston-Merced and Cortez chapters of the JACL started working on a proposal for a permanent memorial, which was inaugurated only two years later. 52 The Merced memorial consists of a child sitting on a pile of suitcases. The human-scale bronze statue is surrounded by a ring of low benches and informative panels. A wall with the names of the internees and the name of the memorial creates an enclosure of the space on one side. In 2012, the Merced memorial was presented as a success story, one to be imitated at Tanforan. The members of the TACMC believed that one of the reasons the Merced memorial was so compelling was that it represented a child. Suffering children were seen as the best means for representing the unjust incarceration of people of Japanese ancestry as an example of unwarranted “wartime hysteria.”53 The artist’s focus on children best conveys the absurdity of incarcerating minors, women and elders on the assumption that they were Japanese spies.54 After seeing the Merced memorial, the members of the TACMC already had a material—bronze—and a subject—children—in mind. Unlike the Merced memorial, the future Tanforan Memorial aims to represent real children based on a series of Dorothea Lange’s photographs for the WRA, three of which depicted the Mochida sisters and their family on their way to the Tanforan Assembly Center. In June 2013, the TACMC issued a Request for Proposal to build “a monumental bronze sculpture for a ‘Tanforan Assembly Center Memorial,’” which presented its vision for the memorial: The monument is conceived as being of two children, ages approximately 4 and 8, waiting with their luggage to be transported to the Tanforan Assembly Center. They are wearing their best clothes and a white tag that only had their families’ ID number issued by the government. They are confused and fearful of what is to come but display the Japanese cultural value of “gaman.”55
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Fig. 2. Photograph of the Mochida sisters by Dorothea Lange, May 8, 1942. Local Identifier: 210-G-C155, National Archives, Washington, DC, https://catalog.archives.gov/ id/537507. Courtesy of the National Archives.
The TACMC pointed out the specific photograph of the Mochida sisters that they wanted the memorial to be based on. The photograph (figure 2) depicts two of the Mochida sisters and their mother. The younger girl is holding a piece of bread that she has just taken a bite of, bread crumbs are visible around her mouth, and her older sister holds a wrapped sandwich. On the left side of the frame, the mother is busy, looking down, her hands probably engaged with further distributing food for her family members. Lange’s original caption explains: Hayward, California. Two children of the Mochida family who, with their parents, are awaiting evacuation bus. The youngster on the right holds a sandwich given her by one of a group of women who were present from a local church. The family unit is kept intact during 56
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Fig. 3. Photograph of the Mochida sisters by Dorothea Lange, May 8, 1942. Local Identifier: 210-G-C154, National Archives, Washington, DC, https://catalog.archives.gov/ id/537506. Courtesy of the National Archives.
evacuation and at War Relocation Authority Centers where evacuees of Japanese ancestry will be housed for the duration. Trees, grass, pathways and a blurry silhouette in the distance index the setting in which this shot was taken. Lange took this photograph, alongside others, in a public park in Hayward, California, while the families of Japanese ancestry were waiting for a bus to take them to Tanforan in May 1942. A second photograph, which had the same caption as the first, depicts the two girls waving at someone we cannot see (figure 3), and another photograph depicts the entire Mochida family group, including the girl’s parents and their siblings (figure 4). The latter photograph is the most complete depiction of the family’s members in this situation. Bags with the Mochida family name written on them surround the group, posing against a backdrop of pine trees and decomposed granite pathways. The signs of enforced eviction contrast with the pastoral landscape in the back. It is not by chance that the TACMC chose these two sisters and these photographs to inspire their memorial. All three photographs of the Mochida sisters had been circu-
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Fig. 4: Photograph of the Mochida family group by Dorothea Lange, May 8, 1942. Local Identifier: 210-GC-153, National Archives, Washington, DC, https://catalog.archives.gov/ id/537505. Courtesy of the National Archives.
lating in Japanese American incarceration publications for decades. The first publication of Lange’s photographs, the aforementioned Executive Order 9066, includes a close-up of the older sister on its cover, and a detail of the two sisters, extracted from the photograph of the entire Mochida family, amongst the photographs reproduced inside the catalogue.56 In Michi Nishiura Weglyn’s well-known book on Japanese American incarceration, Years of Infamy, the first image that confronts the reader is the one of the Mochida sisters receiving food with their mother.57 Likewise, the photograph of the Mochida sisters waving at someone standing in front of their family, is included in the exhibition catalogue Impounded.58 The Mochidas were a family of flower growers from Eden Township, California. Lange’s caption of the family group photograph includes details about their lives that reveal her acquaintance with and respect for the Mochida family: “Members of the Mochida family awaiting evacuation bus. Identification tags are used to aid in keeping the family unit intact during all phases of evacuation. Mochida operated a nursery and five greenhouses on a two-acre site in Eden Township. He raised snapdragons and sweet peas.” Gordon points out that both Lange and her 58
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Apology and Commemoration husband Paul Taylor became friends with the Mochidas, who afterwards attended public events honoring the couple.59 Do Lange’s photographs reveal her incipient friendship with this family? In any case, they uncover something about the process through which they were produced; Lange did not only take photographs: she also interviewed and became involved with her subjects. The decision to base the Tanforan memorial bronze on a real historical photograph was undoubtedly influenced by Kitagaki’s Gambatte exhibition. Inspired by the realism and historical intimacy of Lange’s photographs, the TACMC chose one of her photographs to be reproduced in three dimensions and at human scale. While only one photograph is noted in the TACMC’s “Request for Proposal,” the artist who was selected, sculptor Sandra J. Shaw, drew inspiration from all three photographs of the Mochida family.60 A Los Angeles-based sculptor, Shaw submitted a proposal for a 30 percent larger than life size bronze of the Mochida sisters and their luggage in partnership with the American Fine Arts Foundry.61 From a total of five artists’ proposals, Shaw was selected based on her experience in creating realistic photograph-inspired sculptures.62 Shaw’s background fitted the TACMC’s special interest in the faithful and true reproduction of Lange’s original image; in their own words: “breadcrumbs and jelly included.”63 Barthes’s punctum resonates in the committee’s words: the detail of the breadcrumbs around the smaller sister’s mouth animates a story that could otherwise seem removed from the contemporary viewer. Shaw submitted early concept sketches of alternative compositions for the sculpture, as well as details of the faces of the two girls, none of which are exact reproductions of Lange’s photograph but rather artistic interpretations based on the three photographs (figure 5). In the opening statement of her proposal, Shaw interprets the photograph included in the committee’s “Request for Proposal”: In my view of the photograph, the younger child is helpless and doesn't understand what is happening to them. Her figure conveys that she’s a victim in a tragic circumstance. The older girl senses the situation they’re in yet she projects the possibility that they will be okay someday. She holds her sister’s hand protectively. With her other hand she pulls at her label. The threads
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Fig. 5. Sandra J. Shaw’s early concept sketch for the Tanforan Memorial, 2013. Courtesy of Sandra J. Shaw Studio.
have given way. She is looking to their future. They are not doomed to pathos or victimization. A dramatization of the possibility for liberty and fulfillment that can transcend a tragedy speaks to the American context for this historic event. They are not in Nazi Germany or Imperialist Japan. These children have a chance for a future.64 Shaw slightly reinterprets the committee’s request to make a truthful copy of the photograph. Her proposed bronze is realistic in its aesthetic, but it embodies a new narrative: the scared and defenseless young girl and the hopeful and resilient older sister. This distinction is consistent with 60
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Apology and Commemoration Shaw’s belief that photography is not art, and that a photography-based work of art has to stand on its own adding a new interpretation to the blunt register of a camera.65 Felix W. de Weldon’s sculpture for the Marine Corps War Memorial is perhaps the most renowned memorial based on a photograph. Photographer Joe Rosenthal shot a group of six men raising a flag at Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II. Unlike Lange’s photographs, the truthfulness of Rosenthal’s image was questioned early on by the US press and experts. Maybe because it was contentious, de Weldon was more interested in the similarity of his sculpture to the original photograph than in its symbolism.66 Karal Ann Marling and John Wetenhall point out that de Weldon made some artistic changes to the photograph, but these were minor: he recomposed the figure at the foot of the pole to gain coherence.67 Shaw’s approach to the Lange photographs is different: she not only uses an array of photographs instead of one, but also recomposes the figures, changes their posture and gestures, eliminates the context and adds foreign elements like the rigid luggage. Despite their differences, both de Weldon’s and Shaw’s sculptures suggest a new layer of interpretation. Rosenthal missed the moment when the first flag was raised on Mount Suribachi, and his photograph depicts a second and bigger flag that was raised later that same day, which he openly acknowledged. But the memorial purports to portray the first and only flag that was raised at Iwo Jima.68 Shaw’s memorial also presents a new reading of the photograph and the historical event. From the vantage point of looking back from the present, her sculpture suggests that the older girl knew that everything was going to be alright, or, in her words, “[t]hey are not doomed to pathos or victimization.”69 This suggests that in light of the later success of the Japanese American community, their incarceration was not going to break their spirit. However, this is a reading that only a contemporary viewer can make, as in 1942 the world would not have seemed like a place where basic human rights were valued. In contrast to Kitagaki’s exhibition, which provided the context necessary for understanding the WRA photographs, the proposed bronze decontextualizes Lange’s image. The two Mochida girls have been removed from the family group; the caressing hand of the father and the closeness of the mother have been omitted, and now the sisters stand alone amongst strangers’ suitcases. Despite the artist’s intentions to convey hope alongside History & Memory, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Fall/Winter 2018) This content downloaded from 24.7.83.100 on Wed, 29 Aug 2018 18:12:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
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Valentina Rozas-Krause injustice, the isolation of the Mochida sisters from their context provides a deeper sense of vulnerability and helplessness. Memorial Plaza Although the Tanforan memorial decontextualizes the Mochida sisters from the public park in which they were first photographed, the surrounding memorial plaza reintegrates them into a landscape. The TACMC first imagined that the memorial would only be a sculpture, but after unsuccessfully applying for the NPS Japanese American Confinement Sites (JACS) Grant Program, the committee decided to add a memorial plaza to give context to the sculpture, which had been one of the recommendations of the JACS reviewers.70 After reapplying for a second and then a third time, the TACMC finally obtained a $398,839 grant from the JACS program to fund the memorial in May 2016.71 To raise the funds to build a memorial from scratch would have been extremely difficult before Public Law 109-441 created the JACS program in December 2006 and allocated $38 million for the purpose of “identifying, researching, evaluating, interpreting, protecting, restoring, repairing, and acquiring historic confinement sites....�72 Here again apology and memorialization are intertwined. It was the US official apology, the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which included a Civil Liberties Public Education Fund, that had led to the creation of the JACS program.73 The design for the memorial plaza surrounding the bronze of the Mochida sisters is the work of landscape architect Harold Kobayashi, a retired partner of Royston Hanamoto Alley & Abey (RHAA), a Mill Valley based landscape architecture firm created in 1958, who was himself interned in Amache, Colorado as a child. In honor of its Japanese American founders and partners, RHAA offered the work pro bono.74 The memorial plaza is situated against an existing zigzagged retaining wall, which shapes the horse stables in the far end of the design, the benches and the central pavers (figure 6). From the BART station to the shopping mall entrance, the site has a 4 to 5 ft. grade difference, which presents a challenge to the use and access of the chosen location. Kobayashi explains that the design choice that shaped the whole plaza was his intention to decrease the slope of the site, for which he added the opposing curved stone wall as a second retainer.75 The stone wall supports a sign to announce the memorial to 62
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Apology and Commemoration
Fig. 6. Plan for the proposed Tanforan Assembly Center Plaza, January 2016. Design by Harold Kobayashi/ Royston Hanamoto Alley & Abey (RHAA). Courtesy of RHAA Landscape Architects.
passersby and it curves to hug the base for the bronze sculpture of the Mochida sisters. Continuous granite paving stones unify the design from the curved wall to the back, interrupted only by donors’ pavers and a grid of Japanese maple trees, which in the original plan had been nine cherry blossom trees.76 But after the TACMC suggested that each tree could represent one of the permanent Japanese American incarceration camps, a tenth tree was added.77 Together with the rocks spread around the design, the trees signal an easily recognizable Japanese environment. The Japanese maple trees are an important element of Kobayashi’s design as the treetops create a natural roof over the memorial, which produces a sense of enclosure. To design a place that had a feeling of enclosure but at the same time was open to its surroundings was one of the landscape designer’s main challenges. Well aware of the surroundings of the chosen location, a shopping mall and a train station, Kobayashi added vertical and horizontal elements to separate his memorial plaza from its everyday context. Kobayashi thought that one of the most distinct features of the Tanforan Assembly Center were its horse stalls converted into improvised barracks. History & Memory, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Fall/Winter 2018) This content downloaded from 24.7.83.100 on Wed, 29 Aug 2018 18:12:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
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Valentina Rozas-Krause The smell and the indignity of these quarters struck him as something that all internees remembered, so he decided to include a reconstruction of the horse stalls in his memorial plaza.78 Life-sized, these 12 x 12 ft. structures convey the dimensions of the real 1942 barracks, although not their smell. Furthermore, the doors of the horse stalls have plaques attached with the names of all those who were interned at Tanforan. At first glance, the memorial might appear to be a bricolage of memorial strategies: a wall with names, a figurative sculpture, historical reproductions and thematic landscaping. Taking a step back, this layering of elements reflects the designer’s sensitivity to a bottom-up community design process. The initial idea to build a memorial at Tanforan, as well as the elements that it would encompass, came from the TACMC, that is, it arose directly from the Japanese American community organized around remembering Tanforan. When the landscape architects in charge of the memorial plaza joined the team, a series of important design decisions had already been taken: the center piece of the memorial was to be a figurative bronze of two girls, the location was chosen and the committee had key memorial elements in mind, including the plaques with the names.79 Hence, neither Kobayashi nor Shaw have had a leading role in determining the overall design of the project. Although their contributions have shaped the aesthetics of the memorial, particularly in the case of the landscape plaza, the Tanforan memorial remains a community-driven project. Art in Transit or Shopping Mall Memorial? Tensions between public and private space have had an important role in shaping the Tanforan memorial. Situated on the threshold between the San Bruno BART station and the Shops at Tanforan Shopping Mall, the memorial is forced to constantly negotiate its place within the changing borders of these two patrons. Today, the future Tanforan memorial is planned to be located in a paved corner adjacent to the BART station and delimited by one of the shopping mall’s parking lots. The current site was chosen by the TACMC, but it is owned by BART. While the BART Board of Directors has manifested its support for the memorial in two different official letters and public meetings, it is not clear whether the chosen site will be the definite one.80 BART property is strictly speaking public, yet building a memorial on the selected location would generate particular 64
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Apology and Commemoration challenges around the private management of a public place. Depending on the agreement between TACMC and the BART, the site could be either leased to the community, which would imply that BART would take no responsibilities over its maintenance, or remain under BART’s control, in which case TACMC would need to donate the memorial to the transit agency, which would be fully responsible for its maintenance.81 Even if the memorial were donated to the transit agency, BART would still be able to restrict access to it and its uses because it controls the opening hours and schedules of its stations. Nevertheless, in a lot that is otherwise entirely owned by private agents, the BART station and its surrounding property is the most public space available at Tanforan. This is the reasoning behind the TACMC’s determination to locate the memorial as close to the BART station as possible. Recently, a third actor entered the spatial disputes surrounding Tanforan. In August 2015, QIC, an Australian pension investment group, announced its acquisition of the Shops at Tanforan Shopping Mall.82 Following the example of previous owners of the shopping mall, QIC has expressed its support for the Japanese American community and in particular for the development of a memorial on the site of the former Tanforan Assembly Center.83 In 2017, a representative of QIC’s Los Angeles offices met with the TACMC and with the JCCCNC, the community organization that had overseen the construction of the 2007 historic plaque located next to the main entrance of the shopping mall. QIC wanted to preempt any possible conflicts between both Japanese American community groups, and the issue was resolved by incorporating the plaque and commemorative garden into the design for the future Tanforan memorial.84 Further, QIC donated $10,000 to the Tanforan memorial fund and a representative of QIC’s Los Angeles branch attended a TACMC fundraising dinner in early 2017. QIC’s redevelopment plans for the shopping mall include the area adjacent to the BART station, which will be transformed into the mall’s main pedestrian access. Under the redevelopment plans, the chosen site for the memorial, the corner between the station and the parking lot, will disappear.85 In this context, QIC has signed an agreement with BART to beautify the station, which fits into the transit agency’s plan to revitalize existing stations, adding yet another layer of intervention on the site chosen for the future memorial.86
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Valentina Rozas-Krause QIC’s arrival has put BART in the middle point of a three-party negotiation table. With ties to both the TACMC and QIC, BART is seeking a viable solution for both the memorial and the new shopping mall.87 On the one hand, QIC’s timeframe for the shopping mall is still unclear, yet it has been suggested that it will extend over the next few years. On the other hand, the TACMC has explicitly stated that it is working under strict time constraints because the memorial is aimed at honoring the aging Nisei generation.88 While the outcome of this debate is still unknown at the time of writing, I would like to lay out some notions to understand the implications of the different sides of this spatial dispute. Why would these two patrons be interested in housing the Tanforan memorial? In the case of BART, its favorable position toward the memorial has been supported by its employees, full board members and community members. BART’s institutional structure includes public board meetings and community participation, a structure that lends itself to being receptive to projects like the Tanforan memorial. For BART, the memorial constitutes no financial burden and it has the potential to strengthen the relationship between the transit agency and the local neighborhood. Further, the Tanforan memorial also fits into the Art in Transit program, a BART art policy created in 2015.89 While BART has included art in its property since its beginning, only since the creation of its art policy has the transit agency allocated a specific budget and a full-time arts program manager to systematize its existing works of art and plan new ones. One of the goals of Jennifer Easton, BART’s current art program manager, is to develop a master plan for the transit agency, which would include a “Public Art Memorial Policy.”90 Easton serves as a mediator between the pragmatic demands of the planners and engineers at BART and community-driven art projects like Tanforan. Moreover, the future memorial does not only suit the BART’s developing art policy but can also serve as an example for the future Public Art Memorial Policy which will shape a range of memories, from the police shooting of a young African American man, Oscar Grant, at the Fruitvale Station to the memory of a community activist at Balboa Park Station.91 In the case of QIC, shopping malls have been keen to incorporate memorial conventions, similar to the ones at play at the Tanforan memorial. Ahistorical memorials with invented ties to the past such as the Spirit of Los Angeles bronze sculpture in the middle of The Grove in Los Angeles 66
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Apology and Commemoration adorn main circulations and landscaped areas in shopping malls in the United States and elsewhere. These artificial memorials create cultural reference points, beautify the space and separate pedestrian flows. Other shopping spaces have included real memorials to remember local histories. For example, Bay Street Emeryville, a shopping mall located on a prehistoric Ohlone Indian habitation site in the San Francisco Bay Area, has incorporated the Emeryville Shellmound Memorial to remember the Native American history of the site. In this context, it seems likely that QIC will want to incorporate the Tanforan memorial into its design. Further, the Shops at the Tanforan is QIC’s first 100 percent-owned US property.92 As a gateway to further investments in the American real estate market, Tanforan is a model project for QIC’s future developments. Since the shopping mall was acquired including the existing historic plaque, a battle with a local ethnic community might be considered a liability by a foreign investor. This suggests, that it is in QIC’s best interest to find a viable solution to building the Tanforan memorial. Placing the memorial inside the shopping mall would give QIC control over its content, visibility, accessibility and appearance. One of the questions that permeates this debate is whether the future memorial will be part of the shopping mall or the BART station or if it will constitute its own public space. In this context, I would like to suggest a twofold reading of the memorial: as complicit with these institutional patrons and as subversive of their rules of conduct. The aesthetic choices of the memorial might suggest that it follows the building codes of corporate spaces: figurative representation, didactic transmission of its message, durability, clear separation between public and private space, and visible plaques with the names of the sponsors and donors. Yet, the Tanforan memorial’s struggle to find a definite place amongst this suburban corporate landscape suggests that it is also subverting these rules. Memorials serve consumer spaces when their references to the past are abstracted into a vague sense of historicity. To bring real details of a conflictive past into QIC’s future Tanforan shopping mall would undermine the shopping mall’s domestication of the past.
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Valentina Rozas-Krause Future Visitor So far, I have interpreted the Tanforan memorial from the viewpoint of three main actors who have been involved in its construction: the TACMC, QIC and BART. It is now necessary to introduce a fourth actor, the future visitor of the memorial. Partly speculative and partly based on the existing evidence, this future visitor plays a fundamental role in the current planning and future design of the memorial. Future visitors are most often represented by designers and architects: RHAA’s perspectives for the memorial include cut-outs of real people using the plaza (figure 1). Yet, this future visitor is also present in the debates and documents of the TACMC. A 2017 position letter sent by the memorial committee to BART stated: [The] placement of the Memorial in the plaza [area] between the BART station and the mall is critical. Indeed, any alternative placement will certainly have a lower level of exposure to casual visitors, i.e. those who do not specifically plan to visit the Memorial, but will visit because it catches their eye while riding BART or visiting the mall. Our Memorial will speak to multiple communities, and while former incarcerees and their families are at the center of our effort, this Memorial will also speak to a larger audience of passersby, shoppers and commuters. Situating the Memorial in any place other than the proposed site would diminish our success in educating the general public.93 This letter, written to BART to communicate the committee’s position toward keeping the memorial in its planned site, envisions the future user as a casual visitor. While it is a memorial for the surviving incarcerees, the committee acknowledges that its meaning will shift once all the survivors of the internment are gone. Thus, the letter also illustrates the generational shift discussed in the previous section: it is at a moment when the Nisei generation is aging rapidly that it becomes all the more important to build a memorial that can speak to a broader public. The line of communication between the Nisei generation, the memorial activists and the future visitor is place. In the eyes of the TACMC members, where the memorial is located is crucial for extending its message beyond their own community.
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Apology and Commemoration Whether it ends up being part of the shopping mall or the BART station, the Tanforan memorial will be immersed in the everyday life of commuters, residents, shoppers, moviegoers, travelers and tourists. Today, the shopping mall and the BART station concentrate the highest density of activities within the San Bruno area, a centrality that will only increase after the shopping mall’s renovation.94 The memorial will, therefore, speak not only to the Japanese American community but to a much broader array of publics. While some people will travel to Tanforan only to visit the memorial, most encounters will be unplanned. Most future visitors of the Tanforan memorial will be of the kind described in the above passage: people who stumble upon it during their everyday activities. The TACMC understands this quotidian dimension of the memorial, but the everyday has not shaped its design. Like any traditional memorial, the Tanforan memorial’s aim is to create a place of contemplation, a retreat from the speed, bustle and preoccupations of everyday life.95 The rationale behind this is that remembrance is an exceptional experience that requires a certain space, time and state of mind.96 Today, the activists and designers behind the Tanforan memorial are planning to carve out an oasis in a desert of parking lots and retail stores, in an attempt to separate the past from the present of the site. To write about an ongoing project implies that there is potential for multiple outcomes, some of which are unforeseeable today. I believe that the memorial’s potential lies precisely in its hybrid position between the exceptional moments of life and the ordinary routines we repeat every day. At its best, the future Tanforan memorial can suggest that memory is part of the everyday and that it is possible to remember in suburban quotidian spaces like the shopping mall.
CONCLUSION The changes in the Japanese American community and in the surrounding city of San Bruno have impacted the meaning and interpretation of the standing apologies at Tanforan. The first plaque had an active role in the redress movement: in the absence of an official apology, it demanded justice, recognition and remembrance. The next two plaques spoke of the unfulfilled promises of the official apology: given that not all interned History & Memory, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Fall/Winter 2018) This content downloaded from 24.7.83.100 on Wed, 29 Aug 2018 18:12:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
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Valentina Rozas-Krause Japanese Americans were included, that Latin American Japanese are still excluded from the redress payments and that the NPS has been reluctant to grant national status to sites like Tanforan, it was still necessary in the 1990s and 2000s to dedicate new plaques.97 The photographic exhibition reflects these changes in the memorial landscape of Tanforan, but it also speaks of an unfulfilled apologetic dialogue, despite the various presidential apologies and expressions of regret about wartime incarceration of innocent citizens. In this regard, the memorial interventions at Tanforan can be read as active participants in an open dialogue—interventions that will only spark further debates once the Tanforan memorial is built. Mostly uninformed about the memorial’s history, the future visitor of Tanforan may interpret the memorial not only as a site of remembrance but also as an official apology. To date, the most significant donations to the memorial come from public institutions: the NPS and the County of San Mateo. Arranged by size of contribution, the donor’s plaques at the future memorial site will highlight these donations as the main benefactors of the project and create the impression that Tanforan is an official memorial, or even a manifestation of an official apology. Such an unintended reading of the memorial will change the spatial and temporal dimension of the apologetic dialogue that the four previous memorial interventions initiated. According to Battistella, apologies work when they have a clear receiver, an appropriate speaker, and provide an honest remorseful acknowledgment of the wrongdoing.98 Tanforan’s triad of historic plaques reveals a gradual effort toward defining each one of the components of a successful apologetic dialogue, yet in the memorial these categories are blurred. Paul Connerton criticized memorials for their inability to change, for being stiff and inflexible.99 By contrast, most memory scholars stress the inevitable flexibility of memorials, arguing that their meaning fluctuates as the culture surrounding them changes.100 In relation to material apologies both interpretations are true. The stiffness of their materiality makes them last longer than any dialogue, law or discourse, but, at the same time, their exposure to the passing of time, public space, everyday life and changing users makes the built apology a vessel for the multiple and at times diverging impulses to say “I’m sorry.” As a standing apology, the Tanforan memorial will create space and time for yet another rearrangement of the dialogue around Japanese American incarceration, the result of which can only be explored once the memorial is built. 70
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Apology and Commemoration The phrase “Now more than ever” is one of the most recurrent expressions that I heard during the development of this research. For the memorial activists behind the Tanforan memorial, some of the policies of the Donald Trump Presidency—the ban on the entry of Muslims, the suspension of the US refugee program, the threats to deport undocumented immigrants, and the wall on the Mexican border—are blatant reminders that what happened to them could recur. The Japanese American community has openly rejected Trump’s immigration policies in op-eds, letters, articles and public speeches.101 Recently, the message of the Tanforan Memorial has become as much about the present as about the past. “Now more than ever we need to build the Tanforan memorial” resonated like a mantra which has boosted the members of the memorial committee to organize, plan, fundraise, speak up and resist the corporate urge to delay. Undoubtedly, this new political context has also had an important effect on myself as a researcher. I wanted to study Tanforan because it allowed me to research a memorial in the making. In 2016, when I first proposed this research topic, I did not foresee how enmeshed it would become with the emerging political context. The current administration’s immigration policies and the 75th anniversary of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s signing of Executive Order 9066 have allowed me to observe the actors and objects of memory undergoing a process of heightened transformation. The proposal for the Tanforan memorial will undoubtedly continue to change, and it is most likely that what I have described here will not be built in this exact form. Nevertheless, I believe that in laying out the stakes, actors, issues and debates around the memorialization of Tanforan, this work will shed light on the future memorial marker, as well as on other memorials, whatever shape it takes.
NOTES I wish to extend my deep thanks to the members of the Tanforan Assembly Center Memorial Committee; this article would not have been possible without their support and guidance. A special thanks to my interviewees: Jimmy Chan, Jennifer Easton, Harold Kobayashi, Steve Okamoto, Sandra J. Shaw, Ben Takeshita, and Douglas Yamamoto. I am grateful to Waverly Lovell and my fellow graduate students in the seminar Researching California’s Built Environment (Spring 2017) at UC Berke-
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Valentina Rozas-Krause ley for the discussions that helped shape this article. I also wish to acknowledge the support of the Global Urban Humanities-Townsend Center Fellowship and thank the group of fellows of Spring 2017 for their generous comments on this article. I am grateful to Andrew M. Shanken, Greg Castillo, Julia Bryan-Wilson and Paul Rabinow for their continued support and advice. I also benefited from the thoughtful comments of my reviewers. This article presents the preliminary results of my dissertation research funded by CONICYT/Becas Chile 72150057.
1. Controversies over the terminology on Japanese American incarceration camps have been thoroughly discussed by many authors, including Raymond Y. Okamura, “The American Concentration Camps: A Cover-Up through Euphemistic Terminology,” Journal of Ethnic Studies 10 (Fall 1982): 95–109; and Karen L. Ishizuka, Lost and Found: Reclaiming the Japanese American Incarceration (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006). To call the detention camp at Tanforan an assembly center is part of the euphemistic vocabulary that the War Relocation Authority (WRA) used with regard to Japanese American imprisonment. In this article I refer to Tanforan as Assembly Center because this is the term that the active community around this site has accepted and incorporated. See also below. 2. Alice Yang Murray, Historical Memories of the Japanese American Internment and the Struggle for Redress (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008); Ishizuka, Lost and Found; Ingrid Gessner, From Sites of Memory to Cybersights: (Heidelberg: Universitäts Verlag Winter, 2007). 3. Jeffery F. Burton and Irene J. Cohen, eds., Confinement and Ethnicity: An Overview of World War II Japanese American Relocation Sites (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002). 4. Author’s interview with Ben Takeshita, former Japanese American Citizens League governor, internee at the Tanforan, board member of the Tanforan Assembly Center Memorial Committee, April 17, 2017; and with Douglas Yamamoto, president of the Tanforan Assembly Center Memorial Committee, March 3, 2017. 5. Raymond Y. Okamura, “Temporary Detention Camps for Japanese Americans,” in the File Tanforan Assembly Center, P-41-000209 (California Historical Resources Information System, 1980), Northwest Information Center. Sonoma State University. 6. Yoshiko Uchida, Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese American Family (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2015); Michi Weglyn, Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996); Charles Kikuchi and John Modell, The Kikuchi Diary: Chronicle from an American Concentration Camp; the Tanforan Journals of Charles Kikuchi (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973).
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Apology and Commemoration 7. Roger Daniels, Concentration Camps, North America: Japanese in the United States and Canada during World War II (Malabar, FL: R.E. Krieger, 1981). 8. Carole Hayashino, “Tanforan Detention Camp,” in the File Tanforan Assembly Center, P-41-000209 (California Historical Resources Information System, 1980), Northwest Information Center, Sonoma State University; Okamura, “Temporary Detention Camps for Japanese Americans.” 9. Tanforan Detention Camp Application for Registration of Historical Landmark, in Hayashino, “Tanforan Detention Camp,” 10. According to records held by the California Historical Resources Information System, alongside Carole Hayashino, Dr. James Okutsu and Ben Takeshita were also members of the committee. 10. Days of Remembrance commemorating the signing of Executive Order 9066 are observed around February 19. The first Day of Remembrance was held in Seattle on November 25, 1978. See Martha Nakagawa, “Days of Remembrance,” Densho Encyclopedia, http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Days_of_Remembrance/ (accessed April 24, 2017). 11. Interview with Ben Takeshita. 12. Burton and Cohen, Confinement and Ethnicity, 375. 13. Okamura, “Temporary Detention Camps for Japanese Americans”; Okamura, “The American Concentration Camps.” 14. Okamura, “The American Concentration Camps.” 15. Given the widespread use of the term “assembly center” amongst the Japanese American community in the present, in this article I use both terms “assembly center” and “temporary incarceration camp” as synonyms. 16. Author’s interview with Steve Okamoto, vice-president of the TACMC, internee at Tanforan, former City Councilman of Foster City, February 11, 2017. 17. Building and Planning Divisions, City of San Bruno, “Redevelopment Permits 1150 El Camino Real,” http://etrakit.sanbrunocable.com/etrakit/ (accessed April 24, 2017). 18. Jane Naomi Iwamura, “Critical Faith: Japanese Americans and the Birth of a New Civil Religion,” American Quarterly 59, no. 3 (2007): 937–68; Raymond Y. Okamura, “The Concentration Camp Experience from a Japanese American Perspective: A Bibliographical Essay and Review of Michi Weglyn’s Years of Infamy,” in Emma Gee, ed., Counterpoint: Perspectives on Asian America (Los Angeles: Asian American Studies Center, University of California, 1976), 29. 19. Burton and Cohen, Confinement and Ethnicity. 20. Pub. L. No. 102-248,” 106 Stat. 40 (March 3, 1992), 102d Congress (1992), http://uscode.house.gov/statutes/pl/102/248.pdf (accessed April 24, 2017). 21. Burton and Cohen, Confinement and Ethnicity. 22. Ibid., 373–75.
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Valentina Rozas-Krause 23. Mitchell T. Maki, Harry H. L. Kitano and S. Megan Berthold, Achieving the Impossible Dream: How Japanese Americans Obtained Redress (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999); Murray, Historical Memories of the Japanese American Internment; William Minoru Hohri, Repairing America: An Account of the Movement for Japanese-American Redress (Pullman, WA: Washington State University Press, 1988). 24. See the records on Temporary Detention Camps for Japanese Americans of the California Historical Resources Information System, located at the Northwest Information Center, Sonoma State University. Newspaper clippings, letters of support, and memorabilia from the commemoration acts that inaugurated these plaques attest to their significance for local communities and for the Japanese American community at large. 25. Edwin L. Battistella, Sorry about That: The Language of Public Apology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 113–34. 26. Michael Cunningham, States of Apology (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014); Jennifer M. Lind, Sorry States: Apologies in International Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008). 27. In a later version the word “evacuation” was replaced with “exclusion.” The storyboards for the first version of the exhibition were repurposed from a 2007 commemoration of the third on-site plaque, organized by the JACCC and the National Japanese American Historical Society. 28. The exhibition is available at https://www.kitagakiphoto.com/p/japaneseamerican-in (accessed April 1, 2018). In Japanese Gambatte means “don’t give up” or “do your best.” It is a statement that reflects the dignity and endurance with which families of Japanese ancestry confronted their unjust wartime imprisonment. 29. Paul Kitagaki Jr., “Gambatte Museum Prospectus,” 2017, http://kitagakiphoto.photoshelter.com/gallery-download/G000042tYANt7K0U/ (accessed April 20, 2017). 30. Interview with Douglas Yamamoto. 31. Battistella, Sorry about That. 32. James E. Young, The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993). 33. Patricia Yollin, “Photos Illustrate Effects of WWII Internment Camps,” SFGate, May 12, 2012, http://www.sfgate.com/art/article/Photos-illustrateeffects-of-WWII-internment-camps-3552117.php. (accessed April 24, 2017). 34. Andrew M. Shanken, “Keeping Time with the Good War,” American Studies Journal, no. 59 (2015), https://doi.org/10.18422/59-02. 35. The National Archives at San Francisco, Record Group 252, Records of the Office of the Housing Expediter Economic Stabilization Agency 1942–1953, Office of Rent Stabilization, Region VIII (formerly Region VI), Accn 83-001
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Apology and Commemoration (FRC 53-0483); OTN-NRIAS- 2010-252- RGN6, NN-373- 185; NN-172- 112; NNTR-N- 92-100, Internal Transfer Number NN-83- 286 36. Linda Gordon, “Dorothea Lange Photographs the Japanese American Internment,” in Dorothea Lange, Linda Gordon and Gary Y. Okihiro, Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American Internment (New York: W.W. Norton, 2006), 5–46. 37. Ibid., 29. 38. Lange, Gordon and Okihiro, Impounded. 39. Maisie and Richard Conrat, eds., Executive Order 9066: The Internment of 110,000 Japanese Americans, new ed. (Los Angeles: University of California, Los Angeles, Asian American Studies Center, 1992); Dinitia Smith, “Photographs of an Episode That Lives in Infamy,” New York Times, November 6, 2006, sec. Arts / Art & Design, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/06/arts/design/06lang. html (accessed April 24, 2017). 40. Erika Doss, Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010). See also Dell Upton, What Can and Can’t Be Said: Race, Uplift, and Monument Building in the Contemporary South (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015). 41. Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial (1982) is an important exception. While Marita Sturken examines the addition of Frederick Hart’s sculpture of three young American soldiers (1984) to Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial (1982) as a criticism of abstraction, Maya Lin’s design can actually be defined as a bottomup abstract memorial. The community of Vietnam Veterans involved in erection of the memorial chose Lin’s design and backed it up during the Hart controversy. I thank Julia Bryan-Wilson for pointing this out. Marita Sturken, Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). 42. Young, The Texture of Memory. 43. Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981), 5. 44. Gordon, “Dorothea Lange.” 45. Barthes, Camera Lucida. 46. Yollin, “Photos Illustrate Effects of WWII Internment Camps.” 47. Interviews with Steve Okamoto and Douglas Yamamoto. 48. Since the new Tanforan Memorial and the existing plaque have been incorporated into the urban transformation that the shopping mall developers are proposing, there have been no protests against the redesign. 49. Yollin, “Photos Illustrate Effects of WWII Internment Camps.” 50. Interview with Douglas Yamamoto. 51. Okamura, “Temporary Detention Camps for Japanese Americans.”
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Valentina Rozas-Krause 52. Adrienne Iwata, “Merced (Detention Facility),” Densho Encyclopedia (Densho Encyclopedia, July 17, 2015), http://encyclopedia.densho.org/ Merced_%28detention_facility%29/ (accessed May 2, 2017). 53. Personal Justice Denied: Report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (Washington, DC: Civil Liberties Public Education Fund and Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997), 18. 54. Interview with Steve Okamoto. 55. Tanforan Assembly Center Memorial Committee INC., “Request for Proposal (RFP): A Monumental Bronze Sculpture for a Tanforan Assembly Center Memorial” June 17, 2013, 3, Douglas Yamamoto and Tanforan Assembly Center Memorial Committee archive. Gaman means “enduring the seemingly unbearable with patience and dignity.” The term is generally translated as “perseverance,” “patience,” “tolerance” or “self-denial.” 56. Conrat and Conrat, Executive Order 9066, 50. 57. Weglyn, Years of Infamy, 7. 58. Lange, Gordon, and Okihiro, Impounded, 118. 59. Gordon, “Dorothea Lange,” 25. 60. Tanforan Assembly Center Memorial Committee INC., “Request for Proposal (RFP)”; author’s interview with Sandra J. Shaw, May 4, 2017. 61. American Fine Arts Foundry, Inc. and Sandra J. Shaw, “Tanforan Assembly Center Memorial: Proposal for a Monumental Bronze Sculpture,” November 4, 2014, Douglas Yamamoto and Tanforan Assembly Center Memorial Committee Archive. 62. Interview with Douglas Yamamoto. 63. Tanforan Assembly Center Memorial Committee INC., “Request for Proposal (RFP),” 3. 64. American Fine Arts Foundry, Inc. and Shaw, “Tanforan Assembly Center Memorial,” 5. 65. Interview with Sandra J. Shaw; Sandra J. Shaw, “Photo = Art?,” personal blog of artist, Sandra J. Shaw Studio, October 21, 2016, http://www.sandrajshaw. com/blog.html (accessed April 24, 2017). 66. Karal Ann Marling and John Wetenhall, Iwo Jima: Monuments, Memories, and the American Hero (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991). 67. Ibid. 68. Ibid. 69. American Fine Arts Foundry, Inc. and Shaw, “Tanforan Assembly Center Memorial,” 5. 70. Anonymous reviewer for the National Park Service JACS Program, “National Park Service JACS Program Evaluation Sheet,” 2014, Douglas Yamamoto and Tanforan Assembly Center Memorial Committee Archive.
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Apology and Commemoration 71. Interview with Douglas Yamamoto. 72. Preservation of Japanese American Confinement Sites, Pub. L. No. 109441, 120 Stat. 3288 (Dec. 21, 2006), 109th Congress (2006), 1, https://www. congress.gov/109/plaws/publ441/PLAW-109publ441.pdf. 73. Civil Liberties Act of 1987, H.R.442, 100th Congress (1987–1988). Became Pub. L. No: 100-383 (Aug. 10, 1988), https://www.congress.gov/ bill/100th-congress/house-bill/442. 74. Author’s interview with Harold Kobayashi, March 24, 2017; author’s interview with Jimmy Chan, landscape architect and vice president RHAA, March 30, 2017. 75. Interview with Harold Kobayashi. 76. Interview with Jimmy Chan. 77. Interview with Harold Kobayashi. 78. Ibid. 79. Ibid. 80. Thomas M. Blalock, P.E., “Letter of Support for the Tanforan Assembly Center Memorial Committee from the President of BART,” December 16, 2015, Douglas Yamamoto and Tanforan Assembly Center Memorial Committee Archive; author’s interview with Jennifer Easton, Art Program Manager, San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), April 19, 2017. 81. Interview with Jennifer Easton. 82. “San Bruno’s Tanforan Shopping Mall Sells to Australian Investor QIC,” San Francisco Business Times, http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/ real-estate/2015/08/san-bruno-tanforan-q-i-c-breevast-san-mateo.html (accessed February 14, 2017). 83. Hayashino, “Tanforan Detention Camp–.” 84. Interview with Steve Okamoto. 85. Ibid.; interview with Douglas Yamamoto. 86. See https://www.bart.gov/news/articles/2015/news20150813-0 (accessed May, 2, 2017). 87. Interview with Jennifer Easton. 88. Tanforan Assembly Center Memorial Committee INC., “TACMC Position Letter Sent to BART,” March 8, 2017, Douglas Yamamoto and Tanforan Assembly Center Memorial Committee Archive. 89. See https://www.bart.gov/content/art-transit-program, https://www. bart.gov/news/articles/2015/news20150813-0; Bay Area News Group, “BART OKs Art Program for Stations,” East Bay Times, August 13, 2015, http://www. eastbaytimes.com/2015/08/13/bart-oks-art-program-for-stations/ (both accessed April 24, 2017). 90. Interview with Jennifer Easton.
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Valentina Rozas-Krause 91. Ibid. 92. “QIC Announces Acquisition of The Shops at Tanforan.” 93. Tanforan Assembly Center Memorial Committee INC., “TACMC Position Letter Sent to BART,” 1. 94. Interview with Jennifer Easton. 95. Interview with Harold Kobayashi. 96. Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,” Representations, no. 26 (1989): 7–24. 97. Leslie T. Hatamiya, Righting a Wrong: Japanese Americans and the Passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, Asian America (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993); Burton and Cohen, Confinement and Ethnicity. 98. Battistella, Sorry about That. 99. Paul Connerton, How Modernity Forgets (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 100. Young, The Texture of Memory; Sturken, Tangled Memories; Upton, What Can and Can’t Be Said; Andrew M. Shanken, “Towards a Cultural Geography of Modern Memorials,” in Jill Franklin, T. A. Heslop and Christine Stevenson, eds., Architecture and Interpretation: Essays for Eric Fernie (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2012), 357–80. 101. See, for example, “JACL Continues Opposition to Newly Issued Immigration Ban—Japanese American Citizens League,” September 25, 2017, https:// jacl.org/jacl-continues-opposition-to-newly-issued-immigration-ban/; “JACL Submits Amicus Brief to SCOTUS in Opposition to Muslim Travel Ban—Japanese American Citizens League,” September 19, 2017, https://jacl.org/jacl-submitsamicus-brief-to-scotus-in-opposition-to-muslim-travel-ban/; “State of the Union Continues Attacks on Immigrants—Japanese American Citizens League,” January 31, 2018, https://jacl.org/state-of-the-union-continues-attacks-on-immigrants/ (all accessed April 26, 2018).
Valentina Rozas-Krause is a PhD candidate at the University of California, Berkeley. She is an architect with a Master’s degree in Urban Planning from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. She is the author of Ni tan Elefante: Ni tan Blanco: Arquitectura, urbanismo y política en la trayectoria del Estadio Nacional (RIL editores, 2014). (vrozas@berkeley.edu)
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