By Kai Curry
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY
Bellevue Library last Wednesday welcomed the public to a new, traveling art installation meant to honor Bellevue’s Japanese farmers who were seized from their homes and incarcerated during WWII. The installation was unveiled on the annual Day of Remembrance, which memorializes the forced incarceration of 125,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans during WWII.
The installation, which will live in the library for the next two years, is titled “Emerging Radiance” and features a three-dimensional art piece, a small cabin with an uneven roof. Each of the four sides of the cabin is painted with a mural by local artist, Michelle Kumata. The murals represent real Japanese Americans, whose memories about internment, and life in Bellevue, before, during, and after, were previously collected and recorded by Densho as part of the historical documentarian group’s efforts to preserve the stories of Japanese Americans who were incarcerated.
On three of the four sides, brief, but poignant recordings of one of the farmers painted there can be played by clicking on a QR code with a phone or tablet. A short video animation accompanies each of the recordings.
The traveling exhibit started as a wall mural at Meta’s office building in Bellevue. When the artwork turned out to be too hard for the public to access there, Kumata and Bellevue farmers who survived incarceration and their families advocated for a version that could be seen by all.
Following Executive Order 9066, more than 50 Japanese American families were forcibly removed from Bellevue’s farming community. Some of their farms, last Wednesday’s audience came to understand, were located directly beneath where the Bellevue Public Library now stands.
After incarceration, Kumata explained, families were encouraged not to return to the Pacific Northwest.
“There was a lot of propaganda that was put out to encourage Japanese or people of Japanese descent to move away from the West Coast,” Kumata told the Northwest Asian Weekly.
Only 12 families of the Bellevue group came back, event emcee Alice Ito said. Their family names were read aloud. Some of their relatives sat in the audience. The last living survivor of the incarceration depicted on the murals passed away in 2024, but, thanks to Densho, many recollections survive.
Kumata’s grandparents were both born in Minidoka, an incarceration camp located in Idaho. She doesn’t remember them ever talking about it.
“I think it was a protective thing for them to not talk about that and not expose their children to a lot of the pain that they went through,” Kumata said.
That pain was made up of racism and discrimination, Kumata explained, and that the closed house, with no open doors or windows, was an intentional choice for the installation: “The memories, the feelings, the emotions” are held inside.
Kumata depicted each farmer as “larger than life” and said that she intentionally made them stand out against a dark night sky background. There is also barbed wire. This darkness represents the sorrow and pain from incarceration, but there are also positive images, like tiny vegetables and fruits within the stars, which are the farmers’ legacy, Kumata said. Flying cranes, which can be seen as hopeful, due to the act of flying away, also feel a bit mournful. Sometimes, it is not possible to fly away, the barbed wire reminds us.
Documentary filmmaker Tani Ikeda was also part of the installation collaboration. Her father, Tom, was the founder of Densho.
Growing up, Ikeda never knew that the Puyallup Fairgrounds, a place of fun, sat atop the very incarceration campgrounds where her family was first imprisoned.
“Working on this project has been incredibly powerful and important to me,” Ikeda said. “These stories have lived inside me … This was the first opportunity that I, as a creative person, got to engage in the story through using augmented reality.”
Ikeda hopes that the animated recordings will capture the interest of a younger audience. She likened the current times to those days of the incarceration camps, referencing all of the “executive orders that are coming out,” at President Donald Trump’s direction, a majority of which take aim at immigrants and diversity initiatives.
“It takes generations to rebuild,” after causing damage to a community, Ikeda reminded listeners, while also praising the community’s resilience and strength.
“Emerging Radiance challenges us to look back, no matter how painful, and to remember,” said Angie Miraflor, King County Library System’s deputy director. The installation, she said, “forces us to see ourselves, but also points to higher possibilities.”
King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci spoke of the contribution that Japanese residents of Bellevue had made to the area prior to their incarceration.
“It’s a shameful moment of our history,” she said, adding that the same exclusionary impulses exist today, particularly from the federal government.
“We need to stand up and say, ‘No, we don’t stand for this,’” Balducci insisted.
“I grew up in a community and a culture that did not encourage talking back, questioning authority, rebellion, or going against the grain—so I became an artist,” Kumata joked, as she spoke to the audience.
People have silently carried this burden, this generational trauma, Kumata said, which, as an artist, she can express visually.
Kumata ended her talk in tears. “We must stand up and speak out against injustice to protect the rights of our communities,” she implored the audience. “We can’t repeat history. Let light shine on this hidden history. Let light continue to shine on us all.”
In addition to being treated to sushi and mochi, during the event, guests were given gifts of small seed pouches. The seeds, provided by Kitagawa Seed Co., represented the types of crops that Bellevue’s Japanese farmers would have grown, before the U.S. government took these farmers from their homes.
Kai can be reached at newstips@nwasianweekly.com.