BeHere / 1942

It is hereby ordered that from and after 12 o’clock noon, P.W.T., of Saturday, May 9, 1942, all persons of Japanese ancestry, both alien and non-alien, be excluded from that portion of Military Area No. 1 described as follows…

A shop in Little Tokyo shortly before Americans of Japanese descent were sent to the concentration camps. Photograph by Clem Albers, Los Angeles, California, April 1942. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2003652584.

On Saturday May 9, 1942, the lives of Japanese Americans in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, were forever changed. They had until noon to dispose of their homes and possessions, and then they were forced to leave everything behind—the familiar streets and neighborhoods, their livelihoods, the communities they had built.

In the euphemistic language of U.S. government policy, they and other Japanese Americans all along the West Coast—some 120,000 individuals, 37,000 of whom resided in Los Angeles—were “evacuated” to “relocation centers.” In reality, they were loaded onto busses and trains and shipped off to concentration camps where they would live for years, in some cases until after the end of the war.

The forced expulsion of Americans of Japanese descent from Los Angeles and other cities and towns was extensively documented by professional photographers. A few photographs of families and individuals waiting among suitcases and bags to be taken to the camps have come to stand as icons of the incarceration. But as renowned Japanese media artist Masaki Fujihata’s ambitious and affecting public art project demonstrates, the archive deserves and repays more focused attention.

Screen capture of Nishi Hongwanji Augmented Reality (AR) installation during its development. This composite image, inspired by numerous photographs of the forced removal, was created by positioning renderings of individual people within a simulation of the plaza outside the Japanese American National Museum. The renderings of the historic Nishi Hongwanji Temple and the main campus of JANM were created from a series of images shot by drone and processed using photogrammetry software; the human figures were recorded and processed using volumetric capture technology at Crescent, Inc., in Tokyo, and at 4D Fun, Inc., in Los Angeles. In the actual AR application, accessible through a smartphone or tablet, 3D renderings of the people and vehicles are layered over the actual environment.

Timed to open on the same Saturday in May that, eighty years ago, suddenly turned Little Tokyo into a ghost town, BeHere / 1942 uses a variety of media forms—from hyper-enlarged photographs to cutting-edge augmented reality technology—to help us see, in a new light, this dark moment in the history of Los Angeles, and of the United States.

Screen capture of Nishi Hongwanji Augmented Reality installation captured via iPad, on-site at the Japanese American National Museum.

Use the map below to explore the rooms of BeHere / 1942. Each location on the map leads to a text by Masaki Fujihata and the materials found in the physical exhibition space at the Japanese American National Museum.

Explore the Exhibition
On View May 9, 2022 – January 8, 2023 at JANM
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  1. In the Depths of the Eye

    Looking at a photograph is like exploring the ruins of an old building—each gives us a similar sort of pleasure.

  2. “Las Meninas” 1942

    One major shift that occurred in the field of European art at the beginning of the modern period was the emergence of mirrors as objects represented in paintings.

  3. The Old Santa Fe Station, an Epic Poem

    Things that cannot be understood from a single photograph in isolation become clearer when seen across multiple images, which gradually form a larger context and story.

  4. Looking Through the Camera

    How we think about the time and space of 1942 depends on the stance we adopt toward our engagement with the past. Do we enter that world as complete outsiders? As tourists? In conceiving a work like this, it is crucial to think about the role the visitor plays.

  5. Recreating the Crowd at Nishi Hongwanji

    In 1942, the building that housed Nishi Hongwanji temple was located across the street from a block of warehouses, on East 1st Street and North Central Avenue. You can still see it there today, though now it is an annex of the Japanese American National Museum (JANM).