Infamy, 2024
33’x36”
Aryclic paint

'' ... December 7, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy ... " - Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Infamy is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as ''an extreme and publicly known criminal or evil act." President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which allowed for the incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans, based solely on their ethnicity. It dramatically altered both the daily lives and the futures of an entire population.

This work is inspired, in part by a sign posted on a Japanese American business in Oakland the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed. This photograph was made by Dorothea Lange.

The font used is Tatsuro by Tre Seals, founder of Vocal Type, who created the typeface in honor of Tatsuro Matsuda, the store owner.

By definition, ''internment'' refers to the confinement of non-citizens whose country of birth is at war. While the term continues to be used in relation to Japanese American history, the preferred term by many is ''incarceration," which more accurately describes the imprisonment of 2/3 of those effected, who, like my father, were American citizens.