Night Sky, Tacoma, Washington, 2024
(Source: digital sky archive)
39x11’
Arcylic paint, paint markers

There was a beautiful view of Mount Rainier from the front porch of my father's childhood home in Tacoma, Washington. This is the night sky as it appeared, looking east over the mountain, on December 7, 1941.

That evening, my grandfather, Carl Shintaro Miyazaki, was arrested in his home. Over the next four years, he would be incarcerated and moved to numerous locations: The Tacoma City Jail, Immigration and Naturalization Service detention in Seattle; Department of Justice camps in Missoula, Montana, Lordsburg, New Mexico and Santa Fe, New Mexico, the Tule Lake camp in California and the Heart Mountain Camp in Wyoming. Nearly four years later, he would return to Tacoma.

All of the camps which held incarcerated Japanese Americans were situated in remote areas, far from cities and urban light pollution. Aside from the single story barracks buildings, barbed wire fencing and guard towers, the sky wou Id have held a significant physicaI presence. I can only imagine my grandfather, and many others, gazing at the night sky from their places of confinement.

During the exhibition at Hawthorn Contemporary, visitors were invited to add a star to the wall in memory of an ancestor (below, right).