A new museum exhibit tells the history of Japanese Americans on Vashon Island.
The Vashon Heritage Museum opened the exhibit "Joy and Heartache" Friday.
The curators believe there is an untold story of the Japanese-American experience on Vashon Island.
“I think a lot of people didn’t know there were so many Japanese on Vashon and how important they were,” said Rita Brogan, a co-curator of the exhibit.
Some 123 Japanese-Americans from Vashon Island were sent to concentration camps during World War II, according to Bruce Haulman, another co-curator and a former history professor.
The exhibit is broken down into five stages. Brogan and Haulman share insight on each section:
Hope
Brogan: “When 12 young Japanese men came to Vashon Island to seek their fortune.”
Haulman: “I think that’s any immigrant - comes in with hopes of building a new future and then they confront the struggle.”
Struggle
Brogan: “Because they had to work so hard.”
Haulman: “To build a home, to build a life, to create successful farms and here on Vashon, the Japanese-Americans were very, very successful at doing that.”
Haulman spoke of D.B. Mukai, an immigrant who revolutionized how berries were distributed with the "cold process."
Trauma
Brogan: “Trauma describes the period of evacuation.”
Haulman: “Ripped out of your culture with two days notice and send away from Vashon.”
Brogan: “Very poor conditions. There was no plumbing, for example.”
Haulman: “The attempt here is to sort of re-create a barracks in one of the concentration camps.”
Resilience
Haulman: “About a third of the Japanese-Americans on Vashon come back. They start to rebuild their lives.”
Identities
Brogan: "The last phase we call 'Identities.' There is a new very vibrant and very diverse group of Japanese on Vashon Island today."
Haulman: "This exhibit is that the Japanese community on Vashon has reconnected. There’s an opportunity to rebuild a vibrant community on Vashon."
The museum expects this exhibit to run for about a year.
