20th Anniversary Minidoka WPA Style Poster

This piece is a collaboration between Marie Okuma Johnston (@m.okumajohnston), Eugene Tagawa (@ogugtag), and Erin Shigaki (@purplegat3), and was created to commemorate the 20th Anniversary of the Minidoka National Historic Site becoming a unit of the National Park Service. It was commissioned by Hanako Wakatsuki, former (and beloved) Chief of Interpretation and Education of that site. Using historic photos, Tagawa’s lived experience in the prison camp, and the experiences which all of us have had on the site and on Pilgrimage, we set out to create a piece that speaks to the hope and resilience of our families and community who suffered at the hands of white supremacist society before, during, and after WWII. To that end, we opted not to illustrate one of the many guard towers that encircled the prison camp, but instead chose the water tower with its life-giving purpose. We once again reclaim the shoddy tarpaper barracks that our families made as comfortable as possible to nurture us. We illustrate a family—with a father who has volunteered to serve in a segregated U.S. military unit in hopes that his loyalty to America will somehow be heard and seen; a mother who is left to protest their imprisonment and raise her family alone; and children who spend their earliest years playing in the desert dust and absorbing the pain of all the adults around them. Our hanko (signature block) bears our names as well as Tagawa’s prison number and Shigaki’s family prison number. Finally, we depict the ubiquitous magpies of Southern Idaho to symbolize freedom: the dream deferred by all Americans in the face of supremacy’s belief in and reliance on besmirching and locking up Black, Indigenous and bodies of color. We all deserve healing and demand a reimagined society.

Featured:

Minidoka National Historic Site Visitor Center, Hunt, Idaho- 9’x12
Koto Brewing, Twin Falls, Idaho- 3’x4’