The Sign Series: Flowers
or, the Story of a Japanese American Family and a Little Something called Vitreous Marble (with a million flowers, a baby-judging contest, and some 1930s cops who learned yawara-jitsui on the off chance they would stop beating people upside the head thrown in for good measure)
It begins with a boat: the SS Gaelic.
Anna Towata recalls appearing in her first kimono as "Miss Sonoma" at the 1939 Treasure Island Exhibition, relocation to Topaz internment camp as a newlywed ...
Anna Towata, in her own words.
Anna Matsuyama Towata
Photo from Alameda Magazine, courtesy of John Towata Jr..
California Auditorium, Golden Gate International Exposition, San Francisco
SOURCE: BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY TICHNOR BROTHERS COLLECTION
Selling off the Oakland shop, May 1942
SOURCE: OAKLAND TRIBUNE
Not the cover art/fonts I would have chosen, but still. Professor Matsuyama’s book, still in print, after about 75 years…
Go Matsuyamas, it’s your wedding day. We gon’ party like it’s your wedding day. We gon’ sip Bacardi like it’s your wedding day.
A citizen at last. Damn straight.
Alameda Free Library's Claire Coustier tells a moving tale about the day her mother confronted the reality of Japanese Internment in WWII.
