This is 1852 Buchanan my grandfather’s childhood home. He was raised in Japantown San Francisco, an immigrant ghetto where many Issei (first generation Japanese American immigrants) settled to start a life in the US. Born in 1934, my grandfather lived here throughout his childhood, re-established a home here after he and his family were separated and imprisoned at Topaz during the war, and after moving to San Rafael with my grandmother in the late 50s, witnessed the erasure of the Japantown during the wake of urban renewal. Today the community is a remnant of what it once was, it’s community members dispersed throughout the Bay Area and suburbs of the US, but it’s story lives on in the families whose ancestors used to call it home.
This textile collage is part of a greater body of work studying landscapes that are rooted in my own identity as a half Filipino and half Japanese American. By studying the landscapes of my past I hope to bring a greater clarity of understanding myself. Although, I’ve never lived in Japantown, I see the making of this piece as a way of building my own relationship with the space. I asked my grandparents what colors they tied to their own Japanese American Heritage, they immediately responded with black, red and blue. I’ve always wondered why I to had an affinity for these colors in much of my work, I’d like to think this affinity is based in innate ties to my own Japanese ancestry. So here they are again though not as colors I seem to just like but as colors sharing the story of a Japanese American home.
“If you know your people’s history, you know yourself ”
