History and Memory

A search for a non-existent image, a desire to create an image where there is none,“ leads to Rea Tajiri’s composition on recorded history and non-recorded memory. Framed by the haunting facts of the post-Pearl Harbor Japanese internment camps (which dislocated 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II), Tajiri creates a version of her family’s story through interviews and historical detail, remembering a time that many people would rather forget. This video surveys the impact of images (real images, desired images made real, and unrealized dreams) on our lives, drawing from sources such as Hollywood, U.S. Dept. of Defense films, newsreels, memories of the living, and spirits of the dead. Relics of the camps, contrasted with human efforts to forget their existence, create a sense of taxonomic insistence that these camps were indeed real.