Thread by @sharkfinney

Today hundreds are gathered at the San Bruno @SFBART station for the unveiling of the Tanforan Assembly Center Memorial—honoring the thousands of Japanese American Bay Area residents incarcerated here during WWII. @KQEDnews #stoprepeatinghistory

San Bruno’s Tanforan Racetrack, now a mall, was converted into a temporary detention center after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Between April and October 1942, Japanese Americans were forced from their homes around the Bay and incarcerated here for months.

📷: Dorothea Lange

It was just the first stop—After months at Tanforan, Japanese Americans were transferred to internment camps in the interior of the county. Many Bay Area residents were sent to Topaz, in Utah, until the end of the war.

📷 of Topaz: J. William Marriott Library & @DenshoProject

The memorial includes a bronze statue of the Mochida sisters, whose family’s departure from Hayward was memorialized by Dorothea Lange. There are also panels with the names of people who were incarcerated here and model of the horses halls that people were made to sleep in.

More from yesterday: the bronze statue of the Mochida sisters at the Bart plaza was unveiled by members of the Tanforan Assembly Center Memorial Committee, and survivors of the detention center (wearing red carnations).

Emiko Katsumoto's husband was incarcerated at Tanforan and she came to the unveiling on his behalf. She says that as people pass this plaza in the years to come, she hopes they'll pick something up about what Japanese Americans in the Bay Area went through during WWII.

🔊:

There are a lot ways to learn about this history here in the Bay. Here are two to check out:

🔸Visit the Exclusion exhibit in the Presidio: bit.ly/2kRswsh

🔸Listen to @ebyesterday's episode on the legal case challenging the incarceration bit.ly/3Kpooac