VR project explores Japanese internment

It’s been 76 years since President Franklin Roosevelt issued an executive order that formally began the internment of Japanese Americans.

An upcoming exhibit at the Japanese American National Museum will use virtual reality and other technologies to tell the stories of those who were forced to relocate internment camps. The project is slated to be completed and open to the public within two years.

Kraig Fujii, a senior majoring in media arts and practice, met Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism alumnus Kevin Tsukii when he interned at Emblematic, an entertainment company that specializes in emerging technologies. The two connected over a mutual interest in telling the stories of Japanese Americans who were in the internment camps.

“It has been something that was on both of our minds for quite some time so [I’m] kind of just really glad we kind of came together,” Tsukii said.

Many who lived through Japanese American internment firsthand are now in their 80s and 90s.

“In order for each generation to hear them frame their own stories from the source itself … we thought it was important to do everything we can right now because we have the technology to start to preserve stories,” Tsukii said.

Through VR, the exhibit will place each patron into the life of an interned person and take them through their experience in the camps.

“For example, you would see soldiers come to your house and take your things or force you to leave your home,” Fujii said. “Actually seeing it in the VR space, it ends up having a much more emotional impact for people.”

After sorting through testimony, Fujii and Tsukii determined they wanted to base the project on the experiences of one individual: Stanley Hayami, a teenager who died at 19 during the war.

“That’s something that really spoke to me.” Tsukii said. “He [was] just a kid really interested in football, really interested in weight lifting … He’s worried about his Spanish grade, these sorts of things that [show] he’s just a kid.”

The project is based on Hayami’s diaries, which paint a picture of a young man reflecting on the injustices he experienced while navigating his teenage years and wanting to prove his patriotism.

“He’s the perfect kind of subject because he was so introspective and so reflective about what was going on around him and he was also a really artistic person,” Fujii said. “People can see his illustrations come to life and see what he was thinking and kind of get into his head during the time.”

Tsukii and Fujii reached out to JANM and applied for a National Park Service Grant to fund their project.

“We decided to apply to this grant to the National Park Service Grant because it was specifically targeted towards education about Asian American issues and specifically about and around Japanese American historical sights,” Fujii said.

They were shocked when NPS awarded them a grant for $300,000 to complete their project in a two-year window.

“In the coming months, we’re going over with the museum and seeing which exhibition space we can use,” Fujii said. “Hopefully it can be a permanent exhibition in the museum, which would be really cool.”

The grant will also go toward parts of the exhibit other than VR; Fujii and Tsukii plan to integrate augmented reality to create an experience for users at home.

“Ideally people don’t even need to visit the museum [to] still get some experience about the project,” Fujii said. “It’s kind of multi-tiered, multi-approach installation based project.”

Through the exhibit’s interactivity, the two hope to encourage people to think critically about how America historically treats minority groups.

“What I most hope for people to get from this experience is its kind of recognition about how the government has treated minorities, especially racial minorities, in the U.S.,” Fujii said.

Looking at the United State’s recent mistreatment of racial minority groups, Fujii said it isn’t difficult to imagine history repeating itself.

“It’s not a far stretch to say that something like this could happen again,” Fujii said. “I want to inform users and really inform people that this is a big moment in Asian American history and our goal would be to make sure this never happens again.”