JC
LJ World talks with Emily Hanako Momohara, a mixed artist and graduate student from Kansas University who has spent the past six years photographing the remains of various internment camp sites. She discusses the motivation behind her art.

Instead of dwelling on her three years at Minidoka — starting in 1942, when she was 15 — her grandmother “provided the American dream” for her children, Momohara said. It wasn’t until college that Momohara began to pick up more details about her grandmother’s experience and to learn more about the internment camps in general.

Roger Shimomura, a recently retired KU art professor who will chair Momohara’s thesis committee, said her passion for the subject was evident in her internment camp photos.

“She’s a really devoted person to the cause of not only issues of having to do with internment, but also issues of being biracial,” Shimomura said. “These are the things she’s politically active in herself, and therefore they consume her interests in her studio as well.”