The Yonsei Memory Project

Reviewed by: Lini Radhakrishnan 

Review date: March 4, 2025 

Site Link: https://www.yonseimemoryproject.com

Archive Links:

• https://archive.ph/W48cX (home page)
• https://archive.ph/QuSVF (Map Page)
• https://archive.ph/VTy6T (Day of Remembrance Programs Page)

Keywords: Asian Studies, Fine Arts, Performing Arts, Activism and Advocacy

Data Sources: 

• Day of Remembrance (DOR) programs from 2018 – 2024
  
  • List of Japanese American memorial sites and cultural sites on the digital Memory Map.
    
  • The News page shares information of upcoming DOR programs across the years including memory bus tours, intergenerational gathering, art activities, testimonies, cross-cultural community potluck, artist showcases, etc.

Processes:

• The DOR programs for each year from 2018 have descriptions of the programming planned across the schedule day/(s) along with images of the program poster or at times a cover page or a screenshot of a zoom event.
  
• More details about the programs in the DOR along with photographs of the activities or showcased individuals, associated local news coverage are included in the News page.
  
• The individual map sites are accompanied by photographs of the site, short descriptions and occasionally a memory practice activity.

Presentation:

The project is mainly a static repository of past DOR programs and includes a draft memory map featuring ten Japanese American memory sites and cultural sites in California’s Central Valley. The home page is a snapshot of the subpages—the project story, news, map— followed by artist collaborator bios and a contact form. The navigation bar includes an “Our Story” link that provides a short introduction to the project alongside a photograph of the two artist collaborators with the participants from the first intergenerational, arts-based gathering in 2017 and “Past Programs” includes a dropdown listing all the programs since 2018 as well as the memory map. Clicking on the images of DOR activities featured in the programs page navigates to the associated Facebook page or local news article or memorial webpage. The “News” page features more details of the DOR programming. There are also links to information for project donations and a fillable form to join the group’s mailing list. 

Digital Tools Used: 

• Tools are not disclosed. Wappalyzer results suggest that the site uses Stimulus (JavaScript frameworks), Squarespace (Ecommerce, CMS), Javascript libraries (core-js, YUI, Modernizr, Ladash) and Open Graph. Google forms are used and the map also appears to be a Google map creation.

Language:

• English

Review:

The Yonsei Memory Project, founded in 2017, is a labor of love of two artist collaborators, Nikiko Masumoto and Patricia Miye Wakida, and founder member Brynn Saito. Masumoto and Wakida both describe themselves as Yonsei, or fourth generation Japanese American, and the term effectively conveys the generational dimension in the memory preservation effort. Masumoto grows organic produce, working the same soil as her grandparents, and Wakida’s personal connection to the project is rooted in her parent’s incarceration at the Jerome and Gila River internment camps.

The Yonsei project aims to sustain conversations through arts-based inquiry that bridge the WWII incarceration of the Japanese American community with contemporary civil liberty concerns. Funding for the project came from the California State Civil Liberties Public Education Program administered by the California State Library, the Fresno Arts Council and community donations. The artist duo designed cross-cultural and intergenerational memory activities marking the Day of Remembrance (DOR) weekends, celebrated each year with events such as memory bus tours focused on memory sites including Japanese-American concentration camp sites, mindfulness walks, art, music performances, storytelling, river clean-ups and artist showcases featuring multiple genres including literature, photography and comic arts. All the organized events are connected by the common goal of conserving and disseminating memory, history and family stories with the intention of challenging existing power structures. The online sharing of the event information is very static and communicates that the DOR is primarily an in-person experience.

The DOR Program layouts are inconsistent, and some past programs demonstrate cleaner design choices such as the 2019 Gila River Program with horizontal day-wise sections containing a brief description of the activities ending with an image of the program flyer. The more recent 2024 DOR layout is arranged in vertical day-wise stacked tabs with lengthy text content, numerous static images ending with a pointless “Learn More” button that simply takes the viewer back to the top of the page. The images do not really provide any insights into the programming content. For instance, the Day Three tab includes images titled A Grain of Sand: We Are the Children, Kishi Bashi, No No Boy, etc., that provide nothing substantial about the event content. A more efficient way of organizing the Program page would be to publish the DOR flyer image and provide links to useful resources/events/performances/activities. The descriptions could be made more compact and presentable because the current endless scroll does not translate to a pleasant viewing experience. The project should consider digitizing events such as artist showcases, memory bus tours and recording the performances/talks so they can be of service to future DOR organizers and remove existing dependencies on past organizers. The digitized sources can also be evaluated for wider sharing. The ones deemed suitable could be used to enable an experiential journey to site visitors through the DOR repertoire thereby expanding the reach of the project way beyond the physical audience.

The News subpage shares information about upcoming DOR events and is much better organized, with clickable cards for each occurrence. The news text carries links to related local news coverage,site websites, or sources. Clicking on a card brings up the specific news being shared and has a pagination feature allowing the visitor to navigate to the previous or next piece. The Program page could adapt the layout from this section, bringing more consistency to the website subpages and making the page more user friendly.

Apart from the DOR programming, the other primary offering of the project is the Memory Map, which is in the draft stage. The resultant Google Map is rudimentary, with a sample showcase of ten memory sites in California’s Central Valley. For most of the sites information is sparse and probably indicates a work in progress, since the map is intended to be an edifying experience on the history of the Japanese American struggle. Currently, the Memory Map resides at the bottom of the “Past Programs” dropdown list, which is not very intuitive. Once the draft version is completed and finalized, the map should occupy its own link on the navigation bar.

The project has a noble mission with innovative programming ideas that warrant a wider audience. The community should consider ways to allow their work to reach the multitude and invite participation from communities across the country to expand the footprint of the memory project to a national scale.

How are the collaborative aspects reflected in the project?

The Yonsei Memory Project was created based on the collaborative efforts of the two artist founders, and the DOR events are designed to encourage participation from the local community. The community’s contribution in building memory practices and their memory conservation effort is the sign of a successful collaborative initiative that emphasizes the voices of the communities and generations of Japanese Americans the project wants to represent.

Do you see an opportunity to collaborate that would be helpful to the project?

The project could vastly expand its reach by considering digitizing initiatives that would make the current DOR events, memory initiatives, stories and communities accessible to a much larger audience. That level of outreach could potentially lead to multiple collaborations that could enrich their programming, invite more participation and extend their memory sites from its current restricted boundaries within Central Valley.