Web Magazine Online

Previous | Web Magazine | Next

By Richard Wang "Are You a Student?" My Adventures at the Japanese American National Museum On a Wednesday morning, the streets of Little Tokyo are not exactly bustling. Five minutes away, cars fill the streets, horns cloud the air, and people walk across the lanes without much regard for safety. But here in Little Tokyo, the streets are smoother, shoppers are few, parking is plenty, and silence is abundant. Where two roads intersect at less than a 90 degree angle, surrounded by metal and glass stores and shops, sits a faded brick building. Its three stories seem stunted and its stocky demeanor poses no threat to its gleaming neighbors. Across the street, white boards announce the construction of a new building, one with reinforced iron beams twisted into sexy curves, large glass windows, high ceilings and wide open spaces. This new fare is billed simply as Phase II of the Japanese American National Museum. Phase I is easy to miss. No large banners hang off its walls and dangle into the street. The entrance is not a masterpiece of marble and brass preceded by a hundred steps. Its front door is simple, though its handles are well worn. The man behind a great white desk looks at me expectantly. I ask for admission and without my telling him, he charges me the price of a student. Two exhibits are displayed at the museum. The first is about the Japanese American internment. Down a set of steps, a well lit room displays the artwork of Kenjiro Nomura. Something seems strange about the artwork of an internment camp. Wasn't it a time of misery, of sadness, betrayal, and fear? Why would someone want to paint it? No one knows the answers to this question. A leaflet mentions that Nomura never expected these paintings to be exhibited, but then again, he was an artist after all. A volunteer spots me looking at models of the barracks at Manzanar. "Are you doing a project for a class?" she asks, evidently assuming I was a student. "Yes, I am," I respond. "Were your parents interned at the camps?" she continues, assuming I was Japanese American. "No, actually, I'm Taiwanese." "Oh, Taiwanese! You know, the Chinese were excluded!" she launches into a monologue about the difference between Chinese and Japanese diaspora. She seems excited, though slightly puzzled, that I would be interested in the internment display. Later, she tells me about the little details about Minidoka, where she was interned. "We actually had outhouses. Do you know what outhouses are?" she asks, suddenly aware of my age. "Yeah, of course," I tell her. "Well, we didn't get running water until a year later." I am reminded of a scene from Renee Tajima-Pena's film, "My America," where a clip from an American propaganda movie explicates the wonderful benefits Japanese Americans were getting in their camps -- such as bath tubs. How odd they had bath tubs with no running water. The volunteer goes off and leaves me to my wanderings. Most of the information on the walls, I have read in books, heard in lectures, or researched in preparation for my own presentations. An upward flight of stairs leads to an exhibition on sumo wrestling. Outside the exhibit, in the hallway, I spot a guestbook. A mix of comments decorate the pages. "The exhibitions lack imagination," rants one person. "Sumo is cool" writes another. "I really like origami" scribbles a child. While I am flipping through the pages, a middle-aged man dressed in a black suit asks me if I'm a student. I'm beginning to wonder if there's a sign on my forehead or something equally visible. "Yes, at UCLA," I respond. "You have a project due tomorrow?" he continues. "Yup." "You better take this," he says while handing me a packet of papers. He also informs me of a classmate of mine downstairs. At least, he assumes that person is my classmate. Looking through the packet, I find a history -- A to Z -- of Japanese American history. Helpful, but not essential. The sumo wrestling exhibit is considerably larger. A strange counterbalance to the internment camps downstairs. Pictures line the walls with captions explaining the people, schools, dress, and history of sumotori in America. Most of the information I have heard before in various documentaries and late night showings of sumo wrestling. The only interesting facts I find are about the onnazumo: women sumotori who were considered a form of lightweight entertainment. I also found out about Kahuku high school, the only school in the United States to have a sumo wrestling team. The only connection with the downstairs exhibit I find is a fact about all active sumo in the United States and Hawaii getting picked up and interned by the FBI. No trial or charges were ever given. But before I can digest this, a short man wearing a blue button down shirt asks me if I'm a student. I laughed about it on the way out. Walking through the hallway again, passing by a picture of Phase II, I realized that I had not learned very many things from the museum. What I did realize were the assumptions I and others had about nearly everything that happened that day -- from the way a museum should look to the belief students my age did not know what outhouses were. It's funny what a trip to the museum can give you. I went in search of knowledge, interesting facts, and daunting architecture. What I found was something about human nature. Namely, we all seem to expect something in what we see. Rarely, if ever, do we attend to things with no prior assumptions. Driving past the museum on the way home, I thought that the museum no longer seemed out of place. Its brick walls seemed perfectly adequate. The entrance is hospitable and non-intimidating. And its architecture seems wholly unassuming. Standing on the funny shaped corner, the Japanese American National Museum is simply a collection of stuff on the Japanese American experience. Nothing too spectacular, nothing too exotic. It's as American as anything gets. (Richard Wang is a Senior majoring in Biology.)