Veiled Inscriptions by Dean K. Terasaki

Issue 177

Veiled Inscriptions is a body of work created by Dean Terasaki. A collection of letters, hidden in a wall for almost 70 years, is the source material for these photomontages. The letters were requests mailed by Japanese Americans who were illegally removed from their homes and forced into War Relocation Authority incarceration camps during World War II. These hand-written notes came from all ten of the WRA camps and were sent to a Japanese American business in Denver, Colorado, that was still functioning during the war. That business, T.K. Pharmacy, was owned and operated by Terasaki’s uncles.

Terasaki is on a journey to photograph all of the incarceration camp sites. His photomontages reunite the T.K. Pharmacy letters with the locations where they were written. He creates a haunting narrative about loss and isolation. The letters’ often polite tone belies the awful circumstance of the camps. Beyond their historical value, Terasaki sees the montaged T.K. Pharmacy letters as having a deep connection to his own Japanese American experience. The layered visual content is very much like the mystery of identity for many immigrant families. That experience can have both a push toward and a pull away from a community. It is routinely transformational and continually reveals itself.

The incarceration sites shown here, though, are being lost to time and indifference. The individuals who wrote these letters, certainly, have all passed on. These photomontages are an homage to the ancestors and the stories of the Japanese American community. The letters themselves are important both for what they request – hair dye, stomach remedies, dignity – and as a compelling reminder about the fragility of human rights amidst social disruption.

Letters are courtesy of the T.K. Pharmacy Collection, Densho.

Dean K. Terasaki (he/him) lives and works in Phoeniz, Arizona.
deanterasaki.xyz | @silvers_dk