The Tadaima community archive
Welcome to the Tadaima Community Archive! To enter the archive, click here.
The archive is a space to share photos, stories, artifacts, and memories from your family, your community, and your own life.
We envision this archive as a place to tell stories from our Nikkei community alongside and in conversation with Pilgrimage programming. What memories do you have of learning about “camp” from growing up? Is there a photograph or object in your home that brings you back to a specific time with or memory about your family? What does “Pilgrimage” mean to you? What stories or memories were you reminded of from this week’s themed programming?
A few guidelines for your submission, in the form of questions for you to answer:
What? If submitting a photo, an object, a video, etc., please explain what it is/what we are looking at.
Who? Who is in this photo? Who is connected to this object? How do you figure into this story?
Where? Where did this image or story take place? Where does this story or memory come from?
How? How did you find this photo, artifact, memory?
How do you know what you know about this story, photo, artifact, etc.?
Do you have questions about this memory or this photo, this artifact, this story?
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This is also a space where you can share your responses to the prompts provided by Brynn Saito for the “Dear –” project. Brynn’s prompts will be posted on Thursday each week and, if you’d like to share your responses with the community and with Brynn, please submit them to the archive.
Responding to one of Brynn’s prompts, telling your story and/or the story behind the image, artifact, or memory you are archiving can take any form that feels right to you—prose, poetry, a photo essay, a letter, a video, a song, to name just a few examples.
As a reminder, this Community Archive is a public undertaking—by the public and for the public. Please ensure that you have permission to share any and all images and stories. Please reach out with any questions or concerns.
Community Archive entries should be emailed to jampilgrimages@gmail.com. They will be posted in the archive (here) within 48 hours of being received.
We are so looking forward to building this Community Archive—and telling our stories—together.
With gratitude,
Erin & The Tadaima Team
“Dear —” prompts from Brynn Saito
#DearAncestors
Week 1: Immigration & Arrival Histories
Prompt: Conjuring Ancestors. Imagine your elders or ancestors arriving to the United States. Picture a specific person in your family lineage (this person could be you) encountering America for the first time. Write a letter to that person; wonder about them; ask them everything you’ve never asked before; tell them about you, your life.
Week 2: Prewar & Forced Removal
Prompt: Re-grounding in Breath, Body & Place. When we turn toward history, we confront the racist images and narratives that propelled official policies and acts of state violence. Some of us are experiencing anti-Asian racism in the midst of this global pandemic. Many of us are reckoning with the racist propaganda, symbols, and narratives that have led to the oppression of African Americans and other people of color in the U.S. To counter these messages, write a poem that begins with “I come from…” Describe and list the people, communities, and/or places and landscapes that have made your life possible. Be specific; use all of your senses. Re-ground yourself in the many circles of life surrounding you, lifting you, bringing you breath and strength.
Week 3: Forced Removal, Incarceration, Movement (1941-1943)
Prompt: Letters from the Stone. When visiting Manzanar with my parents, I remember wandering the landscape, struck by the scatterings of stones amidst the desert brush. I started to wonder what the stones would say if they could speak—an imaginative act that led to the writing of “persona” poems from the point of view of a stone. (Read one here.) The invitation: imagine life from the point of view of an element in the landscapes where our elders were confined—the stone, the sage, the mountain. Write a letter from the point of view of that element, using the first person “I” voice. Perhaps the letter is written to one of your relatives in camp, perhaps it’s written to you, in the present.
Week 4: A Question of Loyalty
Prompt: Letters to Photographs. Some of the letters I wrote for the “Dear—” project began with photographs. This letter, to my grandfather, was inspired by his image. In it, I wonder about his time in the Military Intelligence Services; I wonder how he thought about loyalty, service, resistance, and freedom. Find a photograph—perhaps a photo of someone who has passed on—and write a letter to the photograph. Begin with description then let your imagination take over. What feelings and questions does the image spark in you?
Week 5: What is Citizenship?
Prompt: Homelands. What does it mean to belong to a country, a people, a place? Write a letter to your homeland, wherever this may be for you. Perhaps it’s a love letter, or a letter of reckoning, or a letter of longing for an imagined country. See “Dear America” by Rachel Eliza Griffiths and “Letter to America” by Traci Brimhall for examples.
Week 6: Resettlement
Prompt: Eternal Returns. Write a letter to someone who has returned home after years of confinement. This could be someone specific in your family, an elder, or a grandparent who has passed on. This could be a returning citizen, someone formerly incarcerated who is making a new life for themselves. What do you want them to know? What do you want to say? Say it, from your heart.
Week 7: Nikkei Incarceration Abroad
Prompt: Documentary Poetry. Poetry that relies on research, testimonies, or historical documents as a point of inspiration is often called “documentary poetry.” As you move through this module, take note of new learnings and create from those a documentary poem—a poem that incorporates facts, quotes, or first-hand testimonies of the experiences of Nikkei incarcerated abroad. (Explore these topics at places like Densho.org, the Canadian Encyclopedia, and Australian news stories.)
Week 8: End of the War to Redress
Prompt: Letters to Justice, Letters to Peace. “Peace, I have feared you, hated you… where are the stone lists who have died in your name?” These lines are from a poem called “To Peace” by Suzanne Gardinier (scroll down here for the full poem). The invitation: write a letter to an abstract concept like justice, peace, power, forgiveness, etc. In the face of these histories, what will you say? What do you want to say to power, to justice, to peace?
Week 9: Intergenerational Trauma, Reconciliatory History, Nikkei Identities
Prompt: Imagining Future Ancestors. Write a letter to someone in the future—an unborn daughter, the next generation, your future great grandson. You are a future ancestor; what do you want your descendants to know? What do you want to say about this moment? What memories or knowledges do you want them to carry? What must be released?