Lately, I have developed a deep interest in the history of Japanese immigrants in Australia. It is a history that remains little known to the general public—often forgotten, or at risk of being lost altogether. The project I am currently working on, The Past Wrongs, Future Choices, focuses on Japanese internment in Australia during World War II. In the late 19th century, many Japanese migrated to Australia in search of work and a better life. They worked as pearl divers, farmers, shopkeepers, launderers, restaurateurs, innkeepers, and photographers. These immigrants crossed the ocean to support their families and seek new opportunities. Many of them came from Wakayama, Kagoshima, Ehime, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki prefectures. Before 1901, under the Free Immigration Act, some even obtained naturalization and became Australian (British Subject) citizens. When I think about the emotions they must have felt as they left Japan—hope, anticipation, anxiety, fear—and about the challenges they faced in their new lives as immigrants, including adapting to a new language, culture, and environment, I feel a deep sense of empathy. Although I live in a different era, as a fellow Japanese who also crossed the same ocean, I strongly identify with their experience.

In 1941, with the outbreak of World War II, Japanese residents in Australia were classified as enemy aliens. They were arrested and forcibly interned in camps until the end of the war. A total of 1,141 Japanese people were interned, including naturalized citizens, those married to Japanese nationals, women, and children. Their experiences—forced removal, relocation, life in the internment camps, early release, the reorganization of the Prisoners of War Japanese Merchant seaman (PWJM), postwar release, and forced repatriation to Japan, and even those who died in internment camps—are at the core of my work. Using official records and oral histories from descendants, I weave their stories and emotions into my artwork, expressing the complex patterns of human relationships and historical memory. My participation in this project is not only a personal journey toward deeper understanding and knowledge of culture and history, but also a tribute to the earlier generations of Japanese immigrants and their descendants who contributed to the development of today’s Japanese and Nikkei communities in Australia. Through my art, I seek to share the stories of Japanese people in Australia—before, during, and after the war—and to connect people by illuminating their experiences, the ways they lived, and how they have continued to evolve to this day.