20 years ago today the Berlin Wall fell after having divided East and West Germany since 1961. I remember marveling at the fragments that my family brought home and framed. At the time I had just returned to Chicago from Los Angeles and was focusing on getting accepted to SAIC, The School of The Art Insitute of Chicago, where several of my family members, including my parents, had attended.
The fall of The Berlin Wall, November 9, 1989
My Great-Uncle, Shinkichi Tajiri, had also attended SAIC on the GI Bill after WWII. This was after he fought as a decorated US Soldier in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team with his brothers Jim, Tom and my Grandfather, Vincent Tajiri, and before he expatriated to Europe, where he spent the remainder of his life.
Rubble from the Berlin Wall
Like many young Americans in the 1940's, my grandfather and his brothers were fiercely American. They were born in Los Angeles, grew up speaking English and had faith in their government. Like many Nisei (first generation Japanese Americans), however, he and his siblings were classified as "4C" or "Enemy Aliens" after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (which ironically fell on Shinkichi's 18th birthday). Nonetheless, they still fought for their country, even while their family was interned by the U.S. Government in Arizona at the Poston "Relocation" internment camp and their family property, real estate and home were confiscated by the U.S. Government, never to be returned.
Barracks at Poston, the interment camp built by the U.S. Government on a former Native American Reservation to house Japanese American civilian families for the duration of WWII
U.S. Government Issues Instructions to Japanese Americans re: "relocation" to internment camps
Although the U.S. Government initially segregated the 442nd due to suspicion based on their Japanese heritage, they became the most highly decorated military unit in the history of the United States Armed Forces, including 21 Medal of Honor recipients. Despite this fact the soldiers of the 442nd experienced intense racism upon returning home to the U.S. and were denied jobs and homes due to their race. Even other Asians did not want to be mistaken as Japanese during this time, lest they also experience ostracization.
Japanese American shop owner declares citizenship the day after Pearl Harbor in a futile attempt to avoid racism, Unknown Photographer
Naturally disillusioned by all of this Shinkichi chose to leave this country and returned to Europe where he could live and pursue his career in art in a (somewhat) less racist environment. In 1969 his travels brought him to West Berlin and to the Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate. As someone who had experienced, on a very personal level, what it felt like to be segregated, ostracized, trapped and forbidden in his own country, he must have felt a special affinity to the significance of the wall and the political situation at the time.
Brandenburg gate, 1969, Unknown Photographer
He began a photo project that lasted several months and documented every kilometer of the inhabited areas near the wall in 550 black and white photographs. He could not have known the significance of this project or what would become of the wall over the years. His photographs show the wall and its surroundings in its "clean" state, in 1969, before it was covered in the colorful graffiti it became known for, and before its fall in 1989. The project was shelved for 30 years before interest in it was renewed.
Excerpt from "The Berlin Wall", Shinkichi Tajiri
During those many years his art career soared and he became known for many different works, most notably his "knots" which have symbolized, among other things, a "coming together" of separate forces; an ironic or perhaps idealized concept considering the subtexts of these significant experiences early in his life. Through his many "knot" sculptures he symbolically reunited what was, in his life, divided. The walls that kept him emotionally separate from his family and place of birth would not fall away before his death, like the Berlin Wall. But in his work he found a way to bind them together.
"Friendship Knot", Shinkichi Tajiri (Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, CA)
Shinkichi passed away earlier this year. I saw him one last time in January. We discussed this project and we spoke about ways to promote the book and the collection of original photographs. He was ill at the time but hanging on fiercely for many reasons, the completion of projects among them. Or perhaps, it was the continual addition of projects that gave him new reasons to continue hanging on.
Either way I have come to understand the many roles that art plays in our lives. That we, as visual, auditory, sensual creatures, find ways to communicate and create solidarity through creative expression. To leave our mark on the world and to let others know, in good times and bad, that they too are not alone.
- Lily Tomlin as Edith Ann
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