On a spring day, people gather where their Japanese American forebears were once forced to live.

They are here to honor James Hatsuaki Wakasa, an immigrant.

His life was silenced by a bullet 80 years ago at age 63.

"It is up to us in this moment and in this place

who has the responsibility of paying attention to his life and death.

We say in this moment because we as a nation continue to be affected

by the racial karma of America."

The gathered offer handmade flowers

to mark the place where Wakasa drew his last breath...

Internees had done the same 80 years ago.

Wakasa is remembered again.

December 1941...

Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor

triggers the United States' entry into World War II.

Deemed as a threat to national security,

more than 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry are forcibly uprooted by the US government.

They were incarcerated in ten internment camps, scattered across the country.

Topaz camp was in the desert in central Utah.

Between 1942 to 1945, about 11,000 people were confined behind its barbed wire.

The living conditions were harsh: there was the unforgiving arid climate,

lack of running water and necessity of growing food on poor soil...

The site, now a national historic landmark, holds remnants of the internees' daily life.

In 1943, a funeral was held for Wakasa inside the camp.

Over 2,000 people mourned his death.

That included the women who made large floral wreaths of paper.

They had no access to fresh flowers.

So, this is the building where Mr. Wakasa lived before he was rounded up

and taken to Tanforan, the racetrack, which was turned into a concentration camp.

Nancy Ukai has been researching Wakasa's life and death.

It is a part of the former journalist's digital history project, called "50 Objects."

The project explores the human toll of camp-life through the curation of internees' personal items.

This is a quilt. This is a pocket watch.

These are "geta," Japanese wooden slippers made in the Santa Fe camp by an "Issei" immigrant for his child.

Nancy has a distant memory relating to Wakasa.

I was a child, probably 9 or 10,

and I don't know why I remember it, but it was at a kitchen table.

My mother got very upset and said, "They didn't have to kill him. He was deaf."

And for some reason I remember that.

And that's the first time I heard his name.

So, this is my mother, my father, my father's sister, my father's sister, my aunt...

Almost all her relatives were impounded at Topaz.

But Nancy, born after the war, would only learn about her family's dark history, much later.

I'm so regretful now.

We just weren't, we were kids.

We weren't that interested in old people and our parents.

I didn't learn about the camps in school.

My knowledge as a child and growing up was fragmentary.

After university, Nancy moved to Japan, landing a job as a journalist.

She realized the importance of pursuing the truth...

not just for her profession but for her own identity, too.

One of the reasons I went to Japan and I lived there for 14 years -

was to gain a sense of my ancestry and to understand why I grew up feeling ashamed

or confused about my racial identity.

And part of that has to do, I am sure with not only being a despised minority - a person of color in the United States -

but also this camp experience which was kind of people talked about not in a clear, defiant way.

Feeling the need to face this buried history,

Nancy began interviewing camp survivors and their descendants to discover

as well as document their stories.

But by then, her mother Fumiko had passed away.

It's our duty to talk to people and try and learn what happened

because it's too late for me to talk to my own parents.

And also to just to think about how we as a Japanese American community

can take responsibility for interpreting our own history.

Nancy's research on Wakasa is extensive, and ongoing...

This is the National Archive file about Mr. Wakasa.

The first page says deceased.

She has accumulated hundreds of pages of wartime government and military records.

They reveal that Hatsuaki Wakasa was born in 1880

in Japan's Ishikawa prefecture and immigrated to the US in 1903, at the age of 23.

He worked mainly as a chef in various cities

...and the last being San Francisco.

When Wakasa was incarcerated in Topaz in 1942, he was single with no known family.

He lived in a barrack at Block 36.

April 11, 1943, around 7:30 in the evening.

Wakasa was walking along the barbed wire fence when a watchtower sentry fired a shot....

The bullet struck him in the chest, leaving him dead.

Nancy recently tracked down a witness to the incident.

Ron Kiino was three and half years old at the time.

We were by the guard tower and we were playing and an elderly gentleman walked out.

The guard yelled something, but I don't remember, but I remember the shots.

The shot scares you.

Just kind of frightens you.

So, it's like a firecracker going off, you know, right next to you.

Because I do remember being at a distance where I see the person falling to the ground.

And I personally think the trauma of the shot,

for myself as a young child that never left my memory bank.

The sentry was court-martialed.

He testified that Wakasa ignored his orders to stop...

and "started to climb the fence" to escape.

The court found his act justifiable, and the soldier was "honorably acquitted."

This verdict was never announced or relayed to the internees...

The killing shocked the residents to the core.

Many of them said "he was simply out on a walk with his dog."

Eight days later, they were allowed to hold his funeral.

But not on the spot where he died.

People of all ages attended the funeral.

I think all people at that time realized we're not safe.

We can be shot. And this is unfair and we have no rights.

Nancy discovered that the "Issei" - the first-generation men who organized the funeral -

also erected a monument where Wakasa had fallen.

This caused a storm...

In a letter, the top camp official explained to Washington

that he never permitted the internees to erect any monument...

and that he commanded them to tear it down, emphasizing the rocks had been removed.

It was ordered to be taken down and there is no trace of it left.

So, I thought, oh, it's been demolished.

When Nancy was writing about the incident in 2020,

Black Lives Matter demonstrations were raging across the country.

Historical statues of Confederate generals that have stood for decades

have been toppled during mass uprisings.

It made me think, our community had a monument that wasn't allowed to exist.

It was built, but then it was demolished, I thought, to bury the history.

She titled her online feature on Wakasa;

"The Demolished Monument"

...and she inserted a detailed diagram of the scene of the killing,

which was rendered on the day after the incident.

It indicated the exact location of Wakasa's death.

The person who drew this diagram went to the watchtower.

I put the circle in the colors here,

but they walked with a measuring tape along the barbed wire fence,

and then the blood spot was still there.

And they measured this distance and found it to be 943 feet and six inches.

And the blood spot was about 4 to 5 feet from the fence.

This caught the immediate attention of a team of two archeologists.

Mary Farrell and her partner who research internment camps headed to the site.

We went there straight away and measured out the same distance as on the map.

So, when we got there, we saw this almost completely buried rock.

The exposed rock measured about 5 centimeters above the ground,

and extended 90 centimeters in length.

We thought that was it, that must be it.

We were pretty astonished that instead of taking it away,

the people who had built it had simply buried it.

The following year, the Topaz Museum, which owns the land, excavated the relic.

The natural boulder weighs about one ton and is 150 centimeters-wide.

It had no discernible writing or carving on its surface...

It now sits temporarily at a courtyard in the museum.

The "Issei" were mourning and angry and resisting orders not to remember their friend, the monument,

which is an example of buried history - it's finally bringing out some of the memories

and truths of people who lived through it.

That was just a miracle.

Delta, the nearest city to the former camp site... is home to the museum.

It is dedicated to preserving the history of internment.

This is just a simulation of a room in Topaz would look like.

The museum officially opened in 2017.

But it evolved out of a local history project

initiated by former teacher Jane Beckwith and her students, way back in the 1980s.

We started interviewing people that worked at Topaz.

They had saved mementos from their friends that they met at Topaz.

Over the ensuing 4 decades, all kinds of artifacts were donated to the project,

forming the museum's collection.

The museum is a big promoter of school tours.

What we are trying to show is that what happened to the Japanese Americans was wrong,

that it should not have happened.

Despite the fact that people were talking about national security,

we felt it was mostly prejudice.

With the discovery of the monument stone, the museum board and the Japanese American community

decide to hold a public memorial on the 80th anniversary of Wakasa's death.

Hello!

Before the anniversary, Nancy travels to Japan for further research on Wakasa's life before his departure for the US.

She heads to his hometown.

It's like time-traveling.

Nancy is looking for leads on living relatives...

She also wants to get a sense of his roots.

I am just trying to imagine little Hatsuaki Wakasa running around here,

and being an innocent little boy, but having the dream to go abroad.

Supportive town officials show Nancy an old district that may hold clues to Wakasa's past.

They also check lists of graduates from the local elementary school.

But they come up empty handed.

Residents, curious about Nancy's research, organize a talk event.

When I was little, my mother said at a dinner table one night

and she said "They didn't have to kill him."

And she was very upset, so I never forgot that.

It's very special for me to be here,

and think of my mother for telling me that story which is bringing me here today.

I'm just very moved to be here today.

And I really thank you for coming.

Nancy shows the audience a drawing by an artist who was interned at Topaz at the time...

Women.. crafting flowers with paper for Wakasa's funeral.

Participants offer to make paper flowers for Nancy to take home.

I was born in 1941 during the war.
So hearing about the war makes me sad.

But knowing someone has come all this way
to search for one of our ancestors...

I am grateful.

Nancy is also given "origami" crafts made by local children.

The fact that they folded Mr. Wakasa's dog,

I can't believe that.

That's really children's heart.

It's so beautiful. Everyone will love this.

Nancy visits the town's elementary school...

Welcome to our school. Nice to meet you.

Thank you for coming all the way to Shika Town.

I was very sad to hear the story of Mr. Wakasa.

All the 5th and 4th grade students made one thousand paper cranes.

Please dedicate these cranes to Mr. Wakasa's monument.

- Here you are.
- Oh. Thank you.

A legend goes that one thousand cranes can make a dream come true.

These kids wish for world peace.

This will be the first time since 1943

that something from Ishikawa-ken went to Topaz, Utah, from the children.

I am so happy to take small pieces of beauty back to the space where he died,

from the ocean, place of beautiful water and dream to the desert.

It's an offering to his spirit and to console me and our community.

Oh, look at the jumping fish! Wonderful.

Ron Kiino who witnessed the event at 3 years old, visited Topaz in 2021.

The first time since leaving.

At the museum, he saw the photo of Wakasa's funeral.

It really, really bothered me all these years.

Did I really see something or did somebody tell me something?

It validated what I remember happened.

After the visit, he was inspired to paint what had haunted him.

The blue to me, it's all blue, comfortable, perfect situation.

But as soon as you get the black, that's evil.

This, to me, this is racism. This is bigotry.

The red, orange - the flow of blood.

That's my rage. That's my anger.

That gentleman who just got shot could have been my mom or my dad or my uncle or my aunt.

So I think that replicates to me.

That's really a family member to me.

I never forgot it.

Camp survivors, their descendants and families from across the US come together in Utah.

It's really the stone, the monument, you know.

Now this story was just forgotten and hidden for a long time.

Not only in honor of Mr. Wakasa but in honor of the "Issei"

who created the memorial as an act of protest, really.

And then were forced to bury it.

I think that we come to honor them.

Nancy returns from Japan.

All these flowers were made in the hometown of Mr. Wakasa.

And they were made by children, citizens.

And then the cranes were also made by school children.

So, we thought we would combine them.

People handcraft paper flowers, just like 80 years ago.

Many bring young family, so they can learn from the past to ensure a just future for all.

I was born there in 1944.

So I don't know too much.

And my parents didn't talk about it.

They felt very shameful.

Should have never happened again - he got killed.

And look it's all starting again, huh?

It's a terrible thing. It's happening again.

Yeah, my grandma. I just wanted to make her feel better and to help out.

We will now start the afternoon ceremony here with the stone monument.

Nancy dedicates the offerings from the children of Wakasa's hometown.

People reach out and touch the stone, as if touching the past...

and unburying its painful truth.

When we can come together peacefully and remember him,

hopefully all of us will go out into the world and bring some of that peace

and kindness and compassion to others that we need.