The bronze relief shows many different faces that all tell the story of how America treated its Japanese-American population during World War II.
On one side of the bronze slab, figures rush through their everyday schedules, showing the story of life in America as an immigrant.
People arrive on American shores as immigrants and run small businesses before, on the far right, boarding a train taking them to an internment camp.
The other side of the sculpture shows despair setting in as Japanese-Americans are confined to a remote camp in California’s mountains.
The sculpture’s creator, Ruth Asawa, knows the darkness and hopelessness of those times because she spent time inside an internment camp as a child.
Her piece stands in downtown San Jose as a reminder of the cruelty shown to Japanese-Americans and the resilience their community showed during that time.
Inside the camp, a soldier approaches a family inside their makeshift dwelling.
The soldier presents the family a star representing the death of one of their relatives in the United States military, adding to the collection of three stars already hanging on the family’s wall.
Two people stand over an elderly woman as she cries for her dead family member, laying their hands on her shoulders while the soldier stands in the doorway.
Outside this family’s home, four soldiers salute while another raises an American flag, under the lines of a barbed wire fence in the foreground.
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