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Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month: KEVIN MIYAZAKI

Today we highlight Milwaukee-based photographer and artist Kevin Miyazaki, and his book A Guide to Modern Camp Homes: 10 New Models & Plans for Persons of Japanese Ancestry. Our copy was published in 2024, but editions were also released in 2013, and 2018. Miyazaki’s statement on the final page characterizes the book as “a fictional publication containing only facts.” Styled after Sears Roebuck catalogues of the time, the optimistic salesmanship stands in harsh contrast to both the bleak descriptions of the camps, where Japanese Americans were forcibly relocated during World War II, and the heavy legacy of our nation’s human rights abuses. In a section titled Home Design, the copy assures: “Constructed mainly from wood and tar paper, your new home is designed to conform to international law.”

The book draws extensively from archival materials. Photographs come from the catalogues of the Library of Congress and include documentary work by Ansel Adams, Clem Albers, Fred Clark, Hikaru Iwasaki, Dorothea Lange, Tom Parker and Francis Stewart. First person testimonials are from Densho, a public history project documenting and preserving oral histories and primary source materials related to the unjust incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. Libby and Patrick Castro of LP/ws Design Studio crafted the architectural designs.

Copies of A Guide to Modern Camp Homes are available for purchase through the Japanese American National Museum.

See more AAPI Month posts!

--Amanda, Special Collections Graduate Intern