Sophie is looking forward to travelling to Aotearoa New Zealand in January on the Capital Artist Patron Organisation Allinsure Emerging Artist Award grant to visit ArchivesNZ to research the people interned in New Zealand as ‘Japanese enemy aliens’ and connect with WYCMN creatives there. The internees included settler families from Tonga and Thai students. Thank you CAPO and Allinsure for supporting this project!
Historic images from University of Auckland Archives, National Archives of Australia and ArchivesNZ, combined with tapa, paua shell and Pacific Ocean. Tapa bush grows in Japan and Tonga, and is used in similar was in both places: to create paper and fabric. Abelone is another organism connecting multiple places of settlement across the Pacific. And of course, the moana connects us all. The quote ‘forget everything’ was the instruction to witnesses of the plane crash in which 11 of the 22 internees, men women and children, were killed, cited in Judith Bennett’s, “After the Plane Crashed: Reactions to the Deaths of Japanese World War Two Internees at Whenuapai, New Zealand.” 南太平洋から見る日本研究: 歴史, 政治, 文学, 芸術 (2018): 163-170.
