Hiroshima Legacy Project (2019)
After graduating from Stanford University in 2018 with a degree in Engineering -Product Design, I set out to capture a project I titled the “Hiroshima Legacy Project”. Using a 4x5 View Camera the goal of this project was to document the people of smaller towns all around Hiroshima Prefecture. Given the urban migration and the aging population, lots of small towns and even small cities in Hiroshima prefecture are starting to slowly die out.
The inspiration for this project began in the summer of 2017, a day after my sister’s 12th birthday party, my grandmother Toshiko passed away in her home. Toshiko was born to Soichi and Kumayo Morimoto of Hiroshima on September 10, 1930 in Watsonville, California, where she grew up with her six siblings until World War II. In 1942, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, and the government imprisoned the Morimoto family, including teenaged Toshiko and her siblings, in concentration camps – first in Poston, Arizona, then in Tule Lake, California. After the war, the US government repatriated the Morimoto family to Hiroshima. In her memory, I wanted to create a photographic essay capturing stories and faces of Hiroshima.
