Living Questions Mural: Fukuoka #17

Location: Takeo, Saga Prefecture, Japan. Mixed media. 2022. In October 2022, I traveled to Ōmuta, Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan, in search of Fukuoka #17, a prisoner of war (POW) camp that held Allied prisoners during World War II, and forced prisoners to operate coal and zinc mines. My intention was to find a connection, and examine the differences between Fukuoka #17, and Manzanar Concentration Camp located in California and operating at the same time. Manzanar was a concentration camp where thousands of Japanese, Japanese Americans and others were incarcerated en masse by the U.S. government under executive order 9066, a notoriously racist abuse of power in a long history of Anti-Asian government policy. The connection I found between the Japanese and American camps is that empire-building, regardless of cultural differences, is contingent upon the mass exploitation and scapegoating of any people, and assigns value to human lives in false hierarchies to justify racist discrimination in the form of mass incarceration and enslavement.

Living Questions is a visual examination of the moral gray areas between corporate slavery and preventative confinement in the United States and Japan from an anti-capitalist perspective. What incarceration practices and justifications of slavery or sub-human status do both countries share? What role does fear play in justifying violence and abuse? Who is allowed to be included in history and why? Who are the unseen victims of industrialization? What are the justifications for tolerating corporate or governmental abuses of power over people?