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- I'm really annoyed.
I'm just.
I'm really mad. Yeah,
I just, I don't I don't feel good about it.
I feel I'm I'm very mad.
- Well, welcome again to Chino y Chicano.
I'm Enrique Cerna.
Well, coming up, my conversation
with Seattle artist Erin Shigaki about a mural
she created in 2020 for Bellevue College.
The mural, titled Never Again is Now,
depicts two Japanese American
children in a World War II incarceration camp.
It also included an informational panel
referencing the role of local businessman
Miller Freeman
in promoting
anti-Japanese sentiment during that era.
Now, after the mural was unveiled,
that reference was removed,
sparking community backlash.
Two Bellevue College administrators, president
Jerry Weber and Vice President Gail Colston Barge
eventually resigned following the decision.
Now, six years later, a rededication
of the mural is planned, but once again controversy
has emerged.
This time over a racist voicemail and questions
about why it took so long
for the college to respond.
Here now is my conversation
with artist Erin Shigaki.
I got to imagine that to some degree,
all of this stuff, it's last so long.
And the controversy around this, this mural
and still kind of going, how do you feel about it?
- I'm really annoyed.
I'm just I'm really mad.
I'm super irritated that
six years later,
this place
is taking up so much of my brain space.
You know, I'm, like, in and out of meetings,
like, having to deal with, the feelings
and desires of staff, people dealing
with the administration of the college,
not to mention,
you know, myself
and then community members who were like,
what is this going to happen?
Are we going to have a ceremony?
What's going on?
Yeah, I just I don't I don't feel good about it.
I feel I'm, I'm very mad.
- And on top of this, you had the controversy
when it was first unveiled.
What, in 2020?
We'll talk about that more.
Now here we are, 2026.
News came out.
Statement from Bellevue College.
About a racist voicemail that was left.
I, I read the text of that
racist voicemail, and it was definitely racist.
It was very profane.
It was. It was awful.
But just the fact that
that still generates that kind of hate.
It boggles the mind after all these years.
And also in this time,
especially when we're dealing with,
issues of immigration and immigrants
being detained, arrested, deported.
That's got to be
extremely irritating.
- Yeah.
And it's it's it's showing me
once again how tied our stories are,
right?
Like this kind of sentiment
where the gentleman caller,
you know, called me the J word six times
and listed a bunch of war crimes,
of Japan again, I'm American board.
And also, you know,
one of those strong echoes
that has lasted longer
than most of the other things he said
is that go back to where you're from.
Sentiment that
only white people can say, it seems like
it's just like it's you don't even make sense.
But, you know. Right. That's not an argument.
That's not an argument
that Trump or any other white person
who's saying that we are forever foreigners,
that we don't belong in this country,
that we're not doing our part.
Put out there, you know, like they don't
claim their own immigrant roots.
And they refuse
they refuse to, to accept
that we are all immigrants except indigenous folks.
You know, like, I know I'm I'm like a colonial
Japanese American immigrant.
Like, that's where my what my family is from.
I know that,
and I own that, right?
- At least as a Mexican American.
I can point to the fact that,
Mexico used to own part and part of the U.S..
- Yeah, exactly. The border. The border crossed.
The border crossed you, brother?
- I actually, I do, but I don't have it here,
right here.
But I have a hat that has,
it looks like a MAGA hat with the Trump
type of thing on it, except it says,
“Make America Mexico Again.”
- I want that hat!
Yeah, I want that.
- I'll.
I'll let you borrow it.
- Thanks...
- But let's talk about, I guess
also the response from the college.
That they did issue a statement recently,
kind of acknowledging that this racist voicemail
had been, called in
and how they also were
saying that this is not something that the college
wants represented,
connected to it and things like that.
But you were irritated about their response
or maybe their time,
how timely or and timely they responded.
- Yeah.
You know, the call came in the same night
as this press conference we had announcing,
that a permanent version
of the mural is coming onto campus.
My parents were there and some other people
from the community and I spoke and,
and I spoke
from the heart, you know, about
what happened in 2020 and how hard it was.
And then I spoke about,
how the work isn't just
for the Japanese-American community.
You know, it's like to tell how
interwoven all of these
stories of detention and incarceration
and family separation are from the start, right?
And super present today with what's going
on, you know, with Trump's ICE.
And, you know,
I thought that
the college
reacted with,
a lot of respect.
I think there are
there are some people at the college
that were surprised that Stan Takuma and I
were up there talking about these interwoven
messages, but...
- Tell me who Stan is.
- Stan Takuma is one of my activist mentors.
He's,
involved with many civil rights organizations.
Right now
we organize heavily
together with Tsuru for Solidarity,
which is a
Japanese-American group that's, working to end
detention and ICE facilities, working toward
Black reparations and working toward healing
like everyone
forgets that piece, that we need healing
from all these things that have happened.
Yeah.
So anyway, it was a great event.
And then the, the, the hate message
came in that night on the president's voicemail.
They told me they gave me
a heads up about it five days later,
and I had a chat with the president
a couple days after that.
And then they didn't put anything out
to their own community,
which is 28% Asian heritage.
13% of the staff is Asian heritage.
Yeah.
And then the next day, the 44th day,
they put out a press release
saying that this message came in.
And, you know, that they don't uphold
any of that kind of language.
And yet it is the timing. It's mostly the timing.
Like they could have just put out
those statements
right away.
As simple as they are
to protect their folks.
But the silence is deadly.
You know that, right?
Like the like staying silent.
What does that remind me of?
That reminds me of, like,
how my whole community was just rounded up
and not enough people stood up.
Yeah.
The silence of complacency,
of compliance, of like, oh, I know,
you know, like I'm going to not say anything
because I got to hold on to what's mine.
You know,
- So tell me about your conversation
with the Bellevue College president
and tell me who the college president is.
And David May. Right?
- Yeah.
His name is Doctor David May.
And,
well, I, you know, it was a
it was a good conversation.
It was a one on one Zoom. And
he he was
appropriately mortified and sorry.
And he asked me what I wanted to happen.
And, you know, one of the things was,
I think you need to tell the community
your community, the community.
You know, and then we talked about
sort of other logistical things like,
what of the Bellevue Police
found out. How many Bellevue
Police officers
are going to be at the, unveiling event.
You know,
what else do I need to feel comfortable, right.
So I just feel like.
Okay, well, you virtually had not,
ignored my number one ask.
So, I'm just left
feeling kind of unconfident.
- So what was the reasoning that you heard?
Or have you heard as to why it took him so long?
- I don't think I've heard.
I don't I don't know, I don't know what it is.
If if, if they said something about it.
- And what were the number of days
and then how long did it take again?
I'm sorry.
- It's 43.
Let's just say 40 over a month.
- Okay. Okay.
And so I take it
you've talked to them about that and still
why did why did it take so long
or have they told you that.
- We haven't we haven't had our meeting yet.
We're meeting this week.
- Yeah.
I mentioned
they're going to have a real
fun time day with you
because you look really pissed.
- So. Yeah. Have you ever seen me?
This mad?
- No, I never have, actually.
I've never seen you this mad at all.
In fact, I've never seen you where you, work.
You know, usually it's always smiling, Erin.
Who's always very positive.
The one that I know for the most part.
But, and I guess it's,
I guess in these times being.
Yeah, I would be, too.
Because it's not only the work
you do, it's what it represents.
But especially in these times.
I think you got to call this stuff out.
- Right? Yeah.
And did they think I wasn't
going to call it out?
It's like...
- I don't know. You know.
- Did you look back and
see what happened in 2020 and the media that this,
that censorship of my work garnered?
They are so lucky that
the frickin pandemic came around because, you know,
I think the story would have kept going.
It was starting to get national legs.
- Let, let let's let's go back to 2020.
Okay.
First of all, when were you
commissioned to do this work?
- I guess
it must have been at the end of 2019.
I was commissioned to put up a mural
commemorating, executive order,
the signing of
Executive 9066,
which allowed the mass incarceration
of Japanese-Americans
on the West Coast.
- And how did that
commissioning all come about?
- A group of Asian
American faculty and staff
came together and decided that they wanted
to do something to honor that day, you know, and to
provide education about it for their students.
- And how long did it take you to do the mural
or come up with the idea of the mural?
I mean, or did you pretty much know
what you wanted to do?
- Well, they knew
because I had already put
up, an almost identical version at Densho
and it, the mural
at that time consisted of a large,
bond paper output
of a very poignant Dorothea Lange photo
that she took of a family going into
one of the preliminary concentration
camps in California, Turlock, California.
I think.
And I, I had zoomed in on these
two children, a brother and sister by appearances.
We don't know their names still.
And they're very frightened faces and just
the youth of them.
- Right. Yeah.
And so you went through the process of doing this?
The the mural went up.
But what? Where in the campus was that originally?
- Right by the cafeteria.
There's a fountain there
so that there's a it's a courtyard.
It's a good, prominent place.
I also put up a banner that said
Never Again Is Now,
which is a slogan that the communities,
I think Jewish-American community uses it also.
So it's okay.
We can share a slogan.
- So it was a pretty trafficked area.
People would have seen it and it was tall.
- It was tall, like 11ft tall.
Yeah.
And and then as as
I always do, there was a piece of interpretation.
Right?
Just,
you know, maybe a roughly 11 by 17 talking about,
the Japanese-American community in Bellevue.
Just a very brief history.
And calling out the name of the so-called godfather
of Bellevue, Miller Freeman,
because he had long been an anti-Japanese agitator
on the Eastside.
And, after Pearl Harbor was bombed,
he really went in whole hog for the removal
of Japanese-American people.
- And property.
He wasn't that part of this?
- That is part of it.
It is surmised that there was
a large land grab, because all of a sudden,
you know, the the Freeman family
then owned most of what is now downtown Bellevue.
- So did they respond quickly
once that was put up
to complain about it?
Or did the college itself and its administrators
at the time decide on their own to,
eliminate that sentence from the explanation
there of the, the mural?
- It seems that the college administrators
themselves decided, because it was one of the
vice presidents herself, who walked up to it
in broad daylight with her little jar of white out
and whited it out right there.
SHe whited it out with white out.
- How long after it went up?
Did that happen?
- Oh my gosh, it was just a few days.
- Wow.
And when did you find out about that?
- I was in Tacoma at the Northwest Detention Center
at a protest.
- Very apropos.
- And one of the Bellevue College administrators,
whom I had worked with to put it up, told me,
and I was like, what?
- Oh, wow.
- Yeah.
Yeah, we were having, a Day of Remembrance
rally at the Northwest Detention Center
in solidarity with folks inside.
- Then what happened?
Would you do that after you found out about this?
Did you have the same look
that you have in your face right now?
- I was, you know,
it was hard.
I, I went through
many moments of confusion and not understanding.
I got a lot of advice from people
in the community.
About what to do.
I can't
remember what the timeline was, but we
we decided that there needed to be
a community, driven
ceremony there because
after it sort of leaked to the press
and it was, you know, that it was a good story.
The Bellevue College,
board wanted to kind of take control
of the narrative and a bunch of people helped me
get behind creating our own ceremony
where we talked about it and our survivors came
and we involved, Bellevue
College Students of Color and...
Yeah, and then I put up a new sign.
- But you were at the initial ceremony, right?
When they put it up?
- There was no ceremony.
I just put it up.
- You just put it up.
- Oh, yeah.
There was no there was no ceremony
like there's going to be this time.
It was just, you know, I eventually got.
Yeah, it was just a few thousand
bucks and me and my buddy
Alexis were on a ladder putting it up.
- So in the end, what happened
was that the administrators
involved the president at the time,
who was, Jerry Weber.
I think I get that right.
Sure. We went now. Yeah. Okay.
And the vice president, Gail Colston Barge,
ended up resigning their positions,
because of this and the outrage
that happened after that.
So how did it come about to do a rededication
and to where we are now?
Six years later, six years later,
by the way.
- Six years later.
Yeah, I had gone back and talked on campus.
When Gary, Governor
Gary Locke was the interim president,
I think he made a lot of changes on that campus.
And then I think there
were other people who have always been, behind,
behind the project.
I think there's been sort of,
a consistent call for more ethnic studies.
It's a lot of that... education has been cut
from Bellevue College, and I can't really speak
to the particulars of that.
Yeah.
So I'm not sure who actually made the push.
But I found myself invited to
put up a permanent version of it.
- So where are we now? Where?
Where is it now?
Where is the permanent version?
And where folks can see it?
On the campus.
- It's being fabricated now, and
I was thinking about
not having the unveiling ceremony
because I just felt like I was fetching
and stepping for lack of better terminology.
Some younger people won't know what that means.
Okay.
- I'm sure if they look to someone
a little older, my age range,
someone will tell them what that means. And.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but yeah, yeah.
- So yes, this this unveiling ceremony
is slated to happen on May 14th at 2 p.m..
- Are you are you saying you're not
going to be there, are you?
- No, I'm going to be there.
I agreed to be there.
- Okay.
- I was thinking of not. I was thinking of just
calling it off.
But after they finally issued this statement,
I'm going to go forward.
I'm going
and I'm going to go forward because I love
I love my community.
You know, this is a this is a
a community that was devastated
during the war, right?
Like lost property, lost,
lost their pets, lost
all of the things that they had worked for.
You know, many sense like my family
coming at the turn of the
century, right to this country
and helping to build things, like the railroad
and dig out to our tree stumps and grow produce.
But,
you know, this community, despite being
unconstitutionally rounded up and jailed for
up to three
and a half years, like my paternal family was,
made it, for the most part, made it out.
And, enough
people came back
to the Seattle area that I got to grow up
in a Japanese-American community.
It was never the same anyway, right?
But, as you know, because because you like to
you like to run with the Japanese-Americans.
It's it is a very vibrant.
- I’m a very diverse guy
that likes to be with everybody.
- Heck, yeah. We're so glad.
- Well, but yeah, you can also
see your work that is in the CID.
It's in the area that used to be the Japantown
and which again, some of your work there,
the mural that you created
there has also been
the target of people defacing it.
And it's had to be
it seems to be an ongoing thing
that we're we have to deal with this stuff.
One thing I do want to say is that
I do want to give you
a shout out, and everybody else within the,
the Japanese community, the
Japanese American community
and the Asian community overall
that have been there to support,
the Latino community and La Resistencia,
Resistencia in, in the work
that they've been doing, to, you know,
point out the issues of those
that have been incarcerated
and being detained at,
like the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma
and as well as those
that have been, you know, deported.
And let's face it, we are in a time when,
what happened back in, in the 40s
and Japanese-Americans in this country.
But, you know, Latinos in this country
have actually lost lives in this process.
So I don't think that we can forget
forget that, that part of it at all.
So I think,
I hope that people will realize that
and speak out about it because, you know, it's
this is not American, American or America.
I don't think so. Yeah. Right.
So where are we stand now?
You're going to go to the ceremony.
At least the statement has come out,
about what had happened in, after the word
got out about rededication
and that that racist voicemail, yeah.
What now?
Well, what do you want from people?
I guess it would be watching this podcast,
understanding what has happened
and why you're upset.
- I don't want anyone's pity.
I but I really want people to understand
the work that I'm doing right is to talk about
is to bring light to this piece of history
that has
consistently been
under taught,
a little bit of raised, you know, by design
of the American government,
because Americans don't like to feel bad
and don't like to learn from their mistakes,
just like Bellevue College.
And I, you know, I think we should
I think we should of, like, look at it all.
And I think that it would behoove us all
to really make that connection.
Chattel slavery,
Indian boarding
school, Japanese-American incarceration.
What's happening with Trump's ICE right now?
As you said, the Northwest Detention Center.
We're also doing work at the King
County Airport,
which is where these support flights
are flying out.
From four times a week.
More than 5000 people were deported last year.
And, you know, the King County taxpayers
are paying for it financially and morally.
Like this is on our heads
just because what didn't what went on in
Minneapolis hasn't happened yet.
Here.
Yeah.
Doesn't mean that ICE isn't here.
- Oh, ICE is here.
There's no doubt about that.
- ICE is here.
- Yeah, they are here.
And it could be you know what.
What kind of level.
And could it be like Minneapolis? Possibly.
We don't know that yet, but we could very much be.
I'm actually taken by the the poster that you have
or the behind you that says,
“What kind of ancestors do we want to be?”
I think that that's
very apropos in our conversation right now.
I also want to point out the fact that,
this country will,
is changing,
which, you know,
people of color
are going to be the majority,
which I'm sure we're not going anywhere.
So that that's something to to remember and to say
one final word.
Got any last things to say
just to the folks out there?
Come to your rededication?
- Yeah.
Let's flood the campus and and see each other
and take care of each other.
I know I was mostly angry during this recording,
but I do believe in the power of community care.
The ancestors. Oops.
Wrong hand.
And there it is.
You know, and what we are doing
now is going to determine the future,
you know, for the next generations.
And that's why it's important
for for our humanity.
- Yeah.
All right, Erin Shigaki, thank you so much
for taking the time to talk about this.
I think it's important
to talk about this because of what happened
six years ago, to remember how we even got
to this point of even a rededication,
and also what's happening,
what happened in response to this,
when the news came out
that it was going to be rededicated,
and the fact that there are still,
some hateful voices out there, unfortunately.
But if we don't address that,
I don't think we'll make any progress.
So thanks for taking the time to talk to me.
All right.
- Thanks for having me.
- All right, take a deep breath
and give me that smile that you usually have.
There you go.
- Okay, let's go to lunch now.
- Okay.
Erin Shigaki, thank you so much.
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