Dr. Midori Samson - Soundscape

Behind barbed wire and guard towers, without charge, trial, or establishment of guilt

When President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, all people of Japanese descent living on the west coast were forced to evacuate their homes and gather at relocation centers, bringing only what they could carry. They would board buses and be transferred to undisclosed rural locations, where they would live in wooden barracks indefinitely, since they were considered threats to national security. Among the incarcerated individuals, my grandmother Marjorie Julia (age eight), lived at Tule Lake Incarceration Camp. As the commemorative plaque at Tule Lake reads, 18,000 people of Japanese descent were forcibly sent there to live “Behind barbed wire and guard towers, without charge, trial, or establishment of guilt.” 

In May 2022 I took a pilgrimage from my hometown of Portland, Oregon to Tule Lake Incarceration Camp, and this work is a meditative soundscape made of sounds collected during my visit. Audio materials include prison cell white noise, keys on chain link fence, glass vodka bottle on concrete, children laughing, bird songs, and distorted music from a 1943 pro-camp War Relocation Authority propaganda film. My arrangement of these sounds focuses on contrast: with child’s play alongside aggressive interruptions, and with harmonious bird calls alongside harsh metallic clanks. Broadly, the work is meant to mimic the tuning of a radio dial, inspired by the camp’s strict ban on radios, as it was believed that incarcerees would use them for spying. 

As a Yonsei—fourth generation—descendant of Tule Lake Camp, composing this soundscape was a form of healing for me. My life is proof of the survival and resilience of my grandmother, Marjorie.