An Afternoon of Music, Theatre, Dance, and RECLAMATION

Reclaiming and healing the original site of the “Portland Assembly Center”—now the EXPO Center —where nearly 4,000 Japanese Americans were unjustly incarcerated.

Resonance Ensemble joins Vanport Mosaic, artist Chisao Hata, and survivors of Japanese-American incarceration and their descendants, to acknowledge the little-known history of the Portland Expo Center and honor the survival and persistence of Japanese Americans in our region.

As part of the 10th Vanport Mosaic Festival, this event will activate the former WWII-era assembly center with historical photographs and video projections, a communal altarpiece, and musical and theatrical offerings — including new site-specific works conceived by Hata. In tandem with Vanport Mosaic’s celebration of a decade of memory activism, this afternoon will be recorded for an ongoing digital memorial as we aim to recognize and ring out the whole of this space in sound, word, movement, and song.