JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
The Washington State Fair opens Friday, where people will be able to ride roller coasters, eat caramel apples and see live music. But the fairground has a dark history. During World War II, thousands of Japanese Americans were incarcerated there. And this year for the first time, there's a new memorial at the fair that commemorates that history. KUOW's Natalie Newcomb went to a preview for survivors and descendants and has the story.
NATALIE NEWCOMB, BYLINE: The memorial consists of a gallery and museum exhibit inside the fair's grandstand. Close to where they sell concessions, there is an illuminated white wall with the names of more than 7,500 people who passed through here. Most of them were American citizens. Alice Hikido, who is 91, and her sister Mary Abo, who is 84, find their own names, along with their mother and brothers.
ALICE HIKIDO: It makes me feel as though they're not forgotten.
NEWCOMB: There are digital interactive panels that explain the history of the fairgrounds and play oral accounts of survivors, one of them from Abo.
HIKIDO: Well, Mary has a story here, so that's great. She...
NEWCOMB: Oh. Your story's up here.
HIKIDO: Yeah. Yeah.
MARY ABO: Yeah.
HIKIDO: Yeah, right.
NEWCOMB: Oh. Let's go take a look at it.
Abo was 2 years old and Hikido was 9 years old when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Their family was forcibly removed from their home in Juneau, Alaska, and incarcerated at the Washington State Fairgrounds.
ABO: We had nothing to do with this conflict, but just because we looked like the enemy, we were treated like the enemy.
NEWCOMB: This was the first stop for thousands of Japanese Americans on their way to other long-term camps like Minidoka in Idaho.
EILEEN LAMPHERE: You talk about cruel. You talk about demeaning, inhumane ways of forcing people to live.
NEWCOMB: Eileen Lamphere is an organizer of the gallery. Her family was sent to the camp before she was born. She shows me a replica of an eight-by-10 horse stall where many families at the fairground were forced to sleep. An atmospheric track plays in the background to stimulate what it was like to live here.
LAMPHERE: If someone were to cough at unit A, you could hear it all the way down to unit 10, right? Babies crying in unit eight - everybody can hear because there was that gap in the ceiling.
NEWCOMB: For Mary Abo and Alice Hikido, the memorial and the fairgrounds are a contradiction. It's a place to have fun. But it was also a place where Americans were stripped of their rights based on their Japanese heritage. They hope that fairgoers will take a moment from the festivities to reflect on this history. Hikido says there are a lot of lessons here for the current generation.
HIKIDO: To have an awareness of people standing up for and speaking out for social justice and so things that happened once before don't happen again.
NEWCOMB: The Remembrance Gallery opens to the public Friday.
For NPR News, I'm Natalie Newcomb at the Washington State Fairgrounds. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.