Seattle mural honoring WWII incarcerated Japanese Americans vandalized

SEATTLE – A mural in the Chinatown International District memorializing the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II was vandalized over the weekend, community leaders said.

It is the second time this year the mural, located on the east wall of Nihonmachi Alley just north of South Jackson Street between Sixth Avenue South and Maynard Avenue South, has been defaced.

Community members first noticed the splotches of silver spray paint defacing the mural over the weekend. By Monday, it had been cleaned by the Chinatown-International District Business Improvement Area, KING 5 reported.

The mural depicts a mother and child being forced to leave, as well as an honor roll of Japanese Americans incarcerated at the Minidoka War Relocation Center in Idaho who still volunteered to fight with the U.S. Army.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s signing of Executive Order 9066 on Feb. 19, 1942, authorized the forced removal and incarceration of more than 110,000 people of Japanese descent from the West Coast – including roughly 7,000 living in Seattle. About 70% of the people incarcerated were U.S. citizens.

“This mural stands as a reminder of our resilience and a reminder for current and future generations this can’t happen again. So when it gets defaced, and fades and written over, it shows we have to really stand up,” Tuyen Than, executive director of the CIDBIA, told KING 5.

The mural, by Seattle artist Erin Shigaki and titled “Never Again Is Now,” was created as part of a series of public artworks installed in 2018 and 2019.

In January, the mural along with another piece commemorating Japanese American incarceration on the west wall of the alley were smeared with black ink, with chapter and verse numbers for two Bible passages scrawled on one side of the alley wall. The CIDBIA hired cleaners to remove the graffiti shortly after.

Officials with the Wing Luke Museum, which sponsored the mural, are “deeply saddened” by the graffiti, said spokesperson Stephen McLean in a statement Tuesday.

“The message conveyed in the mural is enduring, and no amount of vandalism can undermine its power and eloquence,” McLean said.

The defacement does not appear to have been reported to the Seattle Police Department, said Detective Eric Muñoz, who could not find a record of a vandalism report in the area.

The mural has served as a poignant backdrop for community gatherings and protests in recent months, as Japanese American activists and other organizers seek to highlight the similarities between the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement policy and xenophobic rhetoric, and the federal government’s treatment of people of Japanese descent during World War II.

Stanley Shikuma, a member of the leadership council at Tsuru for Solidarity, a local immigrant rights organization led by Japanese Americans, said he’s not surprised that the mural had been defaced again, pointing to the Trump administration’s policies targeting diversity, equity and inclusion.

“People of color are being erased,” he said. “In that kind of social and political context … it creates a climate where people feel empowered to destroy things that tell our history and culture in the United States.