Bellevue College rededicates ‘Never Again Is Now' mural
Bellevue College rededicated its "Never Again is Now" mural as a permanent artwork on the Eastside campus Thursday, more than six years after a vice president's decision to alter the piece led to leadership resignations and a reckoning over how to acknowledge Bellevue's painful history.
Seattle artist Erin Shigaki's 11-foot-tall mural of two Japanese American children as they were taken to an incarceration camp in California was first brought to Bellevue College in 2020.
Her accompanying artist statement was modified so that a reference to "anti-Japanese agitation led by Eastside businessman Miller Freeman and others" was whited-out, along with the mention of the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans, including 60 Bellevue families, during World War II.
"What happened in 2020 in many ways has helped me define my work and my focus," Shigaki said Thursday. "It opened my eyes to the way that this history really needs to be brought to people's attention. It opened my eyes to how entrenched certain ideas are, in places like Bellevue. And I think it really made me aware of how much healing my community still has to do."
Shigaki originally brought her art, a wheat-paste mural of a Dorothea Lange photo, to Bellevue College for the national Day of Remembrance. The Day of Remembrance, observed on Feb. 19, marks when President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the incarceration of Japanese Americans.
More than 120,000 Japanese Americans, including Shigaki's relatives, were incarcerated in prison camps. Her father was born in the Minidoka War Relocation Center in Idaho.
A college vice president was responsible for whiting out the reference to Freeman, who is considered a founding father of Bellevue and who led Washington's Anti-Japanese League. The vice president, Gayle Colston Barge, and the college's president, Jerry Weber, both resigned soon after being placed on leave.
The original mural was supposed to be temporary but remained on campus until it was replaced with the permanent version.
Shigaki recalled the last time she was on campus in 2020, right as the COVID-19 pandemic began to take hold. On a cool, gray day, she cried in front of a crowd who had come to support her and her work. On Thursday, an unnaturally warm and sunny day, she again stood in front of many of the same people.
During her speech, she likened the incarceration camps to today's immigrant detention centers, a sentiment echoed by speaker Stan Shikuma, an activist with the Japanese American Citizens League and Tsuru for Solidarity.
"We were sent to concentration camps … that all sounds terrible when we say it's Japanese Americans, but what about if it's Guatemalans? What about if it's someone from Honduras or Gabon or Iran? That's happening today to all those people," Shikuma said.
Shigaki said she was surprised to hear from college administrators last fall when they brought up the possibility of a permanent installation - "I thought I was done with Bellevue College," she recalled - but pleased with the result.
The new mural is printed on a metal material and weatherproof, and accompanied by a larger display with information about Japanese American incarceration and the 2020 censorship.
"The questions that this mural asks us to confront remain with us," Bellevue College President David May said at the rededication ceremony. "As a college, this place exists to pursue knowledge. To challenge assumptions. And to help people understand the world that we have inherited, but also the world that we're helping to create every day.
And this mural, every time someone walks by it, asks them to do exactly that. It asks us to remember. It asks us to learn. And it asks us to remain vigilant in protecting the dignity and the humanity of every single person."
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