Sacramento billboards acknowledge Day of Remembrance, Japanese American internment

Along freeways around Sacramento and just across the street from the Golden 1 Center, electronic billboards ringed by a barbed wire design proclaim a date: Feb. 19, 1942.

Known as the “Day of Remembrance,” it’s the day President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the forced removal and internment of more than 120,000 Japanese Americans. And it’s a dark chapter of American history that Sacramento-raised artist Bob Matsumoto, the designer of the billboards, hopes people will never forget.

“This happened 80 years ago, but does the public really know about the experience?” Matsumoto said.

“This is a big reminder, and I wanted to also let Japanese Americans know that our messages and experiences will never be forgotten,” he added.

The digital billboards are simple but striking — a red, white and blue barbed wire border against a black background; the date, in a sans-serif font; the names of the 10 prison camps where the U.S. government sent Japanese American families.

Marquees acknowledging the Day of Remembrance will be up at the 555 Capitol Mall Building garage, and posted at 11 marquees around Sacramento County highways like Interstate 5 and Highway 99, until Saturday.

“The red, white and blue barbed wires represent the 120,000 Japanese Americans incarcerated and denied their civil rights, and the black square ... symbolizes the darkest days of our lives,” Matsumoto said. “We were sent to remote, desolate wastelands ... Those camp (names) represent the hardships we suffered and endured until the ending of World War II.”

Matsumoto was also behind another major billboard installation in Sacramento last year in light of the rise of hate crimes Asians during the pandemic — a portrait of the Statue of Liberty, with the phrase “Anti-Asian Hate is Not What I Stand For” next to it.

For Matsumoto, the “Day of Remembrance” installation is personal: As a 4-year-old boy, he and his family were incarcerated in the Manzanar incarceration camp.

In an interview with the Bee last year, he recalled playing with other children while machine guns were pointed at them.

“I was a kid. I didn’t know any better,” Matsumoto told the Bee last year. “But people lost their savings and personal belongings, and a lot of people never went back to what they were doing.”

In the years following internment, Matsumoto regularly talked to his parents about the emotional devastation of the period, and how many families were never able to return to their previous lives.

“The Day of Remembrance has always haunted me, for years,” Matsumoto said. It’s been his mission as an artist, he said, to never let others forget either.