This photograph was taken at the funeral of James Wakasa, an internee at the Topaz Relocation Center in Utah, who was shot and killed by a military policeman near the camp’s barbed-wire fence on April 11, 1943. Internees protested the shooting by holding a public funeral on the spot where Wakasa was shot. The soldier who shot Wakasa was court-martialed but found “not guilty.”
Why do you think Otsuka chose to highlight this incident in her novel? What does the image of this funeral reveal about its significance?National Archives