From the Archives : Brandon Shimoda : The Grave on the Wall

Between the Covers revisits a 2019 interview with poet‑activist Brandon Shimoda, focusing on his memoir The Grave on the Wall. The book begins with a haunting 1943 photograph of Shimoda’s grandfather in the Fort Missoula internment camp and expands into a meditation on how the same forts once used in the Indian Wars now house modern detention facilities. Shimoda interrogates the continuity of U.S. imperial violence, linking Japanese American incarceration to broader patterns of forced labor, bombing, and historical amnesia. His archival approach treats memory as a living, unfinished wall.

Shimoda also unpacks the picture‑bride system, showing how U.S.–Japan agreements turned marriage into a loophole for racist immigration limits. Between 1908 and 1920, over ten thousand Japanese women arrived in the United States under false photographs, expected to perform invisible, “exemplary” whiteness. By foregrounding these erased stories, Shimoda highlights how white American history depends on the labor and compliance of marginalized peoples, from contract pineapple workers to Indigenous women whose disappearances remain under‑reported. The episode weaves these narratives together, arguing that archival silence sustains contemporary injustices such as the missing Native women crisis.

These historical threads reverberate in today’s border detentions, Gaza’s civilian casualties, and the rise of authoritarian rhetoric. Shimoda’s reading of Etel Adnan’s Fog and his call for “solidarity through salvage” underscore that remembering past incarcerations is a political act that challenges ongoing state violence. Listeners are invited to support the Between the Covers community, where further archival projects and bonus audio explore similar themes. By connecting personal family archives to systemic oppression, Shimoda demonstrates that memorializing trauma can reshape public consciousness and inspire collective resistance.