My Name is Lily Havey and Sometimes I go by Yuriko Nakai
“My Name is Lily Havey, and Sometimes I go by Yuriko Nakai” (formerly “justice-memory-artivism”) is a 2-4 week residency that uses the artist/author’s watercolor paintings, award-winning memoir, and multi-faceted visual and written “tool kit” to explore the impact of the Nakai family’s three-year detention in the Amache Relocation Center, a WWII concentration camp for Japanese Americans located in south-western Colorado.
The residency uses a 6-part CDEA video that highlights Nakai-Havey’s artist’s tool kit, with each video demonstrating how journaling, haiku, calligraphy, and watercolors served the artist’s efforts to recall, reflect on, and depict her wartime experiences. The residency also uses excerpts from Havey’s award-winning memoir, Gasa Gasa Girl Goes To Camp: a Nisei Youth Behind A World War Two Fence to take students behind the scenes of a historic event (now acknowledged as a tragic mistake) to present the writing strategies Havey used to convey the experience.
CDEA oral historian Leslie Kelen joins Nakai-Havey, 91, to discuss the watercolors, videos, and memoir with students in order to translate Havey’s artistic work into student lives and aspirations. The residency provides methods by which Havey’s painting and writing can be used by students to explore issues of personal identity and social justice. An exhibit of student-created watercolors and writing completes the residency.