E.O. 9066
In an atmosphere of World War II hysteria, President Roosevelt, encouraged by officials at all levels of the federal government, authorized the internment of tens of thousands of American citizens of Japanese ancestry and resident aliens from Japan. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, dated February 19, 1942, gave the military broad powers to ban any citizen from a fifty- to sixty-mile-wide coastal area stretching from Washington state to California and extending inland into southern Arizona. The order also authorized transporting these citizens to assembly centers hastily set up and governed by the military in California, Arizona, Washington state, and Oregon.
Maruyama's first visual experience of this event was intially through the images of documentary photographers Dorothea Lange and Toyo Miyatake. Her family was directly affected by the evacuation: but little was mentioned of this by her mother, or grandparents. This chapter in her family history was heavily veiled: because of this, she avoided any association with this connection: partially out of suppressed anger, partially out of just wanting to move forward.
Maruyama was awarded an artist-in-residency opportunity at SUNY Purchase in Fall 2008 - and decided to immerse herself in research and investigation of Executive Order 9066 and its effect on the Japanese American psyche as she knows it now.