The Mochida Jacket

The Mochida Family Moves to Utah

The Mochida jacket illustrates the wartime story of of a Japanese-American family of 9. They are pictured in an iconic Dorothea Lange OSI photograph from the Japanese Internment that took place at the start of WWII. Certainly one of the most haunting photographs of the 20th Century, it shows the Mochida Family, a father, mother and 7 children standing on the side of the road in Hayward California. The parents and children are tagged like luggage. They are waiting for the bus that will take them to their next home, a horse stall at Tranforan race track. Mr. Mochido is smiling at the camera but the children have the thousand yard stare of veterans. Eventually they will move on to Topaz Internment Camp in Utah until the end of the war. Hiroko Mochida, who was three in the Lange photograph told me her most vivid memories of the time were of her mother working hard to instill in her children a love of this country.