Tosh Tanaka

Tosh Tanaka is a documentary photographer, researcher, and educator based in Santa Cruz, California.

Sunset Limited

  • Manzanar guard shack and plaque, 1990
  • Drain pipes at Topaz, 1994
  • Grave marker of Kabashima Naozo Rohwer, 2005
  • Manzanar guard shack and sign, 2006
  • Mindoka guard shack ruins, 2005
  • Shards at Topaz, 2006
  • Grave marker of Masu Numoto at Crown Hill Cemetary in Powell, 2005
  • Snowy Amache, 2013
  • One-eyed Susans at Heart Mountain, 2005
  • Gila River Butte camp water tank, 2017
  • Barbed wire remnants at Tule Lake, 2019

A book project of images and reflections from journeys to the 10 War Relocation Authority sites of World War II Japanese American incarceration, from 1990 to present.

Okinawa Memories Initiative

  • Looking for Gail photo locations, 2014
  • Meeting with Denny Tamaki, 2014 (Governor of Okinawa 2018-)
  • Oyama shrine
  • Nakagusuku castle
  • Looking for Gail photo locations, 2018
  • Katsuren boat harbor, 2017

A research group was organized in 2013 to study a set of donated images of post-war Okinawa made by Charles Gail, a U.S. Army dentist stationed on Okinawa from 1952-53. This was during the Korean War when the fear of Asian Communism was on the rise, and the U.S. military controlled Okinawans’ use of cameras.Now the Okinawa Memories Initiative, UC Santa Cruz faculty, graduate and undergraduate students work with media and oral history professionals to complete recorded interviews and research projects endeavoring to encourage a public dialog across the pacific about the past, present, and future of the Okinawan-American relationship.

Press: Students Help Okinawan History Come Alive in UC Santa Cruz Exhibit

Memory works

  • Whale shark tank
  • Reaching up
  • Where The World Was Created
  • Swept up
  • Warm afternoon
  • Jumped off
  • Winter’s mystery
  • The Wall

I have been striving to make images that look and feel like what I see in my mind’s eye: shapes, colors, and movement. Dream visualization.

The Nagamine Project

Akira Talks photo essay: Akira Nagamine was drafted into the Japanese Imperial Army in 1945 and sent to Manchuria where he was stranded at the end of World War II with a broken ankle and wounded right hand. He lived and worked with Chinese, Japanese, and Russians until returning home to Kagoshima, Japan in 1954 and immigrating to Watsonville, California in 1956. Working with UC Santa Cruz history professor, Alan Christy, we traveled to China to learn more. Mr. Nagamine’s demeanor showed us how he thrived in those years.