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Artifacts of Loss Crafting Survival in Japanese Am...

Artifacts of Loss by Jane E. Dusselier explores the experiences of Japanese Americans in concentration camps during World War II, focusing on their psychological aspects and the art they created as a means of survival. The book includes discussions on the material culture, decorative arts, and the mental landscapes of those interned, highlighting how they crafted their identities and connections despite the trauma of their circumstances. It serves as a significant contribution to understanding the legacies of loss and resilience within the Japanese American community.

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Artifacts of Loss Crafting Survival in Japanese Am...

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Artifacts of Loss

Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

Dusselier, Jane E.. Artifacts of Loss : Crafting Survival in Japanese American Concentration Camps, Rutgers University Press, 2008.
ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=413878.
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Artifacts of Loss

Crafting Survival in Japanese American
Concentration Camps
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

Ja n e E . D u s s e l i e r

rutgers university press

new brunswick, new jersey, and london

Dusselier, Jane E. (Jane Elizabeth)

Artifacts of loss : crafting survival in Japanese American concentration camps /
Jane E. Dusselier.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–8135–4407–6 (hbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN 978–0–8135–4408–3 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Japanese Americans—Evacuation and relocation, 1942–1945—Psychological
aspects. 2. Concentration camps—United States—Psychological aspects.
3. Concentration camp inmates as artists—United States. 4. Japanese American
decorative arts. 5. Japanese Americans—Material culture. I. Title.
D769.8.A6D87 2008
940.531773—dc22 2008007759

A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the Brit-
ish Library.

Copyright © 2008 by Jane E. Dusselier

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, with-
out written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press,
100 Joyce Kilmer Avenue, Piscataway, NJ 08854–8099. The only exception to this
prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law.

Visit our Web site: http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu

Manufactured in the United States of America

Dusselier, Jane E.. Artifacts of Loss : Crafting Survival in Japanese American Concentration Camps, Rutgers University Press, 2008.
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To Barbara Judd, who sparked my interest in this topic, and
Tobie Matava, whose support and love mean everything to me.
And in remembrance of all those imprisoned in Japanese
American concentration camps.
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xiii

1 Visual Accounts of Loss 1

2 Remaking Inside Places 14
3 Re-territorializing Outside Spaces 51
4 Making Connections 88
5 Mental Landscapes of Survival 125
6 Contemporary Legacies of Loss 154
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

Notes 167
Index 197

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Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

1 Living unit at Tanforan 15

2 Cabinet made by a Tule Lake crafter 23
3 Table and chairs made from found materials at Topaz 24
4 Embroidered landscapes served as colorful wall hangings
at Heart Mountain 28
5 Carved clay tablet depicting the Heart Mountain landscape 28
6 Artificial flowers made at Manzanar 31
7 Artificial roses made at Manzanar 31
8 An example of ikebana from Jerome 33
9 Kobu was a popular art form in the Arkansas camps 37
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

10 A bon-kei and ikebana display at Amache 38

11 Nameplates helped internees distinguish their living unit
from that of their neighbors at Amache 39
12 A nameplate made from woven cotton yarn at Amache 40
13 Wooden spoons made from discarded apple crates at
Heart Mountain 44
14 Making furniture for schools at Heart Mountain 47
15 School furniture made by Manzanar internees 48
16 Intricately carved butsudans created by internees were
used in camp-wide services 49
17 Internees quickly transformed the areas around their
living quarters 54

ix
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x i l l u s t r at i o n s

18 Garden in front of a Tanforan barrack 56

19 Internees arriving at Topaz found a flat, dust-filled landscape 61
20 Manzanar barrack garden 64
21 Harvesting daikon at Gila River 66
22 The climate and soil conditions at Rohwer produced
lush gardens 68
23 Preparing the soil for spring planting at Heart Mountain 70
24 Woman working in a Manzanar community garden 74
25 Potato planting at Tule Lake 77
26 Playing golf on Manzanar’s dirt- and dust-filled fairways 79
27 Ice-skating was a popular winter activity at Heart Mountain 82
28 Walkways constructed at Rohwer helped internees avoid
ankle-deep dust or muddy silt 85
29 Manzanar before and after 86
30 Camp-made outdoor play equipment at Tule Lake 91
31 Typical interior scene in one Manzanar barrack 95
32 Lapel pin made at Topaz 97
33 Picture of a dog drawn at Poston and mailed 100
34 Small items made with shells and wood were often given
as gifts 101
35 Small objects were easily mailed to friends beyond the
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

camp boundaries 103

36 Attending exhibits was a popular activity in most camps 104
37 Wood carvings made by students participating in the adult
education classes at Amache 105
38 Kobu used as a vase 106
39 Kobu artists at Rohwer and Jerome frequently displayed
their works 108
40 A wide range of art was exhibited at camp shows 112
41 Much needlework featured floral designs 114
42 Heart Mountain art class 117
43 Jewelry created from discarded tin cans at Rohwer 122
44 Some Japanese Americans were driven to suicide by their
internment experience 128

45 Senninbari vests were made to protect friends, husbands,

sons, and brothers who joined the U.S. armed forces 130
46 Masahiro’s artwork was often mailed to his father, who was
imprisoned in a Department of Justice facility 133
47 Funeral wreaths at Heart Mountain 136
48 Women making artificial flowers 137
49 Boys carving model planes at Poston 140
50 Girls proudly display the dolls they made at the
Labor Day Festival 143
51 Father and son carve small wooden animals 147
52 Manzanar craftsman making getas 149
53 Bird lapel pins made from scrap wood 153
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

Artifacts of Loss owes much to many archivists, librarians, and community

activists. I struck gold in Powell, Wyoming, both in terms of primary
sources and a new friend, when I met Ladonna Zall, who serves on the
board of the Heart Mountain Foundation, an organization committed to
remembering the imprisonment of Japanese Americans. Zall is the orga-
nization’s archivist and cares for a rich collection of artifacts. Jane Beck-
with welcomed to me Delta, Utah, and the archival holdings of the Topaz
Museum. She graciously and enthusiastically supported this project from
my first phone call to her. Beth Porter was my archival host at the East-
ern California Museum, providing encouragement as I worked my way
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

through the museum’s extensive collection of oral histories and artifacts.

She is an incredibly competent archivist who knows her collection. When I
arrived in McGehee, Arkansas, on a warm June afternoon, Rosalie Santine
Gould treated me to a delicious poor-boy sandwich at the local golf club
and then showed me her collection of Rohwer artifacts. She is devoted to
gathering and preserving camp-made art and contributed to the success-
ful efforts to designate Rohwer a national landmark. Johanna Lewis, a his-
tory professor at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock, helped me locate
oral histories and artifacts related to the Rohwer and Jerome camps.
Many of the archives waived their fees, which has allowed me to include
a powerful selection of photographs. Along with the aforementioned

xiii
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xiv ack now l ed gm en ts

organizations, archives, and activists, the following archives granted

me permission to publish their images free of charge, for which I thank
them: the Department of Special Collections in the Charles E. Young
Research Library at UCLA; the Hinckley Library at Northwest College
in Powell, Wyoming; the Life Interrupted Papers at the University of
Arkansas, Little Rock; and the Department of Special Collections at
California State University, Sacramento.
I was lucky to have three supportive editors at Rutgers University
Press. Melanie Halkias expressed interest in this project from the start.
I first presented a paper on my work at an Association for Asian Ameri-
can Studies conference, where Gary Okihiro kindly chaired the panel
and acted as commentator. Melanie attended the panel and urged me
to expand the paper into a volume. Kendra Boileau and Leslie Mitchner
guided this book through the press. I’m especially thankful to Leslie,
who offered suggestions on how to improve the book and was committed
to including a wide selection of images. Thank you to Roger Daniels for
reading the manuscript. His suggestions made Artifacts of Loss a much
better book. And thank you to Kathryn Gohl, who was a thorough and
thoughtful copyeditor.
I also thank Edith Mitko and Haruko Moriyasu, who helped track
down oral histories and art created at the Topaz camp. Although they are
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

not archivists, they were generous with their time, energy, and support.
And finally, I thank Nancy Struna, Kandice Chuh, Jo Paoletti, and espe-
cially Robyn Muncy and the director of my dissertation, Seung-kyung
Kim, whose belief in this project never failed.

Visual Accounts of Loss

Testifying before the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment

of Civilians on August 4, 1981, U.S. senator Sam Hayakawa described life
in World War II Japanese American concentrations camps as “trouble-
free and relatively happy.”1 Established by the U.S. Congress, the commis-
sion had been charged with examining the application of Executive Order
9066, signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, and recom-
mending “appropriate remedies.”2 Hayakawa’s cheery characterization of
camp life was immediately met with audible jeers from an audience of
former internees and their descendants, to whom the Republican senator
from California responded by asking: “How else can one account for the
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

tremendous output of these amateur artists who, having time on their

hands, turned out little masterpieces of sculpture, ceramics, painting, and
flower arrangement?”3 Artifacts of Loss takes up this question, but argues
that camp-made art, broadly defined, aided internees in repositioning
themselves in hostile environments. By creating art, imprisoned Japanese
Americans attained visibilities and voices that incorporated heterogeneity
and challenged exploitive racialization.
Rather than understanding camp-made art as evidence of humane
treatment, I suggest that these material cultures comprised diverse visual
accounts of loss, and physical as well as mental landscapes of survival.
This thesis offers two parallel yet distinguishable forms of analysis, one

1
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2 a r t i fac t s o f l o s s

perhaps belonging more to the past and the other to the present. The
historical consideration addresses my interpretation of the meanings
and purposes of camp-made art for imprisoned Japanese Americans.
Artifacts offers four such meanings, which are explored in individual
chapters. In chapter 2, “Remaking Inside Places,” I discuss how internees
employed art to rework their physical locations of imprisonment into
places of survival. Both at temporary imprisonment facilities and later at
permanent concentration camps, internees were confronted with filthy
and deplorable living quarters. Many of the temporary living units,
located on the grounds of racetracks, were formerly horse stalls. Even at
permanent sites of confinement, dwelling units were crudely constructed
barracks with abundant and gaping cracks that provided easy entry for
sand, dirt, and cold.
These inside places were modified by internees as they responded to
degraded living conditions by creating furniture from discarded apple
crates, cardboard, tree branches and stumps, scrap pieces of wood left
behind by government carpenters, and wood lifted from guarded lumber
piles. Having addressed their needs for beds, chairs, and tables, intern-
ees turned their attention to aesthetic matters by creating needlework,
wood carvings, ikebana, paintings, shell art, and kobu. Living quarters
evolved into more bearable places made meaningful by camp-made and
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

displayed art that created visual dialogues at least partially controlled by

internees. Through and with art, many imprisoned Japanese Americans
spoke of their commitment to survival as they improved the materiality
of their lives by altering dwellings spaces. In this way, art helped intern-
ees to reposition themselves in hostile settings.
Dramatic changes to outside spaces were also critical for altering
external spaces of confinement into survivable landscapes. In chapter
3, “Re-territorializing Outside Spaces,” I examine changes made to the
landscapes of both temporary imprisonment facilities and concentra-
tion camps. Camp geographies were re-territorialized when internees
created vegetable and flower gardens, pebbled walkways, and elaborate

landscaping projects. In this context, re-territorialization is the process

by which hostile and unfamiliar spaces are modified into arenas where
identities can be articulated and marginalized people can declare dif-
ferences and enact subjectivities.4 America’s concentration camps were
spatial expressions of race based on the U.S. government’s concentration
of Japanese Americans in geographically specific locations. But internees
worked to alter these physical landscapes of confinement by joining aes-
thetics and politics through the art forms of gardening and landscaping.
Vegetable, fruit, and rock gardens, as well as skating rinks, golf courses,
and swimming pools, were, in the words of Akhil Gupta and James Fer-
guson, “conceptual and political acts of re-imagination” on the part of
internees.5 By inscribing camp landscapes with these art forms, internees
imagined and enacted portable senses of place.
In chapter 4, “Making Connections,” I position art as a means of
making connections, a framework that helps us escape utopian thinking
and models of community building that overemphasize the development
of common beliefs, ideas, and practices that supposedly unify people
into identifiable groups.6 Creating art sustained, reformed, and created
new relationships among family members and friends. By sewing clothes
for each other, presenting gifts of artificial flowers and lapel pins, and
participating in classes and exhibits, internees addressed their needs for
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

maintaining and developing relationships. From this perspective, camp-

made art helps us understand how internees connected with one another
in the context of heterogeneity that encompassed a range of differences,
including those of sex, generation, date of immigration, class, religion,
language, age, and occupation. This idea of making connections takes on
more meaning when we remember that these new prisoners of the U.S.
government experienced a series of displacements as they were forcibly
removed from their homes and then incarcerated in temporary impris-
onment facilities, only to be later moved to more distant, permanent
concentration camps. Art provided internees with mediums through
which they were able to create connections among themselves on the

basis of identifying with each other rather than being identical to one
another. In this way, art created and sustained a myriad of intricate and
layered connections. “Making Connections” addresses how art helped
internees connect with one another in the context of heterogeneity and
almost limitless differences.
In chapter 5, “Mental Landscapes of Survival,” I explore how some
internees linked the creation of art with their own emotional and mental
well-being. Creating, exhibiting, consuming, living with, and thinking
about art became embedded in the everyday patterns of camp life for
many internees and helped provide a context for mental, emotional, and
psychic survival. Even in the bleakest of conditions, art aided impris-
oned Japanese Americans in creating strategies to improve the psychic
conditions of their lives and fashion mental spaces of survival. Here
they attempted to join individual and personal visions with collective
considerations by making and exhibiting their art. Many nonartists
participated in this process by consuming camp-made art. Camp artists
reached beyond aesthetic considerations, employing art as a method to
ensure emotional subsistence in psychically and materially oppressive
environments. Art materialized the psychic lives of internees, helping
them link individual concerns with social life. In chapter 5, I ask readers
to think about art and everyday objects as critical to mental and emo-
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

tional health.
Although my analysis of the meanings of camp-made art may be more
easily understood in context of the past, I intend my concluding chapter
to resonate more deeply with the present. In chapter 6, “Contemporary
Legacies of Loss,” I argue that past losses of imprisoned Japanese Ameri-
cans are applicable to the present. By creating art in forms such as flowers
made with tissue paper, wood carvings of pets left behind, and furniture
from discarded apple crates, internees revealed and asserted their many
losses. Considering what “was lost in terms of what remains,” this chapter
positions camp-made art as creating narratives that bring past losses
and, by association, past oppressions into the present moment. From

this perspective, losses such as those produced by Executive Order 9066

encompass half-lives with which we must continue to engage in the pres-
ent. While imprisoned, Japanese American women, children, and men
employed art to remake the physical landscapes of the camps into livable
places, establish new and reform existing connections, and create mental
spaces of survival. They also generated lasting legacies for those of us
interested in social justice. In the last chapter, I join with recent scholars
pointing to the intellectual, cultural, and political meanings of loss.7
Using these ideas of loss, I hope to further expand artifactual evi-
dence beyond the realm of museums, which often construct unified,
national narratives based on consensus. Art like that created in Japanese
American concentrations camps is best situated in political arenas where
differences are valued and objects understood as provoking human
responses that lead to change. Employing the ideas of loss to study art
created by imprisoned Japanese Americans will help us as we emphasize
transnational understandings of culture and identity and frame our
scholarship in contexts of globalization. By studying a wide range of
camp-made art, we learn that place, even when it is denied by the power
of nation-states, can reside in portable spaces such as art. This book
addresses global movements of people by attempting to understand how
Japanese Americans who experienced a series of voluntary, coerced, and
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

forced displacements recuperated a sense of place.

Some readers may be hesitant to think of the everyday objects I dis-
cuss as art, but most of these camp-made crafts adhere to Cambridge
Dictionary’s definition of art as “the making of objects, images, music,
etc. that are beautiful or that express feelings.”8 Many internees shared
interests and time, creating a wide range of what some readers may
describe as crafts, folk art, material culture, or hobbies. Among these
objects were finger rings created with peach pits and toothbrush handles,
furniture constructed from discarded orange crates, hats created with
grasses gathered on camp grounds, flowers made from Kleenex tissues
and crepe paper, jewelry made from shells, canes carved from ironwood,

and dresses sewn from discarded rice bags. The labels we give these
objects are laden with cultural meaning and power, especially when we
consider the art of Asian Americans within the conventional Eurocentric
cannon. With this in mind, I use the terms art, craft, and material culture
interchangeably to include all forms of cultural expression that result in
a physical object. My use of these terms is intended to disturb a hierar-
chy of cultural expressions in which objects classified as art are imbued
with more legitimacy, meaning, and significance. This interpretation
asks readers to expand their definition of art to include objects created
by people with little or no formal training and who use a wide range of
materials and diverse skills.
This volume complements an established body of work concerned with
concentration camp art. Rather than studying the activities of everyday
crafters, however, previous scholarship about concentration camp art
focused on the work of professionally trained artists who expressed their
creativity through “fine art,” including watercolors, oils, woodblock prints,
and sketches. Outstanding examples of this burgeoning area of study
include Kimi Kodani Hill’s monograph exploring the life of her grandfa-
ther Chiura Obata, Kristine Kim’s work on Henry Sugimoto, Karin Higa’s
exhibition catalogue, The View from Within: Japanese American Art from
the Internment Camps, 1942–1945, and Deborah Gesensway and Mindy
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

Roseman’s Beyond Words: Images from America’s Concentration Camps.9

Although the works of prominent painters have captured the interests of
internment scholars, more common forms of cultural and artistic expres-
sion have remained outside the realm of scholarly inquiry.
Artifacts addresses this gap, concentrating on everyday art forms cre-
ated by imprisoned Japanese Americans with little or no formal artistic
training. Only two books have been published on the topic of crafting
activities in the camps, which is surprising considering the volume of
art created. A highly illustrated volume titled Beauty behind Barbed
Wire (1952) contains photographs of crafts, but the author is more intent
on congratulating the War Relocation Authority for “one of the finest

achievements in American war and peacetime government administra-

tion” than revealing the lives of camp crafters or the meanings of their
work. A portfolio-sized photographic book titled The Art of Gaman
(2005) emphasizes the striking aesthetics of the objects over their politi-
cal meanings.10 Recognizing this void, Artifacts focuses on the political
consequences and uses of camp-made material culture.
Although strongly disagreeing with Senator Hayakawa’s positive
portrayal of camp-made art, previous explorations of this topic have
treated concentration camp art as less than radical, instead attributing
high levels of artistic production to an increase in leisure time available
to internees.11 This reading of crafting activities has come to be known
as the “forced leisure” interpretation. Because they are more canon-
ized and privileged, the works of professionally trained artists skirt the
forced leisure interpretation because they adhere to accepted aesthetic
standards while also serving a documentary function. These artists were
not simply whiling away their time but creating “true” or legitimate
pieces of art that provided literal and much-needed records of intern-
ment experiences. A forced leisure interpretation of camp-made art
is problematic because it suggests that internee artwork is evidence of
humane treatment.
Rather than focusing our attention on the harsh conditions and
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

struggles for survival, the forced leisure interpretation encourages us to

see images of internees with an abundance of free time on their hands,
occupying themselves with carving, sewing, and planting gardens. This
interpretation belies the recorded experiences of many imprisoned Japanese
Americans, who worked as camp cooks, doctors, nurses, teachers, and boiler
tenders to keep conditions in the camps livable, while also struggling with
basic survival. Because living units lacked plumbing, internees spent much
of their time in long lines waiting to eat and attend to personal hygiene. Along
with being poorly designed and constructed, communal latrines, bathing
spaces, and laundry facilities were too few in number to adequately accom-
modate camp populations. In this context, it becomes more apparent that

the motivation of internees involved in crafting activities was not simply

to fill leisure time and prevent boredom. While the free time of internees
certainly varied, evidence suggests that many found time in their busy
schedules to participate in crafting activities.12
Many students of the internment argue that high levels of artistic
expression among imprisoned Japanese Americans should not surprise
us. Indeed, some interpret the creation of art by internees as represent-
ing a “thrilling revelation of fine innate culture.”13 Elaine Kim argues
that Asian artistic expression has been viewed as “a harmless racial and
cultural trait passed down as if in the genes.”14 From Kim’s perspective,
Asian American artistic abilities serve as markers of racial difference and
are problematically grounded in an ancient, unchanging, and singular
Asian culture. Representing this mythical Asianness and undergoing a
process of orientalization, the artistic successes of Asian Americans are
understood as nonthreatening because the products are interpreted as
exotic, feminine, and extraneous. From this perspective, high levels of art
making in Japanese American concentration camps were, and unfortu-
nately continue to be, understood as natural, predictable, and harmless
expressions of Asian culture, requiring no explanation or analysis.
A review of crafting literature, however, provides convincing evidence
that prolific artists and crafters exist among most groups of people, espe-
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

cially those experiencing marginalization. During the first thirty years

of the twentieth century, itinerant carvers in the United States often
exchanged small intricate boxes made from pieces of scrap wood for a
meal or a night’s rest in a warm, clean bed. These “tramp artists” also
produced a wider range of objects for selling or gift giving, including fur-
niture, elaborate picture frames, tea sets, and wall clocks.15 Art created by
African Americans during the last third of the twentieth century was the
subject of a massive two-volume work titled Souls Grown Deep: African
American Vernacular Art of the South. With little formal education, these
“vernacular artists” from eleven southern states employed a wide range
of found and discarded materials to produce diverse art forms. Among

the objects created were paintings, sculptures, carvings, and yard art
made with tree roots, chewing gum, buttons, house paint, cinder blocks,
chunks of concrete, rocks, tree branches, tin cans, and nails. Rather
than purchasing expensive brushes, paints, and canvas, ninety-year-old
Jimmie Lee Sudduth created paintings by dipping his fingers in stains
made from berries, grass, and mud and then drawing on scraps of wood
and iron. As Sudduth reported: “I got twenty-three colors of mud in my
own yard.”16 Similar to the creations of imprisoned Japanese Americans,
those of itinerant carvers and African American vernacular artists were
made of scrap lumber, discarded fruit crates, tree roots, rocks, and other
found materials. All three groups of artists created material cultures that
spoke of their experiences and visions for the future.
Quilts and other forms of patchwork are well-known examples of
crafting among diverse groups of people, ranging from seventeenth-cen-
tury settlers arriving on the eastern seaboard to slaves escaping on the
Underground Railroad. For centuries, Appalachian artists living in the
poorest region of the United States created quilts using scraps of calico,
muslin dyed with indigo, and with animal-feed bags for batting.17 We
can also look at the resistive importance of quilt making for African
American slaves. Jacqueline L. Tobin and Raymond G. Dobard argue
that slaves devised a complex system of oral and visual communication
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

by making and studying quilts.18 Designs and patterns functioned as

codes in a complex language that instructed slaves preparing for their
escape, improved the likelihood of their survival during the journey,
and provided directions for them while traveling on the Underground
Railroad. Stitching was an integral part of this language, with the length
and position of threads relaying specific meanings. Once these “visual
maps of freedom” were “mastered” and the time of escape drew near,
quilts were placed on fences to serve as mnemonic devices and instruct
slaves to take specific actions.
As this literature shows, crafting is not a “natural” activity linked
to racial identities but is employed by diverse groups of people to form

identities and ensure survival. Rather than connected to some imagined

racial essentialism, the meanings of this art are contingent on the
specificities of cultural, historical, political, economic, and geographical
contexts. Recognizing that crafting is a common experience for many
Americans is not an argument for universalism but suggests that art is
one aspect of culture that some people draw upon to survive. Although
some forms of Japanese American concentration camp art encompassed
cultural continuity, this observation should not lead us to the conclusion
that Japanese Americans were more or less artistically inclined than any
other cultural or racial group. We should also remember that art was
only one cultural practice that internees relied on to create identifications
with one another. Among other identifying activities were board and
card games, sporting events, gambling, performing arts, work, cooking,
reading and language clubs, and drinking.
For readers unfamiliar with the mass incarceration of all West Coast
Japanese Americans during the period of World War II, some historical
background may help place this art in context. As result of Executive Order
9066, signed on February 19, 1942, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt,
more than 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry living in the United States
were forcibly removed from their homes and imprisoned in concentration
camps. Most were U.S. citizens who had been affected in many ways by
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

the century-long legacy of anti-Japanese discrimination that prevented

first-generation Issei from becoming citizens of the United States or own-
ing land and severely restricted the educational, employment, and housing
opportunities of second-generation Nisei. A series of immigration acts
passed by the U.S. Congress throughout the nineteenth century ensured
that racism was supported by structures of the nation-state. Using hysteria
generated by Pearl Harbor to justify this mass and illegal incarceration of
Japanese Americans, the U.S. government ignored the unconstitutionality
of imprisoning persons without charging them with crimes. With rulings
from the Supreme Court, the federal government used race as the basis on
which to incarcerate 120,000 innocent women, children, and men.

Japanese Americans were first confined in what the government

euphemistically referred to as “assembly centers.” Thirteen of these
facilities were located in California and one each in Oregon, Arizona,
and Washington, for a total of sixteen in all. Tulare, one of the temporary
imprisonment facilities located in California, was the first to open on
April 20, 1942. Housing a total of 5,061 Japanese Americans who previ-
ously resided in Los Angeles and Sacramento, Tulare reached its one-
day peak of 4,978 on August 11. Fresno, also located in California at the
Fresno County Fairgrounds, was the final confinement center to close
after reaching a peak population of 5,120. On October 30, 1942, the last
group of Japanese Americans were loaded onto trains and shipped to one
of ten concentration camps.19 By late October, 120,000 Japanese Ameri-
cans were shipped to distant and desolate places of confinement, includ-
ing Manzanar and Tule Lake (Newell) in California, Minidoka (Hunt)
in Idaho, Jerome (Denson) and Rohwer in Arkansas, Heart Mountain in
Wyoming, Granada (Amache) in Colorado, Poston (Colorado River) and
Gila (Rivers) in Arizona, and Topaz in Utah.
Conditions in these camps were deplorable and filled with hardship.
Simple yet necessary activities such as eating and bathing absorbed
tremendous amounts of time and energy, and filled the days of many.
Internees were required to stand in long mess-hall lines three times
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

each day, in frigid winter conditions that sometimes caused frost bite
and extreme summer temperatures that resulted in heat stroke. Time-
consuming trips to communal outhouses and laundry facilities were
also daily experiences. When we consider the lives of mothers, we gain
a glimpse of the miseries endured. Because living quarters lacked run-
ning water, young mothers focused much of their time and energy on
toting youngsters to and from communal latrines and bathing facilities,
along with daily laundry trips.20 Young mothers with infants fought the
unending battle of keeping up with soiled diapers.
Cramped living conditions made the immediacy of washing freshly
soiled diapers clear to all internees, even those with bad sniffers. Dirty

laundry required the constant attention and labor of women, otherwise

the smellscapes of living quarters became unbearable. A twenty-six-year-
old Nisei man imprisoned at Tanforan astutely observed: “The mothers
work as hard as ever with the exception of cooking. The laundry work
is probably much harder.”21 Keeping clothes clean was made even more
taxing by the flourlike dust that frequently soiled those freshly laun-
dered garments left hanging on outside lines to dry. One young woman
remembered that besides combating the lethargy caused by frequent and
nagging illnesses such as stomach upsets and colds, much of her energy
was consumed by “keeping our room dusted, swept, and mopped to be
rid of the constant accumulation of dust, and in trying to do laundry
when the water was running.”22
Young children’s unaccompanied trips to the latrine encompassed
tragic possibilities, as in the case of a boy imprisoned at Salinas who
slipped through a toilet seat made to army specifications for grown
men. Responding to screams coming from inside the privy, a passerby
found the youngster “in the hole hanging by his elbows” and rescued
him from a twenty-foot drop into human waste.23 Internees at Poston’s
Camp II were on alert for children in distress after several boys slipped
through the seats, got stuck, and required help to remove themselves.24
At Amache, rattlesnakes coiled in the dark, cool environs of outhouses,
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

posing yet another threat to carefree youngsters and forcing mothers

equipped with two-by-fours to make hourly sweeps before allowing even
older children to enter communal latrines.25 Toilet training children in
these conditions was especially difficult and traumatic, leaving con-
cerned mothers with few options but to provide emotional and physical
support and hope for the best.
Rooted in these material conditions of imprisonment, Artifacts of
Loss asks readers to think differently about identity, subjectivity, and
art with the hope of prompting a reconsideration of everyday objects
as critical to physical, mental, and emotional survival. Concentration
camp art activities, defined in the broadest terms, were not frivolous

but encompassed political possibilities. Beyond the histories of Japanese

Americans, this project speaks to how oppression is lived and the place
of art in the lives of marginalized people. Challenging the idea that
subjectivity is always grounded in or a product of embodied identities, I
offer art as a means by which people identify with each other and change
their circumstances. In this volume, I expand our understandings of
identity formation by advancing the idea that embodied sameness and
identities may serve more powerfully as structures of oppression rather
than templates of resistance. When we pay close attention to connections
between art and the everyday materiality of life in Japanese American
concentration camps, sameness based on embodied identity appears less
important than differences created by thinking with and producing art.
Through and with art, internees generated ideas, strategies, and visions
for re-placing themselves in the context of larger and often hostile places
and groups of people.
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

Remaking Inside Places

By joining the need to create places of survival with practices of making

art, many imprisoned Japanese Americans recuperated a portable sense
of place. Some internees looked to the materiality of their lives to pro-
duce liberative practices. Hopes for generating even very limited degrees
of comfort through the creation of art helped many camp crafters to
improve the material conditions of their lives. By reworking inside places,
internees spoke to each other through visual narratives that expressed
emotions and commitments to survival. With art, internees generated
new ideas that allowed the traumas of internment to be thought through.1
This process of re-placing themselves in hostile landscapes began slowly,
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

as internees altered the inside places of imprisonment locations. After

long, tiring bus and train trips, the newly arrived internees often walked
into small rooms usually measuring sixteen by twenty feet and furnished
with a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling. In many cases, potbel-
lied stoves, the only sources of heat, had not yet been installed. Internees
were responsible for making their own mattresses by stuffing canvas and
burlap sacks with straw. Of all the indignities encompassed by intern-
ment, a nineteen-year-old young woman found nighttimes filled with
hay pricking her skin especially demeaning.2
Living quarters at temporary imprisonment facilities were constructed
with little thought for the comfort, health, or dignity of the inhabitants.

14
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r e m a k i n g i n s i d e p l ac e s 15

1. Living unit at Tanforan, June 16, 1942. Photographer: Dorothea Lange.

Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.

A father, mother, son, and two daughters, newly designated by the U.S.
government as family 10710, arrived at Puyallup, Washington, on April 28,
1942, and were assigned to unit 2–1-A, a single room measuring eighteen
by twenty feet. Located thirty-five miles south of Seattle at the Western
Washington State Fairgrounds, the new “home” of the Itoi family was
bare except for a small wood-burning stove. A recently constructed floor
of unseasoned two-by-fours rested directly on the ground . A bumper crop
of dandelions was pushing up through the numerous and ample cracks
between the floorboards, evidence of hurried and faulty construction.3

Conditions were even more crowded for a widowed mother and her
seven children who were forcibly removed from their home in Colusa,
California, and confined in a fourteen-by-fourteen living unit located
on the Merced County Fairgrounds. To make matters worse, Merced’s
living units were separated by thin partitions reaching only halfway
to the ceiling, an environment in which privacy was impossible for
this family of eight, with all seven children under the age of eighteen.4
A pregnant woman imprisoned at Fresno found survival particularly
difficult. Summer temperatures reaching over 110 degrees and a smells-
cape permeated with horse manure provoked extreme measures from a
nauseated and weakened Violet De Cristoforo. First she wrapped herself
in a wet towel and crawled under a bed, but when this failed to relieve
her symptoms, De Cristoforo dug a hole and took shelter in the cooler
environs of the earth.5
At Tanforan Racetrack, in San Bruno, California, Tsuyako Kitashima,
her mother, and three brothers were assigned to a small horse stall but
spent most of their time outside in their efforts to avoid the stench of
manure.6 Thankful for even meager improvements, another family
imprisoned at Tanforan was moved from their horse stall to newly con-
structed barracks in July, after enduring temperatures reaching over one
hundred degrees. Although it was “rough,” the new living unit included
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

a window, which made hot afternoons more bearable. But now family
members found themselves battling excessively dusty conditions, which
caused persistent respiratory ailments including sore throats, colds, and
asthma.7 Also shipped by bus to Tanforan, Yoshiko Uchida’s family was
assigned to barrack 16, a long barn previously used to stable race horses.
Arriving at stall 40, the family of four looked into a filthy room measur-
ing ten by twenty feet, with three folded army cots leaning against a wall.
Floorboards saturated with horse manure had been hastily covered with
linoleum, producing an especially sickening odor.
Living conditions at Topaz, in Utah, the Uchidas’ final place of impris-
onment, remained harsh and difficult. Having endured two exhausting

nights on dirty and dilapidated trains, many internees shipped from

Tanforan to the desert town of Delta, Utah, arrived in a weakened state
and suffering from severe motion sickness.8 Most of the trains transport-
ing internees from temporary to permanent imprisonment facilities had
been retrieved from storage after being retired. They were fitted with
nonfunctioning gas light fixtures and contained hard, straight-back
seats that made sleeping impossible. The Uchidas, after their train ride,
boarded a bus for the remaining seventeen-mile drive to Topaz. Upon
arrival, they were assigned to a dusty twenty-by-eighteen-foot room
identified as block 7, barrack 3, unit 3. Empty except for army cots, the
walls of this room were distinguished by enormous and abundant cracks
that allowed dirt from frequent dust storms unfettered access to every
inch of living space.9 Some Topaz internees responded to these condi-
tions by pulling up the floorboards, digging ten feet into the earth, and
creating basements that were warm in the winter, cool in the summer,
and relatively free of dust.10 Degraded living conditions and shoddy con-
centration camp construction are memorialized even today by the term
“Topaz carpenter,” a derogatory expression used by contemporary resi-
dents of Millard County, Utah, when referring to construction workers
who produce poorly built and substandard structures.11
For internees being transferred from Pomona, California, to Heart
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

Mountain, Wyoming, conditions were more severe in that these train

passengers were forced to endure four long sleepless nights. Because
the train had attracted rock-throwing mobs on previous trips, anxious
armed guards, hoping to hide the identity of their passengers, insisted
that window shades be drawn throughout the entire journey. Exhausted
internees walked into drafty, cold living units furnished with a coal stove
and metal army cots.12 Bedding was a persistent problem, with internees
perplexed about where and how to sleep. Many newly arrived Japanese
Americans created “mattresses” by stuffing burlap sacks with straw,
although while stuffing they had to be on the lookout to avoid snakes
and scorpions. When mattress-making supplies and blankets ran low,

some internees doubled up and shared a single cot, padding the wire
springs with one blanket and attempting to stay warm under the other.
Fusaye Hashimoto remembered surviving her first cold nights at Man-
zanar, in California, by sharing a blanket and cot with her sister.13
Although cold temperatures confronted Japanese Americans confined
at Heart Mountain and Manzanar, heat was a formidable problem for
internees arriving by bus at Poston, in Arizona. A twenty-seven-year-old
Nisei man from Fountain Valley, California, described his Camp I liv-
ing quarters in three words: “It was hot!” Worried about the climate, he
remembered that his first impression was that “a lot of guys were going
to die.”14 Even mainstream media sources commented on the degrading
living conditions, with a Catholic Digest article best summing up the
impression of reporters visiting the Granada camp at Amache, Colorado.
“No one has starved, and no one has frozen; but this is about as much as
can be said in defense of the centers as housing projects.”15 These tem-
perature extremes were especially traumatic for people accustomed to
the moderate West Coast climates of California and Washington.
Furniture making was the most immediate art activity of many
internees during the first days of imprisonment, as they attempted to
transform the shoddily built and dilapidated barracks into adequate
shelter.16 Often, furniture building occurred twice: first at the temporary
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

imprisonment facilities, euphemistically referred to by the government

as “assembly centers,” and then again at one of the ten permanent con-
centration camps such as Topaz (Utah), Heart Mountain (Wyoming),
and Gila (Arizona). Even though Japanese Americans recognized that
their confinement in “assembly centers” would be short-lived, they
immediately began employing art in the form of furniture making to
create places of survival. Men were the most active participants in this
art form, with wood understood as a manly medium, but some women
crossed these gendered crafting lines to help furnish living units with
camp-made tables, chairs, beds, shelves, desks, benches, partitions, and
closets.17 In an article assuring readers that “women can be carpenters

too,” a camp newspaper reported on the chairs, shelves, and tables cre-
ated by Mrs. Toba in 4–23.18
Following the example of other internees, a father of two young
daughters used his first day at the temporary imprisonment site in Puy-
allup, Washington, to scavenge the grounds for lumber and nails left by
the contractors responsible for building the camp.19 By the end of the
first month, his new creations included a writing table, benches, shelves,
and sliding wooden storage platforms that fit discreetly beneath each cot.
Perhaps the most prized piece of camp-made furniture was a specially
designed wooden cabinet that concealed the family’s “illegal” hot plate
from armed guards conducting surprise searches for “contraband.”20 Hot
plates were especially valued possessions, with many internees ignoring
regulations prohibiting cooking in the living units, where they prepared
infant formula and other foods on these small electric devices.21 Although
they risked blowing the fuses and plunging an entire barrack into dark-
ness, many internees willingly exchanged evenings without power for the
satisfaction of “home”-cooked meals prepared on hotplates.
A woman from Los Angeles remembered that when, as a sixteen-
year-old, she was imprisoned at Santa Anita, her family made their
room “as livable as possible” with camp-made curtains and furnish-
ings.22 A racetrack prior to March 27, 1942, when the first Japanese
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

Americans arrived, Santa Anita eventually contained nearly 19,000

internees, with many living in stables that formerly housed race
horses.23 Upon arrival at Puyallup, another teenager immediately
began searching the barbwire-fenced area for scrap lumber left behind
when the camp was being constructed. Hoping to provide his family
with a minimum level of “comfort,” William Kimura used these scav-
enged materials to build furniture.24 A Hayward, California, teenager
experienced feelings of despair during her first weeks of imprisonment
at Stockton, but followed the example of her parents and pitched in
to help “beautify their apartment.” Although these physical improve-
ments did not remedy the emotional anguish and physical discomforts

caused by the implementation of Executive Order 9066, they did aid

Nobuko Hanzawa in resituating herself in a hostile environment and
better ensured her mental and physical survival. Remaking the physical
environment of her living unit was critical to “pulling through the mist
of confusion” for this youngster, who had been forcibly removed from
her home in a rural area just south of San Francisco.25
Many furniture-making efforts were the result of lengthy trial and
error, as was the case at Tanforan when shelves built by Florence Miho
Nakamura’s father gave way in the middle of the night, creating a racket
heard throughout the barrack. Although housed in one of the newly
constructed barracks rather than in a former horse stall, the Nakamura
family lived in one of the units separated by thin walls reaching only
halfway to the ceiling. As evidenced by the startled responses of Naka-
mura’s new neighbors to the collapsing shelves, noise traveled easily from
unit to unit, and the thin walls provided little privacy.26 Also pointing to
the thinness of walls was a warning in Tanforan’s newspaper about the
dangers of “involuntary inoculations” caused by internees standing too
close to walls while next-door neighbors were hanging newly completed
shelves and cabinets. As the Tanforan Totalizer reported, one internee
narrowly escaped being nailed in the back as the “energetic party in the
next stall” hung a shelf on the wall.27
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After using art to create minimal levels of comfort at the temporary

imprisonment facilities, most internees were forced to pack up their few
possessions and board trains for more distant and desolate locations.28
Charles Kikuchi remembered looking around the room that had con-
stituted his family’s living quarters during their two and a half months
of imprisonment at Tanforan and recalled how much their “home” had
changed since their arrival on April 30, 1942. The Kikuchis had taken
down a stable door and hung camp-made curtains to partition the
room in which the family lived. Along with the curtains, the family
furnishings now included camp-made benches, chairs, two wardrobes, a
bureau, art objects that rested on shelves, and a desk built at the foot of

his younger brother Jack’s bed. In preparation for their transfer to Gila,
Arizona, the Kikuchi family worked together throughout the morning
of August 29 to carefully dismantle and pack their Tanforan furniture,
“nails and all.” Friends already shipped off to permanent concentration
camps had written to inform the family of serious wood shortages, so,
as Charles wrote in his diary, “any piece of lumber that we have is going
with us.”29 Before boarding trains for transport to Topaz, another Tan-
foran internee converted his family’s camp-made furniture into packing
crates, which in turn were transformed back into tables, shelves, and
benches upon arrival in the Utah desert.30
At their permanent locations of incarceration, internees again set to
creating habitable places of survival by making furniture. After four
long days on a train destined for Rohwer, Arkansas, Yoshio Matsuda
stepped onto Arkansas soil with the goal of gathering wood to make a
bed.31 A teenage girl recently transferred from Santa Anita to Poston,
Arizona, reported in a letter written to a librarian friend back home in
California that many internees were becoming skilled at making beds
from scrap lumber. After several nights attempting to sleep in a sagging
army cot provided by the War Relocation Authority, she better under-
stood the motivation of these crafters, observing: “The cot sinks down
in the middle while the wooden bed stays straight.”32 Some new arriv-
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

als at Granada, in Amache, Colorado, immediately began constructing

beds from scavenged wood, but supplies were soon exhausted, and many
spent their first restless nights on straw-covered floors.33 Seven hundred
and fifty miles to the west in Topaz, Utah, a young girl felt less anxious
sleeping in a bunk bed constructed by her father.34
Having devised adequate sleeping spaces, crafters shifted their atten-
tion to other types of furniture, including privacy screens, night stands,
shelves, chests, chairs, and tables.35 Describing her family’s living unit at
Amache, Colorado, as “nothing but a big room,” Yoshie Mary Tashima
had her spirits lifted by the furniture made by her brothers from scrap
lumber.36 Two brothers imprisoned at Topaz, Utah, transformed the

wooden crate that once protected their new potbellied stove into a
five-foot-long cushionless couch.37 Countering the gendered image of
furniture makers with the headline “She Makes ’Em Herself,” the Man-
zanar Free Press reported that Fumi Marumoto of block 9 created a small
bench and a “closet of shelves” from a discarded orange crate and card-
board boxes.38 As a Minidoka internee remembered, the idea of comfort
remained uppermost in the minds of Japanese Americans as they again
repositioned themselves in harsh places of imprisonment by creating
furniture from found materials.39
Desperately needing privacy, internees constructed screens and
partitions from scrap wood, spare blankets, and cloth. Some internees
extended walls of individual living units to the ceiling, whereas others
partitioned their already small rooms into sleeping and living areas.40
While attending an art exhibit at Tulare, an Issei woman admired a
privacy screen, noting in a diary entry that the item had been made
by meticulously piecing together small pieces of scrap wood.41 At Tule
Lake, California, administration officials reacted negatively to repeated
requests from internees for partition-making supplies. But when new
barracks were constructed to house supposed troublemakers from other
concentration camps, the men, women, and children already imprisoned
at Tule Lake lost little time taking advantage of the fresh supply piles in
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

the camp lumberyard. As one internee reported, “our luck changed” and
“we band[ed] together to attack in groups.”42 One youngster imprisoned
at Tule Lake recalled that these camp-made screens made her family’s
“barren room look a bit more homey.”43
Many women and children who endured imprisonment without their
husbands and fathers accepted the help of neighbors who offered to make
furniture.44 With her husband imprisoned in the Department of Justice
facility at Lordsburg, New Mexico, Yukiko Furata and her four daughters
eagerly accepted a gift of camp-made tables to furnish their living unit
at Poston.45 In a separate yet parallel incarceration, Furata’s husband
was among thousands of Issei rounded up by the FBI in the aftermath

Dusselier, Jane E.. Artifacts of Loss : Crafting Survival in Japanese American Concentration Camps, Rutgers University Press, 2008.
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r e m a k i n g i n s i d e p l ac e s 23
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

2. Cabinet made by a Tule Lake crafter, July 1, 1942. Photographer: Francis

Stewart. Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.

of Pearl Harbor and held in Department of Justice facilities. In a similar

case, Dwight Takashi Uchida was arrested before nightfall on Decem-
ber 7 and imprisoned in the Department of Justice facility at Missoula,
Montana. Nearly five months later, Uchida’s wife and two daughters were
forced from their Berkeley home and transported, under armed guard,

3. Table and chairs made from found materials at Topaz. Courtesy of the
Topaz Museum.

to Tanforan and later Topaz, Utah. Thankful to be imprisoned alongside

old friends, the female Uchidas relied on neighbors to build shelves, a
table, and two benches.46 Revealing the total lack of reason underpin-
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

ning internment of the over 120,000 Japanese Americans was the case
of a woman imprisoned without her husband because he was ordered to
train Navy intelligence officers in Boulder, Colorado. Shipped to Amache,
Colorado, from Santa Anita during September 1942, this wife and mother
was too busy caring for two young sons to be concerned with building
furniture. Fortunately, neighbors quickly recognized her predicament
as a single mother and presented her with small chairs and tables pieced
together from scrap wood.47 In the case of a widowed mother and two
daughters imprisoned first at Stockton and later at Rohwer, the eldest
daughter enlisted the help of three male friends, who transformed one-
by-twelve-inch pieces of lumber into shelves and benches.48

Supplies for making furniture were difficult to come by and proved

to be the most significant obstacle for furniture makers. Careful to avoid
the attention of armed soldiers in guard towers, internees restricted their
early searches for furniture-building materials to well within the barbed-
wire perimeters. Furniture makers dug and sifted through soil surround-
ing newly constructed barracks for discarded nails, while others hiked
throughout the camps looking for scraps of lumber, discarded fruit
crates, and cardboard boxes.49 At Poston, furniture makers scoured the
camp grounds for ironwood, mesquite, and sagebrush roots.50 Persistent
and enduring shortages of furniture-making supplies prompted many
internees, primarily men, to take War Relocation Authority carpentry
jobs. By securing these positions, camp carpenters established easier
access to nails and wood for building chairs, benches, tables, and other
“knickknacks” that made living units more habitable.51 Understand-
ing nails as prized possessions is likely difficult for many readers, but
for imprisoned Japanese Americans, furniture-building materials were
considered extraordinarily generous gifts. A woman imprisoned at Gila,
Arizona, remembered giving nails, many of them bent, as an engagement
gift to her friend. Gathered by sifting through sand in a windbreak, an
area where scrap lumber was piled, and raiding her father’s supply, the
“precious” nails were then wrapped in paper that previously had lined
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

fruit crates.52
Some camp artists were forced to engage in activities they understood
as bordering on stealing. Imprisoned internees risked embarrassment
and further punishment by snatching wood from guarded camp lumber
piles. Shuzo Chris Kato remembers gathering furniture-making supplies
at Minidoka as his “first venture into stealing for his family.” Accompa-
nied by friends, Kato crawled under a barbed-wire fence surrounding the
lumber pile to “steal” wood for bench and table making.53 At Poston, a
Nisei teenage girl waited for the dark of night before approaching wood
left by outside contractors responsible for building barracks.54 After
discovering a similar source of furniture-making materials, Kimi Yanari

recruited a girlfriend, and together they conducted a nighttime raid

on Rohwer’s lumberyard, which was guarded by a mounted MP. Hav-
ing successfully and safely secured lumber for shelf and chair making,
Yanari recalled: “That was the only time I ever stole anything.”55 At dusk
each night, occupants of Minidoka’s bachelors’ barracks looked out their
windows toward the camp storage area to “literally see lumber walking
off in many directions.”56 In addition to threats presented by armed
guards, open and unfinished sewer ditches proved formidable obstacles
to the successful completion of nocturnal lumber raids.57
Internal security forces comprised of internees paid by the War
Relocation Authority were most often responsible for protecting lum-
ber piles, so tensions were to be expected. These security officers were
accused by other internees of being inu, translated as “dogs,” and col-
laborating with camp administrators. Members of Poston’s security
force patrolled in marked cars, prompting angry internees to scratch off
the po from police, leaving the letters lice on the vehicles.58 Although
George Fukasawa preferred to ignore the wood-gathering activities of his
fellow internees, as a Manzanar security guard he often found himself
in the awkward position of protecting government property in the form
of lumber.59 Internees were not always so lucky to encounter men like
Fukasawa, as evidenced by the shooting of a Japanese American man by
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

a U.S. Army soldier guarding Manzanar’s lumber pile.60

Shortages of furniture-making material had reached crisis propor-
tions at Tule Lake when frustrated and desperate internees swarmed
a delivery truck loaded with lumber and then carted off the contents.
Having witnessed this incident, Noboru Shirai commented: “Those
who knew the truck drivers and lumberyard workers got what they
wanted. Nobody else did, since polite requests were always denied.”61
After being caught removing lumber designated for building a barracks
that would serve as Manzanar’s hospital, five members of a boys’ “gang”
were admonished by the camp director, to the great embarrassment of
their parents.62 As late as May 1943, a full eight months after opening,

Paul Taylor, the head administrator of the Jerome camp in Arkansas,

warned Japanese Americans that taking lumber from “construction
areas” was punishable by forced labor without compensation and a jail
sentence. Apparently, the irony of being threatened with further impris-
onment while already incarcerated was lost on some War Relocation
Authority officials.63
Furniture was only one art form used by internees to transform their
living units into places of survival. With the basic and immediate need
for beds and furniture met, women resisted oppressive living conditions
in assembly centers and concentration camps by crocheting, sewing,
weaving, embroidering, and knitting. Colorful and intricately crocheted
blankets, tablecloths, teapot holders, and pillowcases were popular and
welcome additions to drab surroundings. Needlecrafters who created
decorative arts for living units often worked together, sharing techniques
and ideas. Women imprisoned in Tanforan created “house-step sewing
circles” in which they made a wide range of items with yarn and fabric,
including table runners, slipcovers, lamp shades, bedspreads, afghans,
and quilts. Tulare women discovered it was possible to crochet colorful
rugs from discarded rags.64 Embroidered and carved landscapes served
as colorful wall hangings at Heart Mountain, with one women taking
advantage of the administration’s efforts to develop a ceramic factory.
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

On a thick slab of clay, she carved out the defining element of Heart
Mountain’s landscape in the background and sculpted a group of resi-
dential barracks in the foreground. By kiln firing the panel to a tempera-
ture that allowed liquid glaze to be applied without dissolving the clay,
this crafter was able to highlight her design with colors.
At Rohwer, an old loom requiring repairs sat unused for several
months, but a newly hired staff person with weaving skills was eager to
restore the device to working condition. Soon imprisoned women were
unraveling burlap sacks retrieved from camp warehouses, washing and
coloring the “yarn” with vegetable dyes, and then weaving the material
into rugs. Other artists gathered flat slender sticks and wove them into

4. Embroidered landscapes served as colorful wall hangings at Heart

Mountain. Photographer: Tobie Matava. Courtesy of the Heart Mountain,
Wyoming, Foundation.

Venetian-like blinds for windows, and when bundles of clothes were

donated to the camp, internees cut them into strips to create more than
seven hundred rag rugs for the floors of living units.65 Women impris-
oned at Topaz created stuffed animals from percale or gingham and used
worn out sweaters and blankets as filling. Patterns for pandas and giraffes
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

that stood a foot high were provided by the women’s page editor of the

5. Carved clay tablet depicting the Heart Mountain landscape. Photographer:

Tobie Matava. Courtesy of the Heart Mountain, Wyoming, Foundation.

camp newspaper, who informed her readers that these bed or shelf deco-
rations were easily made for ten cents’ worth of materials and doubled as
toys for children.66 Internees lucky enough to have teapots were offered
patterns for creating potholders in the likeness of a horse, made with
black-and-white-checkered percale and red bias trim.67 Another Topaz
woman solved a persistent cold weather problem by crocheting woolen
covers that prevented her family’s hands from adhering to frigid metal
doorknobs. According to her seventeen-year-old daughter, losing a piece
of flesh while opening doors was a frequent and painful experience before
her mother’s invention.68 Such practical additions to living quarters were
carefully created to brighten the austere interior surroundings.
Daughters and mothers, hoping to improve their living quarters,
browsed through the Sears and Roebuck and Montgomery Ward cata-
logs for material and together sewed draperies.69 Fifteen years old at the
time of her transfer from Santa Anita, a daughter remembered helping
her mother sew draperies to make their Amache, Colorado, unit more
“comfortable.” 70 A Topaz mother and her two young daughters mail-
ordered pink fabric and hand sewed curtains and covers for recently
made shelves.71 Imprisoned without their father and husband, who had
been taken into custody by FBI agents on the night of December 7, 1941,
this family of three females furnished their living unit with the help of a
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

man and his son living in the same block. Draperies served functional as
well as decorative purposes. When frequent noises from barrack mates
awakened a young Puyallup girl, she appreciated curtains made by her
mother because they blocked out the powerful beam of the search lights
manned each night by armed U.S. soldiers in guard towers. Once shipped
to her permanent location of imprisonment, this same girl helped her
mother pick out white organdy fabric from a catalog. When the material
arrived, they sewed curtains for their Minidoka living unit.72
Artificial flowers were also frequent additions that made living
quarters more hospitable. Careful to save colorful pages from catalogs
and magazines, women transformed the paper into flowers and then

sewed them onto muslin-covered balls stuffed with waded paper, sew-
ing scraps, or discarded bedding materials. Measuring approximately
six inches in diameter, these artificial flower arrangements were hung
from ceilings and walls of living units. Other women created similarly
flowered artwork from silk scraps.73 Women imprisoned at Poston made
artificial chrysanthemums, gardenias, iris, sweet peas, cherry blos-
soms, lilacs, and carnations from colored paper that once lined apple
and orange crates. One teenage girl described artificial flower making
as the “latest rage” but personally found making carnations a “tedious
experience.”74 A reporter for Heart Mountain’s newspaper observed that
“dexterous feminine fingers” were making up for the absence of greenery
and flowers by making roses from crepe paper purchased through mail
order catalogs and wire gathered on scavenging trips. In spite of its sexist
characterizations, this statement is evidence of the difficulties encom-
passing artificial flower making. New to the art form, Miwako Oano
described her friend’s flowers as “so beautiful and so realistic that when
I come home every day, my first impulse is to inhale the sweet fragrance
one would expect to find emanating from such loveliness.”75
Ikebana was an art form commonly practiced in all ten concentration
camps, and its results lined shelves and rested on tables in the living quar-
ters of internees. Dating back to the sixth century and finding its origins
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

in the diverse range of plant life offered by Japan’s geography and climate,
ikebana is a generic name for many schools and styles of Japanese flower
arranging. Early ideas about arranging flowers were introduced in Japan
by Chinese Buddhists, who presented their creations as religious offerings
to the dead and alter adornments. However, the formalization and theoreti-
cal development of ikebana occurred in Japan, beginning in the sixteenth
century with the Ikenobo school, which demanded that artists adhere to
a strict set of rules. Since this time varying styles have emerged, such as
rikka (standing flowers), seika (living flowers), nageire (flowers thrown
in bowl-shaped vases), and moribana (flowers piled in low vases or shal-
low dishlike containers). Distinctive schools shaped by historical, social,

Dusselier, Jane E.. Artifacts of Loss : Crafting Survival in Japanese American Concentration Camps, Rutgers University Press, 2008.
ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=413878.
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6. Artificial flowers made at Manzanar, June 30, 1942. Photographer:
Dorothea Lange. Courtesy of the National Archives and Records
Administration.
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7. Artificial roses made at Manzanar. Courtesy of the Eastern California

Museum.

and cultural contexts also developed, among them the modern schools of
Ohara and Sogetsu, established in 1910 and 1930, respectively. Reacting to
the rigidity of Ikenobo, the Ohara school offered more room for individual
creativity by advancing the idea that arrangements were vehicles through
which artists could express their feelings for flowers. Emerging during the
1930s, the Sogetsu school broke all ties with traditional rules, conceptual
theories, and botanical restrictions by incorporating dead branches and
withered leaves among many other materials.
At risk of over simplifying this complex and deeply theoretical art form,
ikebana is grounded in the belief that the lives of flowers and the lives of
humans are inseparable. The style, size, shape, texture, and color of both
arrangements and containers carry great meaning. In addition to using
empty space to communicate ideas, ikebana artists attach significance to
the location of arrangements and the occasions for which they are created.
Along with flowers, a great diversity of materials have been used since the
1930s, including but not limited to branches, vines, leaves, grasses, berries,
fruit, seeds, and dried or wilted plants, with each conveying a meaning of
its own. With the knowledge that a wider range of methods and materials
was gaining acceptance, imprisoned Japanese Americans likely found it
easier to adapt even traditional styles of Ikenobo to the plant life provided
by their barren environments and the paucity of vases and containers.76
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Imprisoned at Rohwer, Mrs. Hirahara relied on branches, leaves, and

plants found in the Arkansas woods and arranged her creations in a vari-
ety of rectangular cooking dishes. With the arrangements completed, the
dishes were then placed in decorative boxes made from packing-crate
boards. Husbands or male friends of flower arrangers often retrieved the
empty crates from camp warehouses and then cut the boards to precise
specifications before carefully carving, sanding, and staining the boxes.
On one of her ikebana gathering trips, Hirahara came upon a recently
felled red oak and was able to gather branches from the exposed stump.
Focusing her arrangement around these branches, she added other wild
plants and created an arrangement with green leaves that continued to

Dusselier, Jane E.. Artifacts of Loss : Crafting Survival in Japanese American Concentration Camps, Rutgers University Press, 2008.
ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=413878.
Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2025-05-02 14:33:54.
r e m a k i n g i n s i d e p l ac e s 33
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8. An example of ikebana from Jerome, November 25, 1942. Photographer:

Tom Parker. Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.

grow for several weeks.77 Mrs. Homma, a teacher of ikebana at Heart

Mountain, became known for her arrangements made with wild juniper,
which she often displayed on a special shelf in her living unit. Relying
on other wild plants and flowers indigenous to northwest Wyoming,
Homma offered ikebana classes to adults and children alike.78
Internees at Tule Lake lived under the strictest security restrictions of all
the camps because, in fall 1943, the War Relocation Authority designated

Tule Lake the segregation center for “troublemakers.” Because the physi-
cal movement of all the camp’s internees was severely restricted, flower
arrangers at Tule Lake gained permission for a designated “procurement
clerk” to gather materials outside the boundaries of the camp. Each day
an internee cleared by administrators searched within a one-mile perim-
eter of the barbed-wire fence, collecting cattails, wild plums, tule grasses,
willows, and sagebrush. Soon, however, these supplies were exhausted, so
internee crafters once again approached the camp director and, with the
support of a War Relocation Authority staff member, gained permission
to make supervised visits to the Modoc Forest located approximately an
hour east of camp. Here Tule Lake’s flower and plant arrangers found an
inexhaustible supply of cedar, mahogany, pine branches, and sagebrush79
As a Nisei teenager Molly Nakamura was first exposed to ikebana
while imprisoned at Tule Lake, California.80 A senior at Marysville Union
High School when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive
Order 9066, Nakamura was denied the opportunity to participate in
her graduation ceremony and instead received a diploma in the mail at
her Yuba City, California, home. In July 1942 Nakamura, along with her
parents and younger brother, were shipped to Tule Lake, where she imme-
diately began working as a mess hall waitress. But Nakamura’s primary
focus became learning ikebana, making certain to attend classes and
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

practice the art of flower arranging. Nakamura was a committed student

of ikebana and developed what would become a lifelong interest in this art
form. Returning to Marysville, California, after her release, Nakamura
earned her credentials as a teacher of the Ikenobo school and in 1959
cofounded the Sacramento chapter of Ikebana International, an organiza-
tion that paired an interest in art with fostering international peace.
Around the same time that Nakamura began taking ikebana classes
at Tule Lake, Shigeno Nishimi arrived there as a credentialed teacher of
this art form.81 Nishimi also worked as a mess hall waitress but managed
to carve time from her busy schedule to offer ikebana classes. Hoping to
escape the life of rice farmers, Nishimi and her new husband immigrated

to the United States in 1924. After settling into life as the spouse of an
antique and art dealer in Los Angeles, Nishimi began taking ikebana
classes from Senka Okamoto and became a credentialed teacher of the art
form before her internment. While she was imprisoned first at Walegra,
also know as the Sacramento detention facility, and later at Tule Lake, she
relied on local plant life, which she compared to igusa (a strawlike plant
used to make Japanese tatami mats) and futoi (also a plant that produced
strawlike material), and substituted artificial creations made from colored
paper for fresh flowers.82 Her arrangements were often distinguished by
the use of daikon (a large white radish) and carrots. She also fostered close
relationships with carpenters imprisoned at Tule Lake, who supplied her
students with nails and wood to create containers for their artwork.
Released from Tule Lake in January 1946, Nishimi and her family
moved to Sacramento. They were forced to abandon hopes of returning
to Los Angeles because their house had been confiscated by neighbors
who offered to serve as landlords during the war years. In a story all
too common among Japanese Americans forced into the concentra-
tion camps, the Nashimas had all of their property and possessions
stolen, an offense made possible by a series of machinations supported
by the mayor of Los Angeles, who assured the U.S. Representative from
California John Tolan, on April 27, 1942, that “property within this city
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

formerly occupied or used by the Japanese will not remain idle.”83

Forty-three-year-old Nishimi adjusted to life in Sacramento by teaching
ikebana classes and caring for her children and husband, who developed
a general contracting business. During several trips to Kyoto, Nishimi
continued her training as a master ikebana teacher and mentored aspir-
ing artists until 1993. According to her 1997 obituary, Nishimi was known
in Sacramento as a highly respected teacher of ikebana and a talented
artist. Her reputation was further enhanced by a fifteen-year term as
president of the Ikenobo Ikebana Society of Northern California.84
Kobu was an art form practiced in most of the imprisonment loca-
tions, but it was especially popular in the Arkansas camps. With an

abundance of recently felled trees at their disposal, Japanese Americans

imprisoned at Rohwer and Jerome decorated their living units with
natural formations found in the roots of elm, hickory, and oak trees as
well as with art carved from segments of tree trunks. Carefully stripping
away decaying pieces of wood and bark by boiling roots and tree trunks,
internees revealed raw sculptures, which were oiled, polished, and finally
varnished to a high gleam.85 Some of these artists were purists who only
slightly altered figures shaped naturally, whereas others took more a
aggressive approach by carving such items as match holders, bowls,
and plaques from hollowed-out slabs of tree trunks. Among the natural
forms were monkeys, lizards, birds, and human figures. What internees
refereed to as “cypress knees” were also valued by kobu artists in that the
formations often provided pieces of wood that were easily hollowed into
vases. Exceptionally prized and rare, these works of art were used as ves-
sels for flower arrangements by ikebana enthusiasts.86
A primary obstacle for most imprisoned crafters was overcoming
persistent shortages of art-making supplies, but bon-kei enthusiasts were
surrounded by two materials commonly used in their art form, sand and
dirt. Perhaps best translated as “landscape in a tray,” bon-kei reproduced
in miniature all elements of a specific landscape, including buildings and
people. Mrs. Ninomiya had been exposed to this art form during her
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

childhood in Japan, so when she looked out on Amache’s dusty landscape,

she saw possibilities that eluded most internees. After completing an
example of bon-kei during her first days of imprisonment, Ninomiya
soon found herself with ninety-two students, none of whom had previous
experience with the art form. Tray-making materials presented the biggest
obstacle, with Ninomiya’s pupils always on the lookout for discarded
vegetable crates, but unfortunately demand far exceeded supply. Internees
started a letter-writing campaign that sent friends back home off on tray-
shopping expeditions, with the final stop being the post office. After they
began receiving tray-making materials in the mail, Amache artists created
mountain, desert, seacoast, and “imaginary Japanese” scenes. Bon-kei

9. Kobu was a popular art form in the Arkansas camps. Courtesy of the
Rosalie Santine Gould Collection.

decorated many of Amache’s living units, with internees mulling over the
irony of making art from sand—a material they so often cursed.87
Freestanding wood sculptures were carved by camp crafters and placed
on tables and shelves in the living units, and embroidered landscapes
decorated rough barrack walls. Artwork created by imprisoned children
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were welcome additions to living units, with drawings and paintings

sometimes covering entire sections of a wall. Internees marked holidays
by creating special pieces of art. One teenager, hoping to brighten the
mood of his family’s first Christmas at Tule Lake, spent his monthly
clothing allowance of $3.50 to purchase several packages of construction
paper. After transforming green paper and glue into a one-foot-tall
Christmas tree, he created ornaments by cutting small circles from
sheets of red, yellow, pink, and orange paper. Once these decorations
were pasted on the tree, the family of this Nisei artist admitted that the
camp-made Christmas tree helped lift the “dark clouds” hanging over
their lives.88

10. A bon-kei and ikebana display at Amache, September 11, 1942.

Photographer: Joe McClelland. Courtesy of the National Archives and
Records Administration.

Internees extended their experiences of creating livable inside places of

survival beyond the confines of their individual living units. Nameplates
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

and mailboxes helped internees more easily identify their living units, a
difficult task considering that blocks were laid out in standardized grids
composed of twelve identical barracks, each one indistinguishable from the
other. Assembly center structures were characterized by more variation in
style and materials, but in both temporary and permanent camps, internees
created a wide range of nameplates to distinguish their living units from
those of their many neighbors. Nameplates and mailboxes were especially
important in the early days, before gardens and landscaping took hold, cre-
ating more diversity in the landscape and differences among neighboring
barracks and blocks. Because the layout of the housing was standardized,
losing one’s way was a frequent, frustrating, and sometimes traumatic

11. Nameplates helped internees distinguish their living unit from that of
their neighbors at Amache, October 1945. Photographer: Hikaru Iwasaki.
Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

experience, especially for youngsters and the elderly. On their first night at
Heart Mountain, a group of internees wandered out among the hundreds
of black tar-papered barracks in an attempt to locate the latrines, only to get
lost and then rescued by a more experienced neighbor.89 Becoming disori-
ented in this physical maze was not an infrequent occurrence, as noted by
a woman imprisoned first at Tanforan and then Topaz: “All the residential
blocks looked alike; people were lost all the time.”90
A group of bachelors sharing a room in area C of Puyallup used scrap
lumber to create an “entry roof” over the doorway and a sign identifying
their living unit as the “Outside Inn.” Intended as a reference to the shoddy
construction common in all camps, the sign perfectly described the ability

12. A nameplate made from woven cotton yarn at Amache, October 1942.
Photographer: Hikaru Iwasaki. Courtesy of the National Archives and
Records Administration.

of internees and camp administrators walking by outside the barrack to

gaze through gaping holes into individual living units.91 A few signs were
carved or written in Japanese, evidence that some internees were willing to
closely identify with Japanese culture under especially perilous conditions.
But there was conflict among internees about writing in Japanese. A young
Nisei man interned at Tanforan was disturbed after noticing that a newly
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

placed nameplate was written in Japanese, which he felt “gave our Block a
Japanese name.” The offended internee quickly removed the nameplate, even
though he was being watched by a “couple of Kibei boys,” who protested his
action.92 Mine Okubo remembered that nameplates written in Japanese were
prohibited by camp administrators, which likely explained this internee’s
courage in removing the sign even in the presence of objectors. Other
internees imprisoned at Tanforan named their living units Inner Sanctum,
Stall Inn, and Sea Biscuit, sarcastically referring to the cacophonous living
conditions and the animal identities of previous inhabitants. On Okubo’s
door was a sign reading quarantine, signifying her desire for peace and
quiet.93 Burlap and tree limbs were popular nameplate-making supplies
at Santa Anita, the largest and longest occupied of all fifteen temporary

facilities, imprisoning over 19,000 Japanese Americans. Accompanying one

nameplate was a doll made of burlap, sitting on a tree branch, with wood
shavings for hair and buttons for eyes.94
Concentration camp barracks were made of cheap, unseasoned wood,
usually pine or redwood, and black tar paper, creating a maze of replicas
that internees found difficult to navigate. An Amache widow and her
seven children decided on Sleepy Lagoon as a fitting name for their living
quarters and carved the letters into a slab of wood. Mas Ueysugi, who
was seventeen years old at the time of imprisonment, later commented
that the nameplate gave their unit a “homey atmosphere.”95 Creating
anything resembling a home must have presented a formidable task con-
sidering that Amache, laid out on a north–south grid, was a one-mile-
square area of 10,500 acres. A thirty-block internee housing area—with
each block made up of twelve barracks measuring 20 by 120 feet each,
and each barrack further divided into six equal units—was separated by
barbed wire from the upgraded staff housing area. Building materials for
Amache’s internee living units varied from those of other camps, with
asbestos shingles and fiberboard substituted for the usual tar-paper con-
struction. A letter-number system identified specific blocks by indicat-
ing the street intersection at a block’s northwest corner. Living in unit 8F,
also known as Sleepy Lagoon, the Ueysugi family was two blocks from
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

the elementary classrooms, a fortunate location for a family of seven

children, especially on frigid and windy winter days in southeastern
Colorado, where temperatures often dipped to thirty below zero.96
For the nearly 8,500 Jerome internees living in a rectangle comprised
of thirty-six blocks of twelve identical barracks each, nameplates and
mailboxes were powerful honing devices that allowed living units to
be more easily located while also commenting on everyday intern-
ment experiences.97 On the door of the Jerome living unit, identified
by administrators as block 28, barrack 6, unit C, hung a plate with the
names Mr. and Mrs. M. Nishi painted at the top and a service star in
the center honoring their son George, a staff sergeant in the U.S. Army.
Surrounding the service star were the names of their four daughters,

42 a r t i fac t s o f l o s s

Seiji, Grace, Matsie, and Mary. At 9–7-E, a knot in the center of a pol-
ished wood board served as the letter O in the printed blue inscription,
“Generally Knot Inn,” and marked the living quarters of the Tamura
brothers, Spud and John.98 Internees approaching 12–8-D were greeted
with a more practical marker of place that included the instructions
“Please Clean Your Shoes Before Entering this Room. This Also Means
the People Living In this Room. Thank you, the boss.” A designer of one
Topaz nameplate used a metal band that had been wrapped around a
large wooden packing crate, bending and shaping the long strip into his
name, Higashida. Once completed, the strip was attached to a slab of
scrap wood and placed on the living unit door.99
Mailboxes were also effective markers of place, with Jerome’s news-
paper reporting in February 1943 that “practically every” living unit
was “sporting” a mailbox of some sort.100 Eddie Imasu made a wooden
box from spare pieces of pine and then painted the front to look like
a letter addressed to himself, including intricate drawings of a stamp
and postmark. At the Tsukamotos’ living unit, internees working as
mail deliverers were required to “punch the face of Hitler” before gain-
ing access to an opening that accepted letters and packages. Another
imprisoned Japanese American made a log cabin mailbox from small
twigs, bamboo sticks, and pieces of rough bark. When completed, the
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

door of the log cabin opened to accept letters, while the roof lifted to
provide ample space for packages. Smaller and less elaborate mailboxes
were made from paper milk cartons and carved from wood, with mail
deliverers leaving notes for internees to pick up larger packages at mess
halls or camp post offices. Some crafters printed names in Japanese,
others used English lettering, and many announced the inhabitants of
living units in both languages.101
Removed from their homes and familiar environments, internees
endured a severe form of displacement. Their dislocation was made even
more difficult by confinement in physical places characterized by hun-
dreds of indistinguishable buildings arranged in identical patterns and
situated in monochromatic landscapes, with climates hostile to people

accustomed to lush coastal geographies. At the risk of trivializing the

traumas of internment, I suggest that contemporary readers compare
the experience of finding a living unit in one of these camps with that of
identifying your vehicle in a 540-acre (the size of the central portion of
Manzanar) parking lot filled with cars of the same make, color, model,
and year.102 Although this example does not begin to encompass the
everyday obstacles experienced by imprisoned Japanese Americans, it
hints at one task encountered many times each day by internees attempt-
ing to live life at the most basic level. With all blocks and barracks exter-
nally indistinct, camp-made nameplates and mailboxes were welcome
additions and made losing one’s way a less frequent occurrence.
Inside places such as mess halls, classrooms, hospitals, and spaces of
worship also drew the attention of many camp artists. Skills and ideas
developed to enhance family living units were transferred to places more
firmly defined and understood in terms of shared use. Sixty-one-year-old
Kamekichi Kawasaki responded to Heart Mountain’s shortage of mess hall
eating utensils by carving and polishing one thousand wooden spoons or
shakushi from discarded apple crates. By May 1943, his efforts were shifted
to creating mayonnaise spoons and chopsticks. As the Heart Mountain
Sentinel reported: “Garbed in overalls, winter underwear sleeves rolled up,
dreaming maybe of home back in sunny California, he works—unpaid and
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

unheralded.”103 Mess hall walls were popular spaces for imprisoned artists
to display their work. Amache’s rough interior walls were particularly well
known for hosting a wide range of wood panels carved by imprisoned Japa-
nese Americans. After standing in long lines three times each day, internees
sitting down to often meager meals were greeted by carvings, ikebana,
watercolors, and embroidery among many other art forms.104
Christmas was a time when mess halls served as a welcoming canvas
for crafters. Rohwer’s landscape provided trees that internees cut down
and placed in mess halls. Crafters gathered canning jar rims, which
they stuffed with round balls of red cellophane. Other internees, with
needle and thread, strung together dried fruits and vegetables grown
in camp gardens. Together these creations decorated Christmas trees.105

13. Wooden spoons made from discarded apple crates at Heart Mountain.
Photographer: Tobie Matava. Courtesy of the Heart Mountain, Wyoming,
Foundation.

At Heart Mountain, mess hall trees were decorated with stars cut from
tin cans.106 Creating tree decorations for Manzanar’s first Christmas
provided welcomed relief and focus in the aftermath of the December 7,
1942, conflict between U.S. soldiers and imprisoned Japanese Americans,
which resulted in the deaths of two internees and the wounding of nine
others. After fourteen days of martial law, with armed guards patrolling
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

the camp in jeeps mounted with machine guns and liberally using tear
gas, segments of the traumatized population at Manzanar attempted to
extract some level of normalcy by gathering scrap materials and creat-
ing Christmas decorations. Many internees spent their first days of
“freedom” from martial law gently bending and then linking discarded
toothbrush handles into rings to create colorful chains for encircling
Christmas trees placed in all thirty-six mess halls. Once submerged in
hot water, the handles became pliable and easily shaped. Other internees
folded and cut intricate decorations out of tin foil wrappers used to pack-
age cigarettes and gum, or they created tree ornaments by using nails to
stencil designs on the lids of tin cans.107

With the support of YWCA officials, young women at many camps

convinced administrators to allocate spaces for “meeting and club
houses” and lost little time settling into these cramped areas by creat-
ing furniture, pillows, rugs, and curtains. As a Poston Y Girl reported
to national staff members: “We have received (and not very easily too!)
a whole recreation hall which we are going to call the ‘Y’ room.” Grace
Morioka concluded her letter by requesting furniture and curtain-mak-
ing materials.108 Young women at Amache also solicited the YWCA for
drapery- and slipcover-making material, informing the national sec-
retary in Denver that camp-made couches were already constructed.109
A Girl Reserves “clubhouse” at the Canal Camp section of Gila was
already furnished with camp-made couches and curtains, but Y officials
requested that Tucson chapter members search their attics for spare pil-
low-making supplies.110 These spaces allowed teenage girls and young
women to gather together in an environment free of parental supervi-
sion, which was especially important in the context of imprisonment,
where families lived together in one room and privacy was nonexistent.
Classrooms were especially bleak, with teachers walking into empty
shells devoid of furniture, books, and other supplies. Many internees
embraced opportunities to support the education of incarcerated young-
sters by creating furniture and decorations that made classroom environ-
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

ments more bearable. Unable to hold classes throughout the fall of 1942
because wood-burning stoves had yet to be installed, the elementary
school at Topaz reopened in December. Happy to be back in her classroom
teaching second graders, a young Nisei woman, who before internment
had been a student at the University of California, Berkeley, eagerly hung
new curtains made by her mother. As the young teacher commented: “It
was a great relief to be warm in my classroom, and the atmosphere was
further improved by bright colored curtains my mother had sewn for me
by hand.”111 For high school seniors forced to miss their commencement
ceremonies back home, Tulare’s grandstand was transformed into a gradu-
ation stage. Unattractive and heavy beams were concealed with green tree

branches that had been woven together, and daisy chains made by Mr.
Tanaka’s artificial-flower-making class bordered the steep steps graduates
climbed to receive their diplomas. A huge basket filled with camp-made
paper flowers decorated the center of the stage.112
Children also participated in enhancing classroom environments. A
class of third graders was active in transforming Topaz into a survivable
place when they sewed curtains and “made flowers to make our room look
like spring.”113 A group of seventh grade girls imprisoned at Poston made
curtains for their classroom from material purchased by their teacher. As
one of the students reported: “The new curtains and the colorful pictures
which we put up on the walls add to the cheer of the room.”114 A persistent
shortage of furniture in classrooms forced many children to lug chairs
and benches from their living units to classes and then back each day.115
In the mornings sixteen-year-old Aiko Tanamachi carried a portable
bench made by her older brother to school and returned each afternoon
to her Poston I “home” with her camp-made chair in tow. Forty-two years
later Tanamachi had only to look at the scars on her legs, her embodied
memorials, which had been caused by nails protruding from her make-
shift school furniture, to recall this experience.116
Poston’s students were fortunate to have a school at all in that this
concentration camp near Parker, Arizona, was constructed without any
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

consideration given to or space allotted for educating school-aged chil-

dren and teenagers. With the U.S. government ignoring the educational
requirements of its youngest captives and refusing to allocate lumber
to volunteers willing to build schools, internees were forced to employ
alternative and unfamiliar methods of construction. Using natural
materials provided by the physical environment, some internees joined
together to make countless adobe bricks from which school buildings
were then constructed. Although working with adobe was an especially
taxing and dirty job, Poston’s schools were completed, albeit with great
sacrifice on the part of imprisoned Japanese Americans, who worked in
temperatures exceeding 115 degrees. Poston I’s elementary school, located

14. Making furniture for schools at Heart Mountain, September 22, 1942.
Photographer: Tom Parker. Courtesy of the National Archives and Records
Administration.

at the west end of blocks 19 and 30, was a sophisticated group of struc-
tures that included an office, auditorium, library, covered walkways,
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

and ten classroom buildings. On the far west side of Poston I was the
high school, a fortunate location for the previously mentioned bench-
toting Tanamachi, who lived in block 37, barrack 11, unit C, just two
blocks east. The educational complex was composed of an office, library,
auditorium, auto and wood shop, and eight classroom buildings.117 Once
construction was completed, furnishing the classrooms was difficult
because internees again were denied access to lumber and nails.118
Internees also devoted crafting time and energy to making hospitals and
churches more comfortable. With Bill Yamamoto appointed as foreman, a
group of twenty-nine Jerome men organized a “cabinet shop” in November
1942. By March, despite severe shortages of materials and tools, these men

15. School furniture made by Manzanar internees, February 10, 1943.

Photographer: Francis Stewart. Courtesy of the National Archives and
Records Administration.

had completed 1,500 desperately needed hospital items, including X-ray

stands, stretchers, pharmacist’s cabinets, and test tube racks, all made from
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

hard gumwood or oak.119 With the motto “we make anything made of
wood,” block 6 organized their own shop of eighteen carpenters, which also
filled requests from Jerome’s hospital staff.120 Women joined in to make
hospital rooms and waiting areas more bearable with the addition of paper
flowers. Young women imprisoned in the Butte Camp section of Gila deco-
rated hospital wards and trimmed trees for Christmas celebrations.121 Other
internees devoted their energies to creating chairs and tables for religious
services. Intricately carved butsudans were created by Buddhists and placed
in communal locations for campwide services.122
As these crafting activities illustrate, creating art was a critical element
in the complicated process of place making. Uprooted and incarcerated

16. Intricately carved butsudans created by internees

were used in camp-wide services. Photographer: Tobie
Matava. Courtesy of the National Japanese American
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

Historical Society.

by the U.S. government, internees carried with them, in portable spaces

of art, the ability to remake places of survival. Imprisoned Japanese
Americans used these activities and the resulting artifacts to create
places of survival and achieve basic levels of physical comfort. As Martha
Inouye Oye remembered of her experiences at Minidoka: “Comfort was
uppermost in the minds of the people when they first arrived here. As
at the assembly centers, talented and creative evacuees built partitions
and furniture from discarded lumber and material picked up around
the barracks to make their rooms more habitable.”123 Through these

efforts, internees positioned themselves in contexts of larger camp

collectivities as they began sharing techniques, materials, and ideas on
how to make their living units habitable. Art as a tool of recuperating a
sense of place expanded as furniture makers identified internees unable
to make chairs, tables, and shelves because they lacked carpentry skills
or were too overwhelmed with other tasks. Needlework projects such as
crocheted blankets, quilts, and pillows also addressed needs to establish
minimal levels of comfort. Expanding their focus beyond the confines
of individual living units, internees used art to alter inside communal
places such as mess halls, classrooms, and hospitals.
In their efforts to create physical comfort, internees laid the ground-
work for remaking mental and physical landscapes of survival by using art
to decorate their living quarters. Stripped of their personal possessions,
internees demonstrated their commitment to survival by inhabiting their
living units with art in the form of kobu, wood carvings, ikebana, embroi-
dered wall hangings, and paper flowers. Camp-made crafts articulated
fluid, shifting, and multiple stances against oppressive living conditions.
By filling their living units with art, internees made their surroundings
look and feel less like spaces of incarceration, an important consideration
for parents who struggled to establish even limited amounts of normalcy
for their children. Living quarters evolved into vital places made more
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

meaningful by camp-made and displayed art that created visual dis-

courses controlled by internees. Through and with art, internees spoke
loudly, voicing their commitment to survival by improving their material
lot in life and remaking both physical and mental landscapes. In this way
art aided internees in developing understandings of themselves as agents
of their own lives. By remaking inside places of imprisonment, internees
identified with each other on the basis of survival and comfort. By using
art forms to create items such as nameplates and mailboxes, they coun-
tered conditions of dislocation and fears of being lost.

Re-territorializing
Outside Spaces

Perhaps more dramatic than interior changes to internee living quar-

ters and shared gathering places was the rearticulation of outside liv-
ing spaces. Internees re-territorialized the camps, a process of altering
hostile and unfamiliar landscapes into arenas of identity articulation in
which differences are declared and subjectivities enacted.1 Through this
process of re-territorialization, imprisoned Japanese Americans became
anchored in unfamiliar, harsh, and antagonistic environments. These
places of imprisonment were spatial expressions of race based on the
U.S. government concentrating persons of Japanese ancestry in specific
geographical sites. But internees altered the spatial order of these physi-
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

cal landscapes by joining aesthetics with politics and engaging with the
art forms of gardening and landscaping as strategies for creating surviv-
able places. For the internees, vegetable, fruit, and rock gardens as well
as skating rinks, golf courses, and swimming pools were, in the words of
Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson, “conceptual and political acts of re-
imagination.”2 These acts of re-imagination were particularly important
for many imprisoned Japanese Americans as they drew on the physical
landscape to reshape understandings of power and generate new ideas
that better ensured their survival.
Through the process of re-inscribing the physical environment with
gardening and landscaping projects, internees imagined and enacted

51
Dusselier, Jane E.. Artifacts of Loss : Crafting Survival in Japanese American Concentration Camps, Rutgers University Press, 2008.
ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=413878.
Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2025-05-02 14:33:54.
52 a r t i fac t s o f l o s s

portable senses of place. When studying these art activities of Japanese

Americans, we learn that place, even when denied by the almost limit-
less power of a nation-state, can reside in portable spaces such as art.
Understanding gardening and landscaping in these terms helps us see
how internees identified with one another by creating portable senses of
place, which they carried with them. This portability problematizes the
attachment of culture to physical locations structured by nation-states
and instead suggests a more transnational understanding of identity
formation. Identities unmoored from physical boundaries of nation-
hood, such as that of being Japanese or American or any combination
of the two, appear equally relevant or powerful as identities constructed
by structures of the nation-state and issues of territory. A critical tool of
survival for imprisoned Japanese Americans was creating understand-
ings of place as portable and then engraving this newly constructed
knowledge onto the outside spaces of concentration camps.
This form of physical place making took on added meaning and
importance for a people who collectively possessed a long and heteroge-
neous history of geographical displacement that encompassed a series of
voluntary, coerced, and forced movements. Sex, class, ethnic, religious,
occupational, and generational differences constructed distinct paths of
migration for many internees before they were forcibly removed from
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

designated West Coast exclusionary areas during spring 1942. However,

people of Japanese ancestry living in the United States now shared con-
finement in concentration camps defined by race. Understandings of
place as portable took on even more meaning when we recall that these
new prisoners of the U.S. government were first incarcerated in tempo-
rary facilities and later moved to more distant, permanent locations of
imprisonment. Denied places of their own, Japanese Americans relied on
the portable spaces of art in the form of landscaping projects to recuper-
ate and remake new senses of place.
Almost immediately, internees reacted to the traumas of internment
by working with soil surrounding their living quarters. As they engaged

with the art form of gardening, imprisoned Japanese Americans altered

the barren and dusty physical landscapes of the camps into places
marked by flower, vegetable, and rock gardens complete with ponds
and waterfalls. Larger landscaping and architectural additions included
bridges, wishing wells, sizable seating areas, and lakes where model boat
“regattas” frequently occurred, not to mention newly constructed base-
ball fields, skating rinks, sumo rings, and golf courses. Personal gardens
were the most immediate sign of this re-territorialization process, with
children and adults alike staking out small lots near their living quarters
and preparing the less than hospitable soil for planting during their first
difficult days of imprisonment.
Many internees were deeply effected by the bleakness of their tem-
porary imprisonment sites, or what the government euphemistically
called “assembly centers.” Mary Tsukamoto, a young mother imprisoned
at Fresno, was no exception. Tsukamoto was shipped by train from her
home in Florin, California, to the Fresno County Fairgrounds, which
she reported was hot, dusty, and devoid of greenery. The main feature at
Fresno—just over a hundred tar-papered barracks—housed more than
5,000 internees between May 6 and October 30, 1942. By early June of
that year, however, vegetable gardens began appearing, and within three
months a community garden was providing vegetables for imprisoned
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

Japanese Americans eating in communal mess halls. In October, when

Fresno’s internees were ordered to board trains destined for Jerome,
Arkansas, Tsukamoto glanced back at a “transformed” landscape to see
morning glory vines covering the barracks and an array of vegetable and
flower gardens. Strengthened by these physical alterations, this twenty-
eight-year-old Nisei mother gathered her anxious family for an exhaust-
ing four-night, five-day train trip to the Mississippi River Delta region
in southeastern Arkansas.3
Newly created gardens evoked similar ideas and emotions from
internees incarcerated at other temporary imprisonment facilities.
Pausing in front of her Tulare living quarters located at block L, barrack 8,

17. Internees quickly transformed the areas around their living quarters:
Tanforan on arrival, April 29, 1942 (above) and six weeks later, June 16,
1942 (right). Photographer: Dorothea Lange. Courtesy of the National
Archives and Records Administration.

unit 3, an Issei woman admired a recently planted garden full of morning

glories, zinnias, and green beans. Commenting in her diary about the
persistence and dedication of Tulare’s gardeners, she found hope in the art
of others, while also noting that these gardens encompassed frustration,
futility, and sorrow. Evoking ideas of dislocation, loss, and economic
exploitation, she concluded her June 5, 1942, entry by writing: “Raising
these products was their life. As much as they yearn, they can no longer
till the acreage they had in normal times.”4 This admirer of Tulare gardens
reveals how oppositional and what we sometimes think of as exclusionary
ideas such as oppression and resistance, joy and sorrow, often reside
together and are experienced simultaneously. The uplifting effects of
gardens were also recognized by Santa Anita internees, who described

the re-territorialization of soil surrounding the living units that had once
housed animals. Areas formerly trampled into fine dust by the constant
traffic of race horses were being taken over by budding flowers, plants
yielding vegetables, and an array of carefully nurtured greenery.5
Tanforan’s gardeners were especially prolific, with everyone from
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

elderly Issei to youngsters caring for newly planted vegetable and flower
gardens. Although internees were aware that Tanforan was a temporary
imprisonment facility, efforts to re-territorialize the camp by creating
more elaborate landscaping projects were immediate with the addition
of ponds and a community garden. Some personal gardens reflected a
strong Japanese cultural influence, as was the case of a plot located in
the infield of Tanforan’s racetrack that featured a “bamboo-like” fence
and Japanese lanterns. However, most gardens were characterized by
rows of vegetables surrounded by a few flowering plants.6 Three days
after arriving at Tanforan, the second youngest of eight Kikuchi siblings
was tending the family’s “victory garden.” Waiting for the coolness of

18. Garden in front of a Tanforan barrack, June 16, 1942. Photog rapher:
Dorothea Lange. Courtesy of the National Archives and Records
Administration.

night, this young boy stepped out of his living unit at eleven o’clock in
the evening to water new seedlings.7 By June, Tanforan’s victory gardens
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

were producing a wide variety of vegetables, including radishes, turnips,

string beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, and sugar peas, which mess
hall cooks used to supplement canned army rations. On June 13, 1942,
internees eating in mess hall 8 were treated to a potato salad, officially
referred to as a “victory salad” garnished with grated vegetables from
internee gardens.8 In front of 15–9-2, a garden of special note included a
small pond with four gold fish carved from carrots.9
Tanforan was the site of two “lakes,” one a favorite of nature lovers and
artists and the other a place enjoyed by model boat enthusiasts. Plans for
Tanforan’s North Lake were created by imprisoned architect Roy Wata-
nabe, who conceived of the project as a “lake park” ideal for taking quiet
walks and thinking.10 By the time the lake opened in early August 1942,

the project was the collaborative effort of many camp artists, who revised
the original plan to include transplanted trees and plants, a footbridge,
three rock gardens, a promenade, benches, playground, and sandy areas
adjoining the water. Recognizing the danger that water presented for
children, the builders limited the depth of the pond to an average of one
foot, with marked sections on the north end reaching three feet deep. A
concrete fountain connected to a secondary pool provided a dependable
water source, and to further ensure that the lake remained full, internees
constructed a fire tower on the lake’s bank so practicing firemen could
aid in maintaining the water level. Watanabe remained involved in the
lake park, attempting to lure ducks from Tanforan Lake in an effort to
complete his scenic vision for the project.11 Some internees looked on in
amazement at the efforts of these gardeners and landscapers, who were
fully aware that Tanforan was not their final place of imprisonment. As
one of the observers noted, internee gardeners “transformed a mere wet
spot in the Tanforan scenery into a miniature aquatic park.”12
What came to be known as Lake Tanforan existed before the imple-
mentation of Executive Order 9066, but internees maintained and
improved this small pond, located in the Tanforan racetrack’s infield,
as a site for model boat enthusiasts. During twilight, and on Sunday
afternoons after lunch, large crowds gathered at the water’s edge to
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watch internees sail camp-made model boats. As part of a Fourth of July

celebration, 2,000 spectators witnessed one hundred boats compete in a
regatta, with winners in several classes receiving prizes of scrap lumber
to continue their boat-making activities. Other competitive events fea-
tured nearly two hundred vessels ranging from simple ones carved from
a slab of wood to elaborate models equipped with motors and automatic
rudders. Some crafters relied exclusively on penknives to create their
boats, whereas others mail-ordered planes and chisels from catalogs or
asked friends back home to purchase wood-carving tools.
One of the first boats to appear was made by an Issei man from scrap
wood, a discarded tin pail, and a bed sheet. With a nineteen-inch-tall
mast, the vessel measured twenty-one inches long and five inches wide.

Although speed was likely the highest priority, this artist was also con-
cerned with aesthetics in that he painted his vessel with a red, shiny
enamel below the waterline, white above, and varnished the deck. As a
finishing touch, the model boat builder added an American flag at the
top of the mast. This crafter shaped sheets into sails, but others man-
aged to convince women friends to part with silk dresses and slips.13
Issei sailors outnumbered Nisei, but fathers often spent time with their
sons creating new boats. As a result of these collaborations, the art form
of model boat building gained popularity among youngsters.14
Model boats and the accompanying regattas were sometimes seen in
less than positive terms, as evidenced by the June 19, 1942, diary entry
of a twenty-six-year-old Nisei man, who wrote: “The Issei haven’t any-
thing else to do and I see them around all day painstakingly carving out
these boats.”15 This statement likely reflected tensions surrounding a
forced shift of familial authority from Issei men to the U.S. government,
which unabashedly exercised control over the lives of Japanese Ameri-
cans. Because Issei, especially men, were generally but often mistakenly
thought of as more loyal to Japan and less suited to “Americanization,”
those who escaped separate incarceration in Department of Justice pris-
ons were denied leadership roles by concentration camp administrators.
Placed at the fringes of this already racially exploited group of people,
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Issei men and their internment activities such as boat building were
often understood by fellow internees as evidence of weakness, impo-
tence, and desperation.16 As Gary Okihiro wrote: “The Issei represented
an obsolete mentality, an old world flavor that had become distasteful;
the Nisei symbolized the future—a new direction and style—in full
pursuit of the illusive American Dream.”17
A community flower garden full of blooming plants, benches, and a
greenhouse was the joint effort of horticulturalists imprisoned at Tanfo-
ran. Located in the northwest corner of the camp just behind the hospi-
tal, this 150-square-foot flower project was surrounded by a six-foot-high
wooden fence and produced a wide variety of specimens, including sweet

peas, marigolds, asters, stocks, snapdragons, petunias, bachelor buttons,

and chrysanthemums. Under the more than competent leadership of Mr.
S. Takahashi, a 1913 graduate of Columbia University with a B.S. degree
in agricultural economics, this garden project supplied flowers to mess
halls, churches, hospital rooms, and administrative offices.18 Internees
not participating in this art form watched as Takahashi and his team
of gardeners transformed what had once been Tanforan’s dump into
a colorful camp garden.19 On September 9, 1942, when the first group
of internees was about to be shipped from Tanforan to Topaz, one of
the community gardeners appeared with a wheelbarrow full of flowers
picked from the greenhouse. Hoping to soothe the feelings of his anx-
ious neighbors, this artist handed bouquets through a fence that now
separated internees boarding trains destined for Topaz from newly made
friends about to be left behind.20
As the largest and longest occupied temporary imprisonment facility,
Santa Anita was filled with a wide variety of gardening projects ranging
from conventional squared-off plots of cultivated soil containing one or
two varieties of flowers or vegetables to elaborate rock gardens.21 Over
18,000 Japanese Americans were imprisoned at any given time in Santa
Anita, and many of these internees contributed to gardening efforts. An
entire plot of pansies adjoined barrack 37, unit 10, while 26–6 was the
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

site of a rock garden based on a Japanese proverb. Complete with a well,

wooden bucket, dwarf trees, morning glories, wind chimes made from
glass, and frogs, John Doi’s garden recounted the story of a girl who
arrived at a well to draw water and found morning glories wound around
the bucket and ropes. Rather than disturb the flowers, she traveled to a
neighbor’s well for water. Evidence that such creations resonated with
internees was offered by the appearance of tanka and haiku poems on a
wall bordering the garden.22 For Santa Anita internees housed in areas
where land or hospitable soil were scarce, tin cans provided space for
planting. By July 18, George Ikeda’s thriving garden was made up of fifty
such cans gathered from mess hall trashcans.23 Added to many of these

personal gardens were examples of yard art, as in the case of three mon-
keys carved from wood during July 1942. A reporter for the Santa Anita
Pacemaker suggested that the additions be named Adolf and Benito, with
the last name provocatively left to the reader’s imagination.24
A community vegetable garden located in the racetrack’s infield was
a prominent feature of Santa Anita’s landscape. By early June, a group
of thirty former truck farmers were quickly converting fifteen acres of
previously unused land into soil capable of producing food for the over
18,000 hungry internees. At month’s end, the total crops planted equaled
three-quarters of an acre of radishes, an acre of beets, nine acres of spin-
ach, and an acre and a half each of carrots, nappa cabbage, and romaine
lettuce. On Friday, July 10, the appetites of internees were wetted by
the first crop of radishes to be harvested, which equaled nearly 2,400
bunches, closely followed a week later by the arrival of camp-grown
nappa cabbage on mess hall tables. As the Santa Anita Pacemaker enthu-
siastically reported, the initial thirty-five crates of cabbage represented
only a “thinning” of the total crop, with the first picking yet to occur.
Subsequent weeks were marked by the inclusion of an increasingly wider
selection of vegetables in the diets of internees.25 Remembering the poor
quality of food provided by the government upon arrival, one Nisei
woman imprisoned at Santa Anita noted substantial dietary improve-
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

ments once the gardens began producing vegetables.26

After re-territorializing the neglected and barren “assembly center”
landscapes, imprisoned Japanese Americans were forced to abandon
their carefully nurtured gardens and confront even more challenging
geographies. Combining the traumas of imprisonment with yet another
experience of displacement, the U.S. government further accentuated the
sufferings of Japanese Americans by shipping them to distant, isolated,
and desolate concentration camps distinguished by harsh and unfamiliar
geographies. After a seven-hundred-mile train trip from Tanforan, Kitty
Nakagawa recalled her impression of Topaz, Utah, as “just black nothingness
and dryness and I guess you might call it death.” At Tanforan, internees had

19. Internees arriving at Topaz found a flat, dust-filled landscape, October

18, 1942. Photographer: Tom Parker. Courtesy of the National Archives and
Records Administration.

drawn some comfort from the closeness of their homes and the familiar
California climate, but the severity of west central Utah’s Sevier Desert was
beyond the imaginations of many. In the flat, beige, dust-filled landscape
of Topaz, even meager alterations were dramatic, especially the appearance
of plants, which added color to an achromatic palate.27
Despite doubts about the fertility of the Sevier Desert, many Japanese
Americans approached the art of gardening with fervor. During the first
spring at Topaz, small gardens were scattered throughout the camp and

surrounded by fences made from cardboard boxes and scrap lumber.

Intended to protect new seedlings from brutal dust storms that easily
destroyed even the healthiest of plants, fences were constantly being
repaired and refashioned to screen vegetables from the windy and dusty
environment that characterized Topaz. In service to their always thirsty
plants, successful gardeners spent most evenings lugging buckets filled
with water from communal laundry facilities to their struggling seed-
lings. Careful to use every drop of liquid, internees fashioned watering
devices by puncturing the ends of tin cans with holes, then attaching
these camp-made spigots at the end of a stick and dipping them into
water pails. Several evenings of this backbreaking work convinced some
camp artists to move their gardens to areas adjoining the laundry facili-
ties, where water was more easily accessible. A group of men gained per-
mission from administrators to transplant trees and bushes from beyond
the confines of the camp’s perimeters.28 Following the example of their
elders, two eight-year-old girls pitched in to help, as reported in the class
diary of third graders imprisoned at Topaz. A drawing of a shovel, water-
ing can, hoe, and snake was accompanied by an entry, written on May 28,
1943, informing readers that “June and Jane planted some rabbit brush
which they found in the desert.”29
Even with the careful attention of internees, over 15,000 newly planted
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

trees and shrubs died during the first spring of imprisonment at Topaz.
Donated by the Forestry Department at the Utah State Agricultural Col-
lege, these specimens included 7,500 small trees, primarily black locusts,
Utah junipers, and Siberian elms, and 10,000 small plants and shrubs.
One row of moribund saplings was finished off by a group of school-
bound children enjoying an impromptu game of leapfrog. Added to the
many challenges of growing greenery in inhospitable soil was the garden-
ing inexperience of Topaz’s population, which was composed primarily
of people from urban areas in California. Less than 250 professional
farmers were confined in the Utah camp.30 As one internee welcomed
spring, she could not avoid expressing disappointment over the lack of

greenery that accompanied warmer temperatures. Accustomed to lush

California springs, this college-age woman even missed the appearance
of dandelions in her family’s yard, a sight she had learned to “disdain”
from her father, who spent most of his free time during April digging
out these weeds. Hoping to partially compensate for the lack of greenery,
family members devoted themselves to nurturing a single daffodil bulb
mailed by a friend, planting it in an old tin can, and watching it closely
each day. When the flower bloomed, the young woman “was amazed
at the pleasure even a single flower could bring” when compared to the
“hard white glare of bleached sand.”31
Describing a similar scene was fifteen-year-old Yoshie Tashima, who,
after enduring six months of imprisonment at Santa Anita, was transported
to Amache in late October 1942. With the eyes of a former Los Angeles
resident, Tashima looked out on the windswept prairie lands of southeast-
ern Colorado and fondly remembered the warm, plant-friendly climate of
Santa Anita. Drawing from a long history of geographic displacements and
farming experiences, many imprisoned Japanese Americans once again,
in the words of Tashima, set to making a “nothing place” into “something
beautiful.” Within months, newly planted trees, vegetables, flowers, and
even green lawns were added to Amache’s beige landscape of sand dunes,
sagebrush, and prickly pear cactus.32 Frequent dust storms that made the
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

barrack next-door invisible presented formidable and persistent obstacles

to creating livable landscapes, but Amache’s corps of gardeners did battle
with these conditions by constantly watering the grounds. “Of course,” as
Tashima admitted, “on the windiest days there was nothing that could help
us.” Seventeen years old when he was imprisoned at Amache, Mas Ueysugi
later recalled that many of the internees were former California farmers
and accustomed to converting “marginally tillable soil” into “beautiful and
productive” land. “At Amache,” Ueysugi continued, “we did the same.”33
A young Nisei fisherman from San Francisco, Mas Tanibata, was
shipped to Lone Pine, California, by train and then boarded a bus for
the short ride north on highway 395 to Manzanar. Greeted by one of

many common dust storms, Tanibata was struck by “what a miserable

place it was.” Later, however, he remembered how camp artists altered
the landscape by noting: “You know the barracks were really ugly but
then these gardens made the camp beautiful.”34 Another Nisei arrived at
Manzanar via a train trip to Bishop, where he, along with his wife, two
sisters, and mother were transferred to a bus for the fifty-one-mile ride
south on 395. Forcibly removed from their Boyle Heights neighborhood
in downtown Los Angeles, this family was stunned by temperatures that
reached over one hundred degrees during the day, then plunged into the
thirties at night, and by the frequent dust storms that kept the entire
landscape perpetually coated in inches of flourlike dust.35 Manzanar’s
head War Relocation Authority administrator assumed his post in May
1942, but not before describing what greeted him as “ugly.” In contrast,
by mid-June this same official reported that “half of the barracks reveal
the impulse toward decoration,” with internees planting vegetable and
flower gardens surrounded by “decorative” fences.36
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

20. Manzanar barrack garden, June 30, 1942. Photographer: Dorothea

Lange. Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.

Even the dry, sandy, sun-drenched soil of Gila and Poston, Arizona,
gave way to the efforts of internees by producing a variety of vegetation.
With his father imprisoned separately at Santa Fe, New Mexico, one
brother already in the army when Executive Order 9066 was signed,
and three other brothers working on a cattle ranch in Nevada, it was
left to the eldest twenty-seven-year-old remaining son to accompany his
mother and two sisters to Poston. Located 250 miles east of Los Angeles
on the Colorado River Indian Reservation, Poston was organized into
three separate camps, each three miles apart but enclosed by a single
barbed-wire fence. Although administrators referred to these locations
of imprisonment as Camp I, II, and III, internees renamed them
Roaston, Toaston, and Duston, all tongue-in-check references to the
extreme heat and pervasive dust.37 Arriving at Roaston with his sisters
and mother, this twenty-seven-year-old citrus and walnut farmer from
Orange County “wasn’t very pleased” when he saw the barren, dusty
landscape, but he was relieved when internees immediately began plant-
ing shrubbery, gardens, and trees and even creating ponds, noting that
the surroundings “got better all the time.”38
Like Poston, Gila was also constructed on Native American land, the
south central Arizona home of the Akimel O’odham (Pima) and Pee Posh
(Maricopa) tribes. Over the objection of this Gila River Indian com-
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

munity, the War Relocation Authority “leased” more than 16,500 acres
from the Bureau of Indian Affairs and organized a Japanese American
concentration camp in two sections, the Butte and Canal camps.39 Fifty
miles south of Phoenix, Gila had a landscape distinguished by mesquite
trees, creosote and bursage bushes, and cactus, but the dust and heat
were most memorable in the minds of internees. A mother of two sons
whose husband had already been picked up by the FBI and imprisoned
at Lordsburg, New Mexico, Tsuyako Shimizu was forced to contend with
this “barren desert,” but she likely escaped the chronic water shortages
that plagued the Butte Camp. Removed from her home near Guadalupe,
a farming town in California known for growing lettuce, Shimizu was

21. Harvesting daikon at Gila River, November 25, 1942. Photographer:

Francis Stewart. Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Adminis-
tration.
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

likely imprisoned in the Canal portion, a segment of the camp made up

primarily of Japanese Americans from rural areas. Butte, on the other
hand, was the permanent site of imprisonment for internees arriving
from Tulare and Santa Anita, who were predominantly urbanites.40
Regardless of her specific location of imprisonment, Shimizu witnessed
Gila undergo changes that were unimaginable when she first arrived. As
she later recalled, “When we left the camp, it was a garden that had been
built up without tools. It was green around the camp with vegetation,
flowers and also with artificial lakes, and that’s how we left it.”41
Whereas the landscapes of Utah, Arizona, and the Colorado prairie pre-
sented constant challenges to gardening enthusiasts, internees imprisoned

at Rohwer and Jerome found this art form easier to accomplish. On April
16, 1942, Jerome’s newspaper reported that “just about every barracks”
was surrounded by gardens of some sort and that many internees were
constructing hot houses to protect plants from threats of a late frost.42 Two
weeks earlier the newspaper mistakenly reported that recent rainfall had
improved block 17’s struggling lawn. Printing a correction, the newspaper
informed readers that the “socalled green lawn” was actually a “bumper
crop of chives” and that the internee responsible for the garden was plan-
ning on flavoring soup with his produce.43 A year later, internees organized
a camp co-op from which sixteen varieties of flowers could be purchased.
Among the most popular were roses, dahlias, gladiolas, and climbing ivy.44
Portulaca flower seed was also abundant, having been shipped to Jerome by
the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker social justice group.
Sporting multicolored buds and dark green foliage, portulaca, more
commonly known as moss rose, was a hardy plant that offered durable
ground cover and was well adapted to the heat, humidity, and insect
life of the Arkansas Delta. Moss rose edged the many walkways con-
necting block and barracks to communal facilities. Rohwer’s growing
environment was so opportunistic that many vegetable gardeners bor-
rowed methods and ideas from ikebana artists, arranging and exhibiting
their surplus produce in camp art shows.45 But even internee gardeners
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

imprisoned at Rohwer and Jerome were presented with obstacles in the

form of poisonous and deadly snakes. Providing ideal habitat for water
moccasins, cottonmouths, copperheads, and rattlesnakes, the damp,
swampy Arkansas Delta region where Rohwer and Jerome were located
was dangerous to walk through and especially perilous for people clear-
ing land and planting gardens. In addition to the daily dangers presented
by the abundance of poisonous snakes, the soil was often saturated with
water and unable to support vegetation, a problem internees partially
solved by constructing a canal system that drained off excess water.
Each camp encompassed its own set of challenges for gardeners, and
many internees identified and linked the art form of gardening to their

22. The climate and soil conditions at Rohwer produced lush gardens, June
16, 1944. Photographer: Charles Mace. Courtesy of the National Archives
and Records Administration.

emotional and physical survival. A former San Jose farmer used the
warm corner of a Heart Mountain laundry room to get an early start
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

on the short Wyoming growing season by planting beet, cucumber, and

squash seeds in 250 previously discarded tin cans.46 Other camp artists,
hoping for early summer vegetables or winter flowers, nurtured indi-
vidual seedlings in their living units, making daily trips to the commu-
nal laundry room for water. An Issei grandmother mail-ordered flower
seeds from a catalog and then created a miniature winter garden in tin
cans retrieved from mess hall rubbish piles.47 Once spring arrived, space
for gardens surrounding the barracks was soon gone, motivating 150
internees to create a “combined victory garden” on the outskirts of Heart
Mountain. With the guidance of Kumezo Hatchimonji, an experienced
farmer, these newcomers to the art of growing vegetables and fruits first

built ditches connecting a nearby canal to their collective project and

then separated the land into forty-five-by-twenty-foot lots, where thirty
varieties of vegetables were cultivated.48
As internees settled into permanent locations of imprisonment, the art
form of growing vegetables and flowers in small personal plots was accom-
panied by even more intense efforts aimed at creating larger community
gardens and farm projects. Devoting themselves to tilling and planting
larger lots of land, camp gardeners were soon producing more food than
could be locally consumed. During the late winter of 1943, Jimmy Ito
directed a Heart Mountain community garden project by constructing
nine six-by-one-hundred-foot covered hotbeds, in which broccoli, cau-
liflower, cabbage, cucumber, cantaloupe, and watermelon seedlings were
nurtured and later transplanted to fields on the outskirts of camp.49 Six
months earlier, Ito, along with two other internees, conducted soil tests
to determine which areas of the camp were most suitable for planting,
while another group of imprisoned Japanese Americans relied on the test
results and past weather reports to choose seeds that would promise high-
yielding crops. In early May, the camp newspaper reported that a “giant
truck garden is mushrooming in the barren desert.”50
Elderly Issei men such as Harry Tateishi, Kumezo Hatchimonji, and
Sakusaburo Tokuda were responsible for preparing the formerly infertile
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Wyoming soil for planting. Before imprisonment, all three had been
farmers in southern California’s Imperial Valley and were accustomed
to transforming desert and rocky land into fertile fields that produced
an abundance of fruits and vegetables. Prevented from owning land by
the 1913 Alien Land Law, Issei farmers were typically migrant agricultural
laborers or sharecroppers. At best, they leased marginal land that had
been rejected by white farmers. Fertile fields of melons, lettuce, and
tomatoes resulted after years of backbreaking, labor-intensive farming
that included the development of new techniques such as hot capping
and brush covering, in which plants were covered with straw, paper bags,
or small tentlike structures in the early spring to combat frost damage.51

23. Preparing the soil for spring planting at Heart Mountain, March 10,
1944. Photographer: Hikaru Iwasaki. Courtesy of the National Archives
and Records Administration.

Joining the experience of these Issei farmers with the knowledge of

younger college-educated agriculturalists produced harvests never before
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

imagined in the barren desert of north central Wyoming.52 By the end of

June, nearly five hundred acres were planted with twenty-five varieties
of vegetables and fruits, including cantaloupes, nappa cabbage, spinach,
daikon, popcorn and sweet corn, and peas. These successful cultivation
efforts were accomplished with the help of seventy-five women, who
rushed to make the most of the short 119-day growing season by spending
ten nonstop, backbreaking days transplanting seedlings of cucumbers,
onions, eggplant, tomatoes, cantaloupes, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage,
bell and chili peppers, and celery onto sixty-five acres.53
Because Manzanar served as both a temporary and permanent site
of imprisonment, its community gardens were not abandoned, and they

benefited from the constant attention of camp artists. Guarded by sol-

diers in thirty-five military vehicles, the first group of Manzanar intern-
ees arrived in late May 1942, transported in a 140–passenger car caravan.
After completing the 240-mile trek from Los Angeles, the vehicles were
seized by the U.S. Army and used for military purposes or buried in
the California desert, never to be returned to their Japanese American
owners.54 Along with the 420 Japanese Americans, the cars were stuffed
to the brim with personal belongings and gardening supplies, including
tomato plants, vegetable seeds, and garden tools.55 Many Issei farmers
with decades of experience cultivating leased land surrounding Los
Angeles arrived at Manzanar committed to harvesting food during
the first growing season and immediately organized collective garden
projects. One of their first tasks was solving the water shortages that
had plagued the Owens Valley region since the turn of the twentieth
century, a problem camp gardeners overcame by expanding an already
established system of irrigation ditches.
Located in a long narrow desert valley between the eastern slope of
the Sierra Nevada and White-Inyo mountain ranges, Manzanar was
founded in 1905 as a small farming community named after the Spanish
word for apple. A river fed by mountain snowfields supplied an elabo-
rate irrigation system of ditches and canals, which transformed this arid
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valley into a flourishing agricultural center producing corn, wheat,

potatoes, alfalfa, grapes, apples, and pears.56 Along with its twenty-five
homes, town hall, schoolhouse, and general store, the town boasted
nearly 5,000 apple and pear trees and a fruit-packing warehouse. While
Manzanar and Owens Valley residents were harvesting record crops, 250
miles south and, more importantly, downstream of Manzanar, the city
of Los Angeles was growing by 100,000 new residents each year.57 Hoping
to satisfy swelling water demands, Los Angeles city officials began pur-
chasing property in Owens Valley for the water rights alone, and by 1933
owned 95 percent of the valley’s farmland and 85 percent of the town’s
property. Now in complete control of the water supply, Los Angeles city

officials constructed an aqueduct that effectively drained the valley dry.

Without a reliable source of water, Manzanar was abandoned until the
signing of Executive Order 9066.58
Authorized by camp administrators to work outside the barbed-
wire perimeters of the camp, “rock gangs” composed primarily of male
internees repaired and expanded an abandoned irrigation system by
digging new ditches that funneled the runoff from the Sierra Nevadas
directly into the camp. Lined with rocks, these new canals furnished
water for growing fruits and vegetables. Internees who worked on these
rock gangs were allowed to spend nights outside camp boundaries.
Many workers seized on this opportunity to hike into the Sierra Nevadas
on trout-fishing trips. These trips, along with providing fish for many
good dinners, also supplied fish used to stock small garden ponds. After
they established a reliable source of water, many internees worked to
cut down on dust by instituting a program that provided seed, rakes,
and shovels to anyone willing to plant and nurture struggling blades of
grass.59 Once seeded, these lawns were sometimes decorated with yard
art, as was the case in front of block 5, barrack 6, unit 4. The caretaker of
this yard, a foreman for a crew of tree trimmers, used the twisted roots
and branches he gathered while working to create monkeys, penguins,
and turtles. Other internees celebrated the newly constructed irrigation
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system by creating “hobby gardens” in firebreak areas between bar-

racks. By early June 1943, an all-volunteer crew was caring for a flower
garden planted in firebreaks 11 and 17, while a vacant area between bar-
racks 12 and 13 in block 6 was just beginning to sprout vegetables.60 Rock
gardens with small ponds were added to the perimeters of these com-
munity gardens to provide additional living space outside the confines
of the crowded barracks.
What began as a small and simple watered rock garden adjacent to one
of Manzanar’s mess halls evolved into a more elaborate project complete
with a pond surrounded by transplanted trees, two-ton boulders, massive
tree stumps, and a wishing well. Hoping to provide a respite from long

mess hall lines, two cooks who worked the breakfast and lunch shifts
devoted their afternoons to this garden project. The venture drew the
attention of Akira Nishi, a former nursery owner from Los Angeles, who
approached the two men and offered his services in creating an archi-
tectural plan that would include a large, figure-eight-shaped pond. With
construction well under way, enthusiasm grew, and internees throughout
the block picked up shovels and helped clear a larger area.
Another group of gardeners, supervised by guards, drove an army
truck and trailer equipped with a cable winch a short distance to the
Sierra Nevada foothills. Here, these camp artists gathered live trees
and plants, along with boulders and large tree stumps that were later
converted into seating for internees waiting in the long mess hall lines.
Completion of the project was threatened when a top administrator
agreed to supply a mere three bags of cement, twenty bags short of the
amount required for building the pond alone. But the cook who had
originally conceived of the garden was not deterred. He simply devised
a plan based on presenting the original permit for three bags over and
over again to warehouse managers until the required amount of cement
was secured. When it was completed in early July 1942, this elaborate and
collaborative garden served as a model for other Manzanar crafters, who
created eighteen subsequent gardens distinguished by sizable ponds.61
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

Gardeners at Manzanar struggled together against persistent wind-

storms that threatened to destroy everything but fruits and vegetables
grown close to the ground. Although melon, radish, and cucumber plants
consistently produced small, yet edible vegetables and fruits, vine-grow-
ing vegetables such as tomatoes demanded careful placement around
windbreaks and constant attention to produce even marginal yields.62 By
June 4, 1942, over 125 acres were cultivated in radishes, cucumbers, squash,
tomatoes, lettuce, spinach, potatoes, cantaloupe, and watermelon, with
corn used as windbreaks to protect plants from frequent and violent dust
storms.63 By summer’s end, over 300 acres of camp land were producing
fresh fruits and vegetables. A reporter for the camp newspaper recognized

24. Woman working in a Manzanar community garden, July 2, 1942.

Photographer: Dorothea Lange. Courtesy of the National Archives and
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

Records Administration.

the contributions of older internees by noting that initially only one Nisei
was involved in these collective farming operations.64
Internees also pruned and watered abandoned pear and apple
orchards planted at the turn of the twentieth century. By August 26, 1942,
gardeners began harvesting a yearly crop of nearly 4,000 boxes of pears
alone.65 For one teenager who worked as the timekeeper for Manzanar’s
many boiler tenders, fruit from the pear orchards located in the firebreak
between blocks 23 and 29 provided extra nourishment. Walking from
one block to another, and making two rounds daily to check in with

the men tending boilers in all thirty-six blocks, Shiro Nomura looked
forward to rest breaks in the orchard, where he supplemented meager
mess hall portions with freshly ripened fruit.66 Manzanar’s pear trees
also held significance for seven-year-old Jeanne Wakatsuki, marking
the transition from a life that was “outrageous” to one that was “tol-
erable.” In spring 1943, Wakatsuki’s family moved to block 28, which
adjoined a moribund pear orchard, a location that allowed her mother to
be closer to the hospital where she worked as a dietician. After expe-
riencing a difficult year of imprisonment that had encompassed the
trauma of being separated from her father, who was incarcerated for
nine months at Fort Lincoln in Bismarck, North Dakota, and then living
through his abusive alcoholic rages once he was reunited with his family
in Manzanar, Wakatsuki was relieved when her father found a new focus
that drew him outside the confines of their crowded living unit to care
for a group of previously neglected trees.67
Wakatsuki’s father continued to brew rice wine in a homemade still,
using rice and canned fruit as ingredients, and the elderly man engaged
in long, heated, and often violent debates with family members and
fellow internees concerning how to respond to a loyalty questionnaire
instituted by the U.S. government. When, however, he focused his ener-
gies on harvesting pears, his violent outbursts decreased. In addition to
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

his orchard activities, Wakatsuki’s father began building a rock garden

just outside the doorway of their living unit with stones gathered from
the Sierra Nevadas. He also began making furniture from myrtle limbs
found on the banks of irrigation ditches and creeks.68 As the experiences
of the Wakatsuki family illustrated, creating art in the form of gardening
and furniture making proved effective tools for survival. As Wakatsuki
herself suggested, after moving to block 28 she could almost imagine
herself at home near the Pacific Ocean because the sound of wind blow-
ing through the leaves of revived pear trees reminded her of the surf.
At Children’s Village, a facility constructed at Manzanar to house Japa-
nese American orphans, veteran gardeners helped children landscape the

grounds of their new home and plant gardens.69 Opened on June 23, 1942,
Children’s Village was the government’s remedy to a growing “orphan
problem.” Before December 7, 1941, Japanese American orphans resided in
three California institutions, one of which was the Shonien, where Lillian
Iida and Harry Matsumoto worked. When confronted with the possibility
of dispersing the children throughout all ten camps, Iida and Matsumoto
convinced representatives of the U.S. government that keeping the chil-
dren together as a family unit was the least damaging option, and the two
volunteered to take responsibility for all orphans at Manzanar. Added to
these were children of single parents who had been arrested by the FBI and
imprisoned in Department of Justice facilities, as in the case of Takatow
Matsuno and his seven siblings from Terminal Island, California. A total
of 101 children lived in three barracks, with the west structure housing the
mess hall, meeting rooms, laundry facilities, and staff living space, and
the center building serving as the nursery and girls’ dormitory. Boys
had the east barrack all to themselves. As a part of their continuing efforts
to help the children create a livable environment in which to grow up, Issei
males later added a gazebo to already completed gardens.70
The community gardening activities of Tule Lake uniquely encom-
passed layered meanings of re-territorialization. In the wake of the
loyalty questionnaire and subsequent conversion of Tule Lake into
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a segregation center for “disloyal troublemakers,” newly transferred

internees refused to work in the fields and produce was beginning to
spoil. One of the internees’ demands was that farm production be lim-
ited to the needs of Tule Lake alone. Administration officials responded
by recruiting “loyal” volunteers from other camps to harvest 300 acres
of crops. An elaborate and profit-making enterprise totaling 2,900
acres, Tule Lake’s agricultural system supplied produce to the U.S.
Army and Navy as well as to private companies. Between November 1
and November 26, 234 Japanese Americans from other camps harvested
fifty-two carloads of produce, which was immediately shipped to Gila,
Amache, Minidoka, Manzanar, Heart Mountain, Jerome, and Topaz.

25. Potato planting at Tule Lake, July 1942. Photographer: Francis Stewart.
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.

Nine carloads of surplus potatoes were sold to the Pacific Fruit and
Produce Company. Tensions between volunteer crews and Tule Lake’s
community gardeners were palpable, with both groups equally moti-
vated to employ the art of gardening to engage in a complicated process
of re-territorialization.71
Mainstream media sources noted internees’ efforts to convert barren
desert land into productive soil.72 In describing the experiences of Japanese
Americans imprisoned at Poston, Arizona, a magazine reporter remarked:
“The settlers looked at the jungle of tough greasewood, mesquite and cacti

that must be cleared, at the thousands of acres that must be leveled, worked
and reworked before anything could be planted.”73 Beyond the reporter’s
classification of Japanese Americans imprisoned in concentration camps
as “settlers,” which is more than problematic, he clearly saw the difficul-
ties of nurturing plants of any kind in these locations of imprisonment.
A year later, another reporter visiting Poston for the St. Joseph News Press
observed: “Bleak and dusty at first, the center now is green with gardens,
lawns and trees.”74 The Monitor, a Denver newspaper, informed readers
that residents of Granada, a town near Amache, “either shook their heads
dubiously or laughed when they heard that Japanese evacuee farmers were
planting mung beans, tea, lettuce, and pascal celery.” But after a year the
same newspaper reported: “They’re not laughing anymore—they’re look-
ing, listening, and learning.”75
In addition to the re-territorializing efforts of gardeners, other internees
refashioned barren landscapes into sumo rings, basketball courts, baseball
fields, swimming pools, skating rinks, and golf courses. Some internment
scholars have been hesitant to write about these projects, especially the
creation of golf courses, for fear that these re-territorialization activities
might be interpreted as evidence that internees were “pampered.” But the
appearance of such art was more a testament to the efforts and skills of
internees than to humane treatment by administrators. Although golf is
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usually played on lush, manicured greens and fairways, camp courses were
primarily sand, a material that was in plentiful supply at most imprison-
ment locations. At Manzanar, Mas Tanibata, a Nisei fisherman from Ter-
minal Island, first developed an interest in golf while clearing sagebrush
from the firebreak area that was soon to be a very short nine-hole course.
Fairways were a mixture of coarse, unraked sand and clods of dirt, with
the so-called greens composed of fine sand that internees oiled to create a
firm, puttable surface. When, and more importantly if, balls reached the
green, a roller made up of a two-foot-long pipe attached to a handle was
dragged between the hole and ball so that putting was possible. Threaten-
ing to curtail the activities of golf enthusiasts was the expense of replacing

26. Playing golf on Manzanar’s dirt- and dust-filled fairways, February 13,
1943. Photographer: Francis Stewart. Courtesy of the National Archives and
Records Administration.

balls blackened by dirt- and dust-filled fairways, but this problem was
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

soon solved when an internee ordering golf clubs from a Sears catalog also
purchased a can of white paint.76
After completing plans for Tanforan’s North Lake, Roy Watanabe
turned his attention to his newest project: designing a six-hole pitch-
and-putt golf course. Employed as an architect since graduating from
the University of California in 1936, this prolific artist was now super-
vising a landscaping crew of thirty internees.77 After he located a vacant
weed patch on the grounds of Tanforan Racetrack in San Bruno, Wata-
nabe, with the help of two other imprisoned architects, expanded his
original design to include a nine-hole, par-three course. Completed in
four weeks, the course opened in the middle of July and averaged forty

golfers per day, 60 percent of whom were beginners.78 With its limited
room, Tanforan was a short course. Its holes ranged from between 40
to 75 yards long, but they presented challenges to even experienced golf-
ers, who found breaking par an impossible task. Another nine-hole, par
twenty-seven course was created in District A of Puyallup, a temporary
imprisonment facility separated by barbed wire into four sections and
located thirty-five miles south of Seattle, Washington. As one of 2,000
internees to be imprisoned in District A, Mits Kashiwagi, an experienced
golfer, described the course as “interesting,” an observation backed up
by scores in the 50s.79
To outsiders, internee-constructed swimming pools may appear extrava-
gant, but for Japanese Americans imprisoned at Poston, where temperatures
frequently exceeded 130 degrees, these landscape additions were necessities.
Internees in all three units established a cooperative labor system requiring
each block to devote a specific number of hours to completing swimming
pools.80 Summer temperatures in Powell, Wyoming, were not as severe
as those in Poston, but on days when thermometers reached above 100
degrees, an internee-made swimming pond provided welcome relief. With
the permission of camp administrators, internees dug a large hole, lined
it with stones, created a diving platform, and finally flooded it with water
from a nearby ditch.81 Minidoka’s internees frequently swam in a canal
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

on the north side of camp, but after a drowning occurred, two swimming
pools were built.82 An especially unique aboveground swimming pool was
constructed out of wood in Area B of Puyallup. Located in a cramped space
between two barracks and resembling a giant squared-off hot tub, the pool
was created by a group of men to entertain children incarcerated in Area
B.83 Remembering that Puyallup was a temporary facility and open for less
than five months, this re-territorialization project represented a high level
of investment both in terms of time and materials.
Heart Mountain internees staked out and then flooded a large field
to create an ice-skating area. The sport became an especially popular

wintertime activity, and the arena a popular meeting place. Some intern-
ees saved their meager wages of $12, $16, or $19 a month to buy skates
from mail-order catalogs, but with the cost of ice skates in the 1943 Sears
and Roebuck catalog at $6.85, purchasing a new pair represented a con-
siderable investment.84 After spending most of the afternoon of January
9, 1943, watching a group of youngsters from Heart Mountain’s block 1
enjoy this wintertime activity, a seventeen-year-old teenager ordered his
first pair of skates. Even though his first experience produced sore arches,
bumps, and bruises from his many falls, Stanley Hayami reported in his
diary that skating was “still a lot of fun.” His pleasure was tempered by
worries about dwindling finances, but he continued to enjoy skating, a
novel sport for most Heart Mountain internees, who before imprison-
ment had lived in the warm climate of California.85 Internees hesitant
to lace up the boots found contentment in observing the activity. As a
reporter for the Heart Mountain Sentinel remarked, watching skaters
“lifts us momentarily out of this world.”86
Although the skating season in Utah’s Sevier Desert was much
shorter than that of northwestern Wyoming, Topaz internees under
the supervision of Moto Takahashi built an open-air skating rink by
first creating a dirt bank, then opening up the fire hydrant, and finally,
waiting for the water to freeze. Just as at Heart Mountain, internees
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purchased skates from mail-order catalogs, as in the case of a teenage

boy who surprised his sister with a long-cherished and much-enjoyed
gift. Warmly remembering this gift years later, the sister wrote: “I
thought that it was so nice of him and we had fun on that ice rink.”
Located on the south side of camp between blocks 37 and 38, the rink
measured 410 by 440 feet. There, internees were able to enjoy a short yet
frigid season of skating, with December temperatures hovering around
zero. Sixty-one years after stepping onto the rink at Topaz, Kumiko
Kariya Matsumoto recalled that skating provided pleasurable moments
during a “drab and miserable” time.87

27. Ice-skating was a popular winter activity at Heart Mountain, January

10, 1943. Photographer: Tom Parker. Courtesy of the National Archives and
Records Administration.

Baseball, basketball, sumo wrestling, football, and judo enthusiasts

altered camp landscapes, with every imprisonment location including
sporting areas.88 An especially unique “tennis basketball court” was
designed at Santa Anita. In preparation for their imprisonment, three
San Francisco youngsters made sure that a basketball hoop was among
the items accompanying them to Santa Anita. The boys, who ranged in
age from thirteen to fifteen, spent their first days in camp hunting for a
suitable place from which to hang their prized possession. Unsuccessful

and frustrated, they devised a miniature basketball goal and net from a
scavenged piece of wire and string. After nailing up this device behind
barrack 28, these three buddies, along with new friends, played what
seemed to observers to be endless games of “tennis basketball.”89
Rock, pebble, and wooden walkways were common and necessary
additions to all the imprisonment landscapes. This need was especially
clear to internees who were unfortunate enough to arrive in the wake
of frequent spring rainstorms. Tanforan’s unimproved walkways were
referred to as “slush alleys,” with small amounts of rain causing intern-
ees to struggle through silt-like mud.90 Stepping off a bus at Puyallup in
April 1942 after a sudden spring downpour, a family of four from Seattle
immediately “sank ankle deep into gray Glutinous mud.”91 One brother
and sister arrived prepared for the worst after having been warned of
muddy conditions by friends already imprisoned at Tanforan. The sib-
lings, who had been forcibly removed from their home in Berkeley, Cali-
fornia, arrived wearing boots they had recently purchased—a fortunate
occurrence since they found themselves trekking through high weeds
and sticky mud before they located their assigned living unit, previously
identified as stable 16, stall 50. The grounds of Tanforan Racetrack were
still wet from a downpour the previous day, and remained difficult and
exhausting to negotiate.
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

After being transferred to their permanent location of imprisonment,

these same siblings reported that conditions at Topaz were equally chal-
lenging, with internees carving one-foot-high getas to ensure that their
feet remained mud free on walks home from the communal bathing
facilities.92 But negotiating muddy terrain in stilt-like sandals was beyond
the athleticism of many Japanese Americans. And, according to Fumi
Hayashi, creating walkways was a necessity because the alkaline soil at
Topaz repelled water: “It stayed on top, so what we would do was we gath-
ered rocks and make kind of a pathway up high, you know, about a foot up
and then all the in between places would be full of water. We’d make these
little pathways so that we could walk to the bathroom or to the mess halls

and not get all muddy.”93 For former residents of California, the first snow-
fall at Topaz was accompanied by an atmosphere of excitement. This sense
of novelty was quickly dampened by the appearance of the sun, followed
closely by melting snow, which produced sticky mud that was backbreak-
ing for even the strongest internees to traverse.94
The landscapes of Rohwer and Jerome were especially challenging
because these camps were located in the swampy Arkansas Delta region.
At an elevation of 140 feet, Rohwer was laced with river inlets, and outlying
areas remained underwater during the spring months.95 Adapting to this
geography, a group of women imprisoned at Jerome created a maze of raised
wooden walkways, with one camp administrator commenting somewhat
defensively: “Women are equal to men when it comes to digging, picking
and wielding heavy tools if not better.”96 With rock and wooden walkways
completed, internees could more easily walk to and from daily activities
and tasks without sinking ankle deep into fine layers of flourlike dust on
sunny days and muddy silt during frequent rain storms.97 While most
internees cursed the mud, Joseph Sasaki saw possibilities in this “alluvial
muck.” When not working as Jerome’s optometrist, Sasaki experimented
with the mud, which he shaped into ashtrays and figurines, and then
“toasted” his creations over or in potbellied stoves. Devising reliable clay
from a mixture of various muds, he named his pottery Densonware after
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

the post office’s official designation for the camp.98

Perhaps nowhere more clearly do we see the relationship between the
physical and mental, and connections between individual and collective
identity formation, than in the process of re-territorialization. Through
their efforts to remake locations of imprisonment into survivable spaces,
internees expanded their mental landscapes. Frequently employing the
word transformation as an apt description of the changes to their
material surroundings, some internees also articulated the edifying
and strengthening effects of physical landscapes on their minds and
emotions. At Topaz, a college-age internee was buoyed by the pleasure
she experienced when a single daffodil bulb bloomed, and some Heart

28. Walkways constructed at Rohwer helped internees avoid ankle-deep

dust or muddy silt, June 16, 1944. Photographer: Charles Mace. Courtesy of
the National Archives and Records Administration.

Mountain internees were “momentarily lifted” from their world of

imprisonment by activities on a newly constructed skating rink. Not only

did vegetable and fruit gardens create and fortify moods of survival for
internees, but they also drastically improved concentration camp diets,
evolving literally into embodied monuments of re-territorialization.
Internee gardeners from all ten camps converted 10,000 acres of barren
land into crop-producing soil, and in 1943 alone they harvested forty-one
million pounds of vegetables.99 With and on the soil, internees identified
on the basis of re-territorialization to create collective art projects such
as gardens, basketball courts, and walkways—all with others in mind.
Re-territorialized camp landscapes became public sculptures that some
internees choose to carve together out of the soil.

29. Manzanar before (top) and after (bottom), June 30, 1942.
Photographer: Dorothea Lange. Courtesy of the National Archives and
Records Administration.

Re-territorialization efforts were of course often restricted by camp

administers, as in the case of an arbor created by internees living in block
17 at Jerome. Measuring twelve feet square with a ten-foot-high roof, this
porchlike structure was attached to a barrack and became an especially
popular after-dinner meeting place.100 Anxious to restrict large, idle
crowds of internees from gathering informally in social settings, a War
Relocation Authority official ordered the arbor removed, citing it as a
fire hazard. For some this reasoning was hopelessly hypocritical since
camp administrators ignored the obvious fire hazards presented by the
tar-papered and raw wood architecture of the internees’ living units.101
As this example illustrates, issues of territory and power were critically
important to camp administrators, which made gardening and land-
scape projects even more essential to re-territorialization efforts. Gov-
ernment officials interpreted these projects as industrious and evidence
that Japanese Americans were becoming “Americanized” rather than
understanding gardening or improvements to camp landscapes as sub-
versive or a challenge to the power wielded by structures of the nation-
state. To understand identify formation in terms of re-territorialization
demands that we understand the art form of gardening as creating spaces
from which place can be recuperated. This process took on added mean-
ing for persons undergoing forced removal and multiple losses, with an
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

art form such as gardening enacting a portable sense of place that helped
internees re-root themselves in brutal and especially hostile physical set-
tings. To survive in these locations of imprisonment, internees had few
options but to replace what they had lost in terms of food, environmental
aesthetics, and place.

Making Connections

Many imprisoned Japanese Americans used art as a way of making and

sustaining connections among themselves and with people outside the
camps. Such a framework complicates the idea of community, which is
often rooted in creating structures of sameness, homogeneity, and exclu-
sionary thought. Although the idea of community sometimes allows us to
freeze and study moments of cultural and social solidarity, we are often
left with a utopian understanding that fails to encompass the complex-
ity or full range of human experience. The idea of connections is offered
as a tool for understanding how people relate with each other in more
fluid ways that run along a continuum from momentary to long-lived
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

alliances. Rather than emphasizing uniformity in values and ideas, this

framework offers a way to highlight difference among people who choose
to create bonds with one another. Here I offer connections as a way of
thinking about the countless, complex, and imbricated practices that aid
relational understandings among people while encompassing conflict
and differences. Revealing these layered webs of everyday connections
balances exclusionary understandings of community building and iden-
tity formation based on oppositional constructs of us versus them, with
alternative forms of identification that may lead us to expand liberative
social change. In this way, art created and sustained a myriad of intricate
and layered connections among imprisoned Japanese Americans and

88
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m ak ing con nections 89

friends beyond the confines of the barbed-wired camps. Art provided

some internees with cultural practices that created connections based on
identifying with each other rather than being identical to one another.1
The making of crafts sustained and reformed relationships among
family members imprisoned together, with these activities often taking
on gendered meanings in terms of art-making materials. Fathers and
sons most commonly created art for family members with wood, whereas
mothers and daughters employed yarn and fabric. Many art forms
exchanged between family members addressed functional needs, as in
the case of a chair made by Tom Kikuchi for his Issei father. The elder
Kikuchi, a barber in Vallejo, California, before internment, brought his
clippers with him to Tanforan, but he found cutting the hair of internee
customers a cumbersome process because he had no barber’s chair in
which to seat them. By May 7, 1942, a short week after being transported
to Tanforan, Kikuchi’s three clippers were hanging on a wall in the
family’s living quarters next to a new barber’s chair made by his son from
a discarded barrel. Dramatic changes in social relations among family
members had occurred, however. Charles, the eldest Kikuchi son, noted
a change in his father’s attitude after the first few days using his camp-
made chair: “It’s a bit pathetic when he so tenderly cleans off the clippers
after using them; oiling, brushing, and wrapping them up so carefully. He
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

probably realizes that he no longer controls the family group.”2

Some fathers carved model boats for young sons and then accom-
panied the youngsters to camp-made ponds to launch their creations.3
Most boats were carved from wood, but when supplies ran low, soap was
substituted. Many of these boats were powered by wind, but some fathers
searched the motor pool for discarded parts and equipped their sons’
boats with engines. Other fathers constructed outdoor play equipment
for their children. Hobbyhorses made from recently felled trees were
especially popular among children at Rohwer, and youngsters impris-
oned at Tule Lake spent many enjoyable hours in camp-made wooden
carts.4 Creating specialized outdoor chairs with “post-like prongs” that

were pounded into the ground was also an art form favored by young
men.5 Making these portable seats took skill and practice, as evidenced
by a teenager who worked for an entire evening before becoming so
frustrated that he destroyed a chair he was making for his sister. Encour-
aged by family members to approach his project with more patience, the
young crafter’s subsequent attempt to build an outdoor chair proved
successful.6 Sometimes men crossed gender lines to create crafts for their
mothers that were more commonly associated with the opposite sex. One
young man imprisoned at Tanforan, especially skilled in the art of knit-
ting, created a matching skirt and jacket for his mother. However, fear of
being ridiculed prevented this talented crafter from knitting in public or
displaying his work at exhibits.7
Mothers and daughters often worked together on knitting and sewing
projects. With yarn received through the mail from a friend back home
in San Diego, a mother imprisoned at Poston helped her fifth-grade
daughter knit blankets and sweaters for her dolls. In a letter thanking her
friend for the gift of yarn, the youngster wrote: “There is nothing I like
better than to knit my head off.”8 A teenager imprisoned at Santa Anita
knitted both her sister and brother-in-law a pair of socks for their first
wedding anniversary, while her mother knitted a table runner to deco-
rate the couple’s living unit.9 Women at Tanforan attended classes where
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

they learned to make baglike containers to protect their eating utensils

from dust as they carried them back and forth between their living quar-
ters and the communal mess hall three times each day. Made with scrap
pieces of cloth, the bags were often collaborative projects between moth-
ers and daughters, who worked to create increasingly elaborate designs
and then to translate them into patterns made from newspaper. After
two months of sitting down to meals made less appetizing by dishes
soiled with fine dust during long treks to the mess hall, a Nisei man was
thankful for a protective bag sewn by his younger sister Emiko. After
receiving this gift, he reported: “This is the latest fad. It is practical since
it keeps our dishes from getting dusty.”10 Another Tanforan internee

30. Camp-made outdoor play equipment at Tule Lake, July 1, 1942. Photog-
rapher: Francis Stewart. Courtesy of the National Archives and Records
Administration.

remembered these pieces of art as “ingenious containers” that grew more

“elaborate in a sort of unspoken competition.”11
Mothers maintained and strengthened relationships with family
members by keeping them clothed in everyday fashions. Imprisoned at
Topaz, Fumi Hayashi remembered her mother attending sewing classes
and always finding time to make her daughter a new outfit for special
occasions such as dances and parties. During an especially demanding
pattern-drafting class, Hayashi’s mother made her a tailored suit and
coat, which her daughter continued to wear for ten years after being
released from Topaz.12 Another Topaz mother, who had been employed
as a dressmaker in Oakland before the war, kept her daughter’s wardrobe
up to date by sewing pleated skirts. A woman friend in block 10 knitted
“Sloppy Joe” sweaters to compliment the skirts. So, with her skirts reach-
ing slightly below her knees and the long, oversized sweaters revealing
only two or three inches of her skirt, Seiko Akahoshi was outfitted in the
latest World War II–era fashion.13
Sewing machines were among the most difficult items for mothers to
leave behind when the family was shipped to temporary imprisonment
facilities. A bewildered fourteen-year-old girl from Oakland watched
as her mother refused to board a bus destined for Tanforan because
an armed military guard was unwilling to load her sewing machine.
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

“I need it. I have eleven children,” she replied to the guard who was
ordering her to leave the machine behind. This Nisei mother stood her
ground: “I’m sorry but I will not get on the bus without my machine.”
The mother blocked the bus door, and with a crowd gathering behind
her, an officer standing nearby ordered the guard to load the machine.14
Another girl, Katsumi Kunitsugu, remembered that once her family
had been transported from Pomona to Heart Mountain, her mother
immediately wrote friends back home in the downtown Los Angeles
neighborhood of Boyle Heights and asked if they would retrieve her
sewing machine from storage. When the machine arrived, Kunitsugu’s
mother set to making new clothes for her family of five. They were

confined in a colder climate than the family was accustomed to, so

winter clothes were her first priority.15
Sisters and daughters also recognized the importance of maintain-
ing connections with family members by making garments, but more
commonly they choose the art form of knitting to accomplish this goal.
Imprisoned at Rohwer, a teenage girl from Stockton, California, was an
accomplished knitter, but she reported that “I never cared much for sew-
ing. My mother and older sister make most of my clothes and I just help
with the little things [like] hooks, snaps, buttons, and the sort.”16 Prepar-
ing for cool winter evenings in the desert of Poston, Arizona, another
teenager spent her late summer and early fall evenings knitting a sweater
for her mother. Rusty brown in color with two cables running down the
front, the sweater was finished by the beginning of October 1942, hav-
ing taken four months to complete.17 After enduring a cold Wyoming
January with temperatures that frequently reached twenty below zero, a
Heart Mountain teenage boy thankfully reported in a diary entry that
his sister had finally finished knitting his sweater. Requiring five months
of effort, Stanley Hyami’s new sweater was certainly the work of a novice,
but the crafter’s experience was of little consequence. On the last Sunday
of January 1943, Hayami wrote that receiving the sweater was a “memo-
rable event” because of the warmth the gift provided.”18
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Women also aided their children and partners in creating and main-
taining relationships by sewing costumes for performances, sporting
activities, and other special occasions. Mothers, wives, and girlfriends of
Tule Lake’s baseball players made uniforms from mattress covers for the
1943 season, a year filled with highly spirited competitions. In the wake
of the loyalty questionnaire debacle and designation of Tule Lake as a
segregation center for “disloyal troublemakers” from other camps, sports
enthusiasts imprisoned in this northern California concentration camp
received an unexpected boost during the spring of 1943. Baseball devotees
from other camps arrived with friendships and team allegiances already
established, naming their new teams according to previous locations of

imprisonment. Now expanded to eight full squads, Tule Lake’s baseball

league included teams from Gila, Topaz, Jerome, and Manzanar as well
as four Tule Lake “home” teams. Women were not allowed to participate
as players, but the uniforms they made were critical parts of a season
that drew between 7,000 and 8,000 spectators for each game.19 There is
an inescapable irony here. The high levels of participation in and enthu-
siasm for baseball, a game thought of as an all-American sport, must
have provoked remarks among some administrators in charge of a camp
designated as a segregation center for internees who supposedly lacked
appropriate levels of “loyalty ” to the United States.20
Having taken ballet lessons in Oakland, California, before imprison-
ment, Dorothy Harada joined the Topaz high school “entertainment
troupe,” relying on her mother to make her costumes.21 Always par-
ticipating in school activities before imprisonment, another Oakland
teenager transferred her enthusiasm to Topaz high school assembly
programs, where she choreographed and performed jitterbug routines
in sturdy garments created by her mother.22 A Santa suit made by an
Issei woman allowed connections between adults and children to be
more easily enacted. As a Tule Lake block manager, Nobori Shirai was
responsible for distributing several freight cars of toys sent by the Society
of Friends to imprisoned children. At dusk on Christmas Eve 1943, Shirai
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

donned the red cap and Santa suit sewn by his wife and spent the evening
walking through thirteen barracks, ringing a bell and passing out gifts to
exuberant children.23 Although block managers were sometimes viewed
as working too closely with camp administrators, Shirai likely found his
reputation softened by his Christmas Eve appearance as Santa.
Employing camp-made art to re-form family connections was espe-
cially significant in the context of internment when we recall that dra-
matic changes occurred within the family, between husbands and wives,
and children and parents. Fathers were displaced as primary breadwin-
ners and authority figures, and supplanted by the U.S. government,
which exercised control over the lives of these Japanese Americans. Many

31. Typical interior scene in one Manzanar barrack, June 30, 1942. Notice
the cloth partitions, which provide little privacy. Photographer Dorothea
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

Lange. Courtesy: National Archives and Records Administration.

fathers were separated from their families and imprisoned in facilities

run by the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, or the
U.S. Army. The dynamics of intact family units were also restructured
by cramped and shoddily built living quarters. Because in some barracks
partitions reached only halfway to the ceiling, even quiet conversations
could be overheard, not to mention the typical arguments that all fami-
lies experience. Even noises conveying the most intimate details of life
were shared by barrack mates. Spending extended periods of time inside

living quarters that were cramped, noisy, and lacked running water or
plumbing was difficult for even close-knit families.
Traditional family structures were further degraded by the require-
ment that internees consume their meals in cafeteria-style mess halls
designed to feed 3,000 people in ninety minutes.24 Teenagers were soon
taking their meals with friends as their parents sat across the mess hall.
Young mothers often ate with their small children, while fathers gathered
around tables where other men were seated. Mine Okubo reflected on the
relationship between changing social relations and eating in communal
messes when she recalled: “Table manners were forgotten. Guzzle, guzzle,
guzzle; hurry, hurry, hurry. Family life was lacking. Everyone ate wherever
he or she pleased. Mothers had lost control over their children.”25 Even if
family members wanted to dine together, conflicting work schedules usu-
ally made this impossible. Enduring extremely low pay rates, male and
female internees worked in the mess halls, camp medical facilities, and
vegetable fields. Other internees were employed as fire safety and internal
security officers, schoolteachers, camp newspaper reporters, and block
captains. Because keeping the camps running at even subsistence levels
meant working long and irregular hours, many internees found that coor-
dinating a common eating time for their family was a low priority.
Art also aided in developing and maintaining relationships among
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

friends imprisoned together. An internee who taught basic English

evening classes at Topaz recalled an elderly male student giving her a
lapel pin made by twisting blue crepe paper into a thread, which was
then woven into a basket. Within the basket was an assortment of tiny
shells carefully painted with nail polish and arranged to resemble a
bouquet of flowers.26 The arrangement featured lilies of the valley and
was three inches long and two inches wide. Young men imprisoned at
Manzanar made rings from discarded toothbrush handles and pre-
sented these works of art to girlfriends. When submerged in hot water,
the handles became pliable and easily shaped into various sizes. Ring
makers used nail polish remover to fuse the ends together, then sanded

32. Lapel pin made at

Topaz. Photographer:
Tobie Matava. Courtesy of
the Topaz Museum.

off the rough edges. Small pieces of already-cut-up handles were care-
fully chosen by each artist on the basis of color and inlayed to form
designs or initials.27
At Santa Anita, Fumiko Fukuyama employed art to identify with
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

other internees by organizing her girlfriends to knit layettes and blankets

for the 150 new mothers in camp. Working the midnight-to-morning
shift as an admitting clerk at the hospital left her days “free” to super-
vise art activities among youngsters. In addition to teaching knitting to
young girls, she had the task of locating yarn and needles, materials she
solicited from friends outside the camp. Considering that her workdays
were between twelve and fourteen hours long, Fukuyama’s commitment
to knitting was significant.28 A group of Tanforan “jitterbug friends” dis-
played less dedication to the art form of embroidery, but they employed
needlework to connect with one another. Learning to embroider so that
they could emblazon the word Tanforettes on the upper-right side of their

newly purchased red jackets, these teenage girls accentuated their danc-
ing skills by being clearly visible at social activities.29
Art activities made creating connections easier for some teenagers.
For the daughter of a celery farmer from Hayward, California, who
before internment counted animals as her best friends, portrait draw-
ing evolved into an important connection-making exercise. Nobuko
Hanzawa’s Rohwer living unit was a bustling center of crafting activity
as friends and acquaintances stopped by to have their portraits drawn
by this aspiring artist. Commenting on her newfound hobby, Hanzawa
wrote: “My teachers have told me that I have a great deal of talent in
art. I may not have talent but my ambition to draw is very great.”30 Boys
expressed their teenage crushes at Puyallup by carving the name of their
latest love interest on a slab of wood and then bravely delivering the
artwork in person. A more sophisticated suitor at Santa Anita created
a gardenia corsage from Kleenex tissues and lemon leaves for a girl he
was escorting to a graduation ball. Events celebrating the educational
accomplishments of recent high school graduates were common in all
temporary facilities, but they took on special significance given that
Japanese American teenagers had been prohibited from attending com-
mencement exercises back home.31
Sewing became an especially appreciated connection-making exercise
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

when twenty-seven Jerome women responded to a desperate need for

clothing by offering their services altering and repairing clothes. Begin-
ning in November 1942, internees were directed to bring their clothes to
Mrs. Alice Tsukimura at block 23, barrack 1, unit D. Although there was
no charge for the service, imprisoned Japanese Americans were instructed
to bring thread. During the first five days in operation, 117 items were
altered, and in December, when it became clear that more space was
required, an entire barrack was allotted to the enterprise.32 Subsumed
under the auspices of Jerome’s welfare office, the seamstresses received
wages from the War Relocation Authority, and with the added space they
expanded their services by offering to make new garments if internees

furnished material. By February 1943, the shop was so overrun with

requests that a hold was placed on new orders so that clothing already on
hand could be completed.33 Tsukimura’s shop remained busy, taking in
220 garments weekly in April 1943, when these artists also began sewing
dish towels and aprons for mess hall workers, mailbags for internee mail
deliverers, and smocks for barbers. Remarkably, many of these clothes
were sewn by hand, and it was not until late May 1943 that camp admin-
istrators arranged for sewing machines to be placed in each block, with
internee seamstresses instructing new crafters in the art of sewing.34
Internees imprisoned at all ten camps were issued military surplus
clothing that dated from the First World War. Among these garments
were peacoats, which camp crafters refashioned into stylish outer gar-
ments. A young girl imprisoned at Manzanar took her drab and over-
sized army coat to the alterations shop, where an elderly seamstress “tore
the lining out, opened and flattened the sleeves, added a collar, put arm
holes in,” producing a “beautiful” cape. Other Manzanar seamstresses
worked full time transforming old army clothes into thousands of shirts,
slacks, and fashionable coats.35 Taye Jow directed an especially welcomed
art project by supervising a group of Manzanar sewers in the creation of
fifty-dozen shower curtains, which were quickly installed in the com-
munal bathing facilities.36 A full three months after Manzanar opened,
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

Japanese Americans incarcerated in this southeastern California camp

were now able to bathe in privacy. These shower curtains were signifi-
cant additions because lack of privacy was a common complaint among
women, children, and men imprisoned in all ten camps.
Internees made small gifts that were easily mailed as a means of
maintaining connections with friends imprisoned at other camps. On
June 4, 1942, a Tulare family anxiously watched their eldest daughter,
Sachi Egami, open a birthday package from her fiancé imprisoned at
Manzanar. Inside was a tiny pair of intricately carved wood getas with
straps made from a black-and-red-stripped necktie. Carefully etched on
the polished wooden surface was her name, Sachiko.37 Although Shiro

33. Picture of a dog drawn at Poston and mailed

on October 19, 1942. Courtesy of the Elizabeth Y.
Yamada Japanese American National Museum.
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

Nomura and his girlfriend were raised in the same Los Angeles neigh-
borhood, they were imprisoned in Manzanar and Amache, respectively.
The separation and his feelings of loneliness were made more bearable
for Nomura by the arrival of a green hand-knitted sweater accompanied
by a brief note: “Finally finished your sweater. I hope it fits to keep you
warm till we’re together. Love Amy.” In spite of considerable ribbing
from his male friends, Nomura responded by learning the art of knitting
from his mother, and in a short time he created a “labor of love” in the
form of knitted woolen socks for Amy.38

34. Small items made with shells and wood were often given as gifts.
Photographer: Tobie Matava. Courtesy of the Heart Mountain, Wyoming,
Foundation.

Works of art were also used to make new connections outside the
barbed-wired confines of the camps. Young women imprisoned at
Jerome who were also YWCA members urged the national office to
connect them with groups that would find their “handicrafts useful.”
In a letter to the Denver chapter, Mary Tsukamoto explained that her
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

female barrack mates were “clever with their hands” and that making
crafts for others would help “keep our minds strong and thoughts
alive with the outside.” She solicitously continued: “If we could get
requests for little favors or nut cups or lapel pins, or even artificial
flowers, or anything like sewing, we would be happy to help out.”39
An embroidery teacher organized an exhibit of his students’ art at a
library in Powell, Wyoming, a town near Heart Mountain. A camp
newspaper article reported on January 9, 1943, that exhibiting 125
pieces of internee-made embroidery was a “first step toward establish-
ing closer, friendlier relationships with those on the outside.”40 Here
we see imprisoned Japanese Americans constructing themselves as

more than internees by keeping their connections with the outside

world alive and relevant.
Other small and easily packaged pieces of art were mailed back home,
sustaining relationships with friends beyond camp boundaries. For many
internees, these works of art thanked friends who mailed monthly boxes
full of cookies, canned fruit, tea, crackers, candy, and rice. Imprisoned at
Santa Anita, Roy Nakata and his family were the recipients of several care
packages personally delivered by a friend. As a thank you, Nakata carved
a pine knot in the shape of a heart and mailed the gift with a note that
read: “We really do appreciate all your kindness from the bottoms of our
hearts.”41 Gardenias and Easter lilies were likewise mailed by a Tule Lake
woman to Jessie Treat in Palo Alto, California, as a token of gratitude for
sending a long list of items, including a tea kettle, yarn, soap, and scotch
tape. In a separate package were “corsages” made with shells collected from
the ancient lake bed once located at the site of the camp. Gathering these
shells was an especially perilous activity because women often encoun-
tered scorpions while sifting through the sand for these crafting materi-
als.42 A high schooler imprisoned first at Santa Anita and later at Poston
received many care packages from Clara Breed, who was the children’s
librarian at the San Diego Public Library. In return, the teenage girl mailed
a stream of thank you letters that often included artwork by her younger
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

sister Florence. From Santa Anita, Margaret Ishino wrote: “Here is a

house Florence drew for you. She hopes you like it!”43 On October 19, 1942,
Ishino included another drawing created by her sister and accompanied
by this description: “Florence drew a picture of a dog at school she would
like you to have.”44 Sending art through the mail was a common practice
among artists of all ages as a way to retain connections with friends from
pre–internment camp days who continued to enjoy their freedom.
Many internees sustained and created new bonds among themselves
by exhibiting their artwork. Serving as webs of collectivities, the exhib-
its demonstrated the diversity of art created by imprisoned Japanese
Americans. In these display spaces, internees gathered to participate in

35. Small objects were easily mailed to friends beyond the camp
boundaries. Photographer: Tobie Matava. Courtesy of the Topaz Museum.

complicated, colorful, and rich visual conversations that revealed inhu-

man treatment, economic exploitation, and the dislocations encom-
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

passed by Executive Order 9066. Displaying a wide range of interests,

form, materials, and style, these works of art provoked ideas, resistive
practices, and strategies for improving both physical and mental con-
ditions. Here, internees connected and formed attachments with the
purpose of improving their lot in life. Embedded in these artifacts were
subversions, with internees speaking about the control exerted on their
lives. For people confined in barren and monochromatic environments,
art shows also offered counter-landscapes, adding vibrancy and color to
camp palates dominated by shades of tan.
Exhibits were frequent and varied in size, location, duration, and
art form. Some small ones featured the work of a single class or block.

Dusselier, Jane E.. Artifacts of Loss : Crafting Survival in Japanese American Concentration Camps, Rutgers University Press, 2008.
ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=413878.
Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2025-05-02 14:33:54.
104 a r t i fac t s o f l o s s
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36. Attending exhibits was a popular activity in most camps. Amache,

March 6, 1943. Photographer: Pat Coffey. Courtesy of the National Archives
and Records Administration.

At Poston III, better known as Toaston to internees, female students in

Mrs. Nakadate’s knitting class organized a one-day exhibit in hall 318.45
One of Manzanar’s carpentry classes was more ambitious. The members
held their first exhibit, which featured bookshelves, tables, chests of
drawers, cupboards, bureaus, benches, and medicine cabinets with mir-
rors, at block 27, barrack 15, on January 9–11, 1943. The camp newspaper
informed readers that pieces of furniture would be for sale and that the

37. Wood carvings made by students participating in the adult education

classes at Amache, March 6, 1943. Photographer: Pat Coffey. Courtesy of the
National Archives and Records Administration.

money raised would pay for new lumber and tools. Prospective buyers
were assured of good deals when the reporter noted that labor fees were
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

not included in the sale prices.46 A class of Amache paper flower crafters
was pleasantly surprised when three hundred internees turned out for an
exhibit on a cold snowy day on the Colorado plains.47 Cold weather was
not a concern for Shigee Honma’s Heart Mountain pupils, who organized
a summer exhibit of their flower arrangements. The exhibit was held in
a small room, at block 17, barrack 25, unit S, during June 18–20, 1943.48
Similar works of art were displayed a month earlier in Jerome’s hall 17,
when Masao Hatano’s ikebana students organized a small exhibit.49
Kobu was an art form commonly practiced in the Arkansas camps,
with exhibits often featuring the work of internees living in a single
block. Mess halls were favored as spaces for these block-centered art

38. Kobu used as a vase. Courtesy of the Estelle Ishigo

Papers, Department of Special Collections, Charles E.
Young Research Library, UCLA.

shows because of their high level of foot traffic. Artists of Jerome’s block
42 spent much of their first January of imprisonment searching the local
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

Arkansas woods for kobu materials, in preparation for an upcoming

exhibit. The time and energy devoted to these searches were rewarded,
as evidenced by a rare and unusual spiral form further distinguished by
poison ivy entwined around a hickory root. Drawing internees to this art
form were the texture and color variations found in wood of the Arkansas
Delta area, which ranged from the smooth whiteness of persimmon roots
and multicolored oak tree roots to rough, wavelike, and banded patterns
of elm. Working with these varied materials, block 42 artists created and
exhibited pin cushion stands, toothpick holders, ashtrays, and plaques.50
Vases for flower arrangements were also favorite objects created by kobu
or tree-root artists.

These artists found as much enjoyment in searching the dense Arkan-

sas woodlands for unique kobu material as they did in creating the final
product. But the pleasures of exploring the 10,000 acres designated as the
“camp reserve” were tempered by the knowledge that locals held Japa-
nese Americans in contempt. These brewing animosities materialized
just over a month after the camp opened when a farmer on horseback
shot two internees. On a deer-hunting trip and armed with a shotgun,
this local man came upon three internees chopping down trees for
firewood as part of a “supervised work detail.” Although a Caucasian
War Relocation Authority engineer was with the internees at the time of
the shooting, the farmer claimed that the internees were attempting to
escape. No charges were filed against the trigger-happy hunter.51
Kobu artists imprisoned in block 31 at Jerome used their mess hall
as a display space for an exhibit that opened on February 22, 1943, and
continued for a full two weeks. It featured both natural formations found
in the roots of trees and art carved from pieces of tree trunks. Among
the natural shapes highly polished by internees were dancing couples,
a monkey climbing a tree, a hunched cat, lizards, snakes, a seal’s head,
and cowboys. The carved shapes included plaques, candy bowls, trays,
ashtrays, match holders, cigarette boxes, and sculptures featuring human
images. As a special opening night celebration, block 31 invited block 43 to
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a talent show.52 Reporting on the kobu displayed in this exhibit, the camp
newspaper observed: “As a form of creative work it has been a boom to
residents in improving their mental attitude.”53 Perhaps the smallest of all
shows at Jerome was an exhibit featuring kobu created by a single artist.
Seeming to have grown weary of the overwhelming productivity of tree-
root crafters, the Denson Tribune, in its issue of March 16, 1943, announced
a weeklong exhibit of Kamayashi Fuhara’s creations with the headline
“Another Kobu Show Opens.” Fuhara predictably identified the mess hall
serving his block 2 as the appropriate place for his solo exhibition.54
Jerome crafters also used their mess halls to display a wider range of
art, with block 44 featuring artificial flowers, paintings, wood carvings,

39. Kobu artists at Rohwer and Jerome frequently

displayed their works. Courtesy of the Life
Interrupted Collection/University of Arkansas Little
Rock Archives and Special Collections.
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

and Densonware made from Jerome mud by the camp optometrist Dr.
Joseph Sasaki.55 Perhaps also weary of viewing kobu, another group of
Jerome internees organized an exhibit without a single piece of tree-root
art. Instead, three life-sized busts made from plaster and cement were
featured, along with crepe-paper flower arrangements, miniature rock
gardens, needlecraft, oil paintings, and bookends created by Pat Shinno,
or what the camp newspaper referred to as “an example of feminine tal-
ent in wood carving.”56 Two blocks sponsored art shows in their mess
halls during March and April 1943, with block 46 including ikebana,
artificial flowers, needlecraft, and an assortment of children’s work,
and of course the ever-present kobu.57 Block 19 featured a special item,

with word quickly spreading throughout camp about a tiny inch-long

violin accompanied by a case and bow. An interview with the artist,
Ichiro Kitamura, revealed that this intricate piece of art had required a
month of devoted effort. Spectators also had the opportunity to inspect
elaborately constructed and polished dressers as well as candy dishes,
ashtrays, and nut containers made solely from kobu found in the woods.
Indicating that the exhibit would be of special interest to kobu purists,
the newspaper noted that “none of the kobu has been patched.” Paintings
by Eizo Nakagawa depicting camp life were also crowd pleasers. During
the first three days of the show, 3,500 internees attended.58
Many shows were sponsored by camp-organized art clubs, with classes
joining together to exhibit works that appealed to a wide audience espe-
cially in terms of sexual difference and age. This collaborative strategy of
attracting big crowds by exhibiting diverse art forms was successful, as a
Heart Mountain exhibit in December 1942 illustrated. Sponsored by the
Art Students League, the exhibit combined the work of Yeneji Morita’s
woodcraft class and Mrs. Kimi Ito’s crocheting students, along with
stone art, flower arranging, and paintings. An especially talented eight-
year-old art student, Reiko Nagumo, displayed a group of his watercol-
ors. Originally scheduled over a weekend, the show was extended until
Monday night to accommodate the larger-than-expected crowds, which
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reached 3,000 by Sunday. Organizers wisely held the exhibit in a barrack

that internees converted into a “recreation hall,” which allowed viewers
to more easily inspect especially popular items. Artwork documenting
everyday camp life and made with materials found at Heart Mountain
aroused the most interest. Internees lingered around a collection of pol-
ished stones painted with designs and figures, and a piece titled Early
Spring, which was a blooming potted dwarf plum tree remarkably made
by combining sagebrush, rice, and eggs.59
Students of Manzanar’s Art Center and Art Institute held weeklong
open houses beginning August 15, 1942. Both of these block-based orga-
nizations conducted classes in a wide variety of media, ranging from

what most understand as fine art to crafts. Drawings, paintings, and

sketches, along with woodcrafts and artificial flowers, were exhibited
by both groups, with students from block 14’s Art Center creating por-
traits for internees willing to take the time to pose.60 Exhibits devoted
to art created by children and teenagers were always well attended.
Jerome’s junior and senior high school students joined together to
display bookshelves, bookends, desks, and more than seventy-five
cedar chests and cabinets, along with final projects from costume
design and painting classes. This art show drew a crowd of more than
2,000.61 Another art exhibit, this one of summer session students at
Heart Mountain, was held in the barracks housing the high school and
attended by 2,000 internees. Especially large crowds gathered in front
of a display featuring furniture made by children ranging from seven
to twelve years of age.62
Manzanar internees living in four barracks, located in four separate
blocks, shared exhibit space during the week of August 26, 1942. Without
the use of carving tools or saws, Duke Tedera created a “perfect” replica
of a Terminal Island fishing boat, which he attached to a wooden panel
so the design could be hung on the wall. Japanese Americans living on
Terminal Island were the first to be forcibly removed from their homes,
even before the government opened temporary imprisonment facilities.
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Located in San Pedro Bay twenty-five miles south of Los Angeles, Ter-
minal Island was a mere three and one-half miles long east to west and
three-quarters of a mile wide north to south. At the turn of the twentieth
century, Issei fishermen began settling on the island, marking the initial
development of a racialized enclave, with people of Japanese ancestry
occupying the southeastern portion of the island known as Fish Harbor
and whites living in the midsection.
Most of Terminal Island’s Japanese American population came from
the Wakayama prefecture on the Kii peninsula in southwest Japan,
which borders the Pacific Ocean and contains 600 kilometers of coast-
line. In America, these men worked on boats, some as captains of their

own ships. Women were land bound and labored in cannery factories
processing and packing fish caught by their brothers, husbands, and
fathers. Fish Harbor was the home of 3,000 Japanese Americans, all of
whom resided in company-owned housing. On February 9, 1942, Issei
with commercial fishing licenses were rounded up by the FBI and incar-
cerated in Department of Justice facilities. Just over two weeks later, the
remaining population was given forty-eight hours to pack up their lives
and leave the island, with no alternative housing offered by the govern-
ment. After their release from concentration camps, many Terminal
Island internees settled in Seabrook, New Jersey, where they grew and
packed vegetables for the Seabrook Company.
Campwide shows were the most common form of art exhibit. Tulare
internees passed their first Fourth of July of imprisonment by organizing
a festival that included an ambitious campwide craft show, which filled
several large rooms. Getas, wood carvings, polished stones, and suzuris
or ink wells used when creating calligraphy were displayed in one room,
while knitted garments, embroidery, crocheting, and appliqué were
grouped together. Another room was devoted exclusively to sewing.
Knitted blankets, crocheted table scarves, and screens made by piecing
together tiny scraps of wood were one Issei woman’s favorites, but she
admitted in her July 4, 1942, diary entry that the size of the exhibit
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

prevented her from viewing all of the displayed artwork.63 Santa Anita
opened its two-day Fourth of July “gala” with an art show. According
to the camp newspaper, the art displayed at the festival “was amazing
in scope.” Overwhelmed by the sheer volume of artwork, organizers
found they had to set up the exhibit in two spaces. Among the items
internees found at one location were a carved bust of Gen. Douglas
MacArthur, lithographs of a cat, and a miniature reproduction of the
camp, complete with grandstand, mess halls, and barracks, made out
of paper by kindergarten students. Especially large crowds gathered
around a “drawing class in action,” where live models posed for students.
A miniature garden, wood carvings, a wide assortment of furniture

40. A wide range of art was exhibited at camp shows, Amache, March 6,
1943. Photographer: Pat Coffey. Courtesy of the National Archives and
Records Administration.

including Ken Matsumoto’s chest of drawers made from cardboard and

wallpaper, and tiny, decorative getas were available for inspection at the
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

second display site.64

Organizers of the Anita Funita art show were experienced in staging
such an event, having successfully hosted several other campwide exhib-
its in the short three months since the camp opened. On the first day of
their June show, over 3,000 internees showed up to examine a wide range
of art. The most unusual forms included boats carved from bars of soap,
wastebaskets created with discarded newspapers, tiny wooden models
of jeeps, and wallets, moccasins, and belts made from leather. A varied
assortment of outdoor chairs made with rough tree branches illustrated
efforts by newly imprisoned Japanese Americans to expand their living
space beyond the cramped, noisy confines of their living quarters. An

extensive needlecraft display featured not only the typical “feminine

handicrafts” of knitted sweaters and crocheted doilies but also a handbag
and a pair of socks knitted by a member of the boys’ club.65 Held in what
the Santa Anita Pacemaker referred to as Handicraft Haven, located at
barracks 36 and 37, this successful show also contained the usual model
planes, bird lapel pins, decorative wooden panels, paintings, drawings,
and carved wooden sculptures.66
A five-day arts and crafts exhibit held during the first spring of impris-
onment at Manzanar featured “floral designs” created by internees living
in blocks 14 and 18, needlework created by a class of block 4 crafters, as
well as carved wooden figurines and copper work from across the entire
camp.67 By December 1942, a Visual Education Museum located at block
8, barrack 15, was established by internees, where they held a holiday
craft and art show. Hosting overflow crowds of 2,000 internees each day,
organizers extended the show, keeping the doors open between Sunday,
December 20, and Saturday, December 26. Among the most popular art
forms were carved wooden canes, vases and lamps made from ice cream
and popsicle sticks, stone and shell art, model ships of “every descrip-
tion,” posters made to “adorn” the walls of living units, and cabinets of
“excellent design.” Especially large crowds gathered around exhibits of
internee-made toys, children’s drawings, and a lathe made entirely from
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

scrap iron found on the grounds of the camp.68

Once the holiday exhibit closed, crafting enthusiasts immediately
began work on another campwide show scheduled to open January 11.
Although all art forms were welcomed, this show was centered around
wood carvings from pear, apple, and plum trees and needlework, espe-
cially embroidery, knitting, and crocheting. No longer limiting intern-
ees to exhibiting three items at any one show, organizers asked that all
works of art be delivered to the museum by noon on Saturday, January
9, to allow plenty of time to design and set up the display space.69 Art
exhibits continued to rotate through Manzanar’s Visual Education
Museum, with yet another show beginning Saturday, January 23. This

41. Much needlework featured floral designs.

Photographer: Tobie Matava. Courtesy of the Heart
Mountain, Wyoming, Foundation.

show featured mainly paintings and drawings by both children and

adults, but the camp newspaper noted that the display of carved wooden
figurines and jewelry was drawing huge groups of girls. A crouched pan-
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

ther brooch “distinctively painted and varnished” appeared to be par-

ticularly appealing, with many passersby noting the artist’s name.70 On
February 3, the Manzanar Free Press announced the fourth show at the
museum in less than two months and informed readers that chopsticks,
getas, and slippers would be the focus, with all valuable items placed in
a glass case for protection.71
Campwide exhibits were record breakers, attracting huge crowds. An
exhibit held in the high school auditorium at Poston drew 11,000 intern-
ees from all three units over a May weekend in 1944. Knitted garments,
shodo (calligraphy), a model train made by the toy department, and a
wedding gown made by block 21’s sewing school were among the crafts

produced primarily from scrap and waste materials. As sponsors of the

exhibit, the Community Activities Committee requested that the clearly
devoted crowd cooperate in making the show a success by “keeping
their hands off” displayed artwork.72 Jerome also held campwide shows
featuring the ubiquitous kobu. A total of 7,000 internees turned out for
a weeklong exhibit organized for April 1943 and were allowed to vote on
their favorite works of art. A miniature chest made by Eidi Takesako won
the grand prize, Kamaemon Tahara’s cow placed second, and a flower
vase by Yeisaku Fujimani came in third. All three artists received cash
prizes ranging from five to ten dollars.73
Another campwide exhibit that drew record-breaking crowds was
directly linked to gender. Jerome’s Fujin Kai (mothers’ club) organized a
“women’s handicraft exhibit” over Mother’s Day weekend. Women craft-
ers were instructed to bring their works of art to any of Jerome’s mess
halls by Thursday, when a truck was scheduled to make the rounds and
pick up the items. Internees with fragile pieces were advised to person-
ally deliver their creations to mess hall 17, the location of the art show. An
especially diverse collection of artifacts, the exhibit included knitting,
embroidery, sewing, crocheting, quilting, carvings of wooden figures
and panels, weaving, kobu, painting, drawing, flower arranging, carved
and painted gourds, and flowers made with crepe paper and Kleenex
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

tissues. Originally scheduled for a three-day run, the show was extended
through Wednesday to accommodate overflow crowds. In a special cel-
ebration of Mother’s Day, a Sunday crowd of nearly 3,000 set Jerome’s
single-day attendance record for art shows.74
Several well-known artists, including Chiura Obata, Mine Okubo,
and Matsusaburo and Haruko Hibi, were imprisoned at Tanforan, so it
was an especially active site for artistic production and campwide craft
shows. A crowd of 9,000 internees surprised organizers of a campwide
show held between July 11 and 14 because only 8,000 persons were impris-
oned at Tanforan. Future exhibits were planned with the knowledge that
many internees would make multiple visits to the same art show. Novice

artists exhibited a wide range of objects, including hats woven from tule
grasses gathered within the barbed-wire perimeters of the camp; vases,
ashtrays, and furniture created out of eucalyptus tree roots found in
Tanforan’s dump; woodcrafts carved from discarded racetrack fence
posts; and lamps made with auto parts scavenged in the motor pool.
Internee crafters also displayed bookends, getas, needlework, leather
crafts, braided work, paintings, drawings, and model airplanes. Also,
with Tanforan having two ponds, it is not surprising that exhibits there
featured as many as six hundred model boats on a single day. Artistic
output reached such high levels that separate exhibits were organized
to accommodate flower and vegetable arrangements. Apparently the
manure-rich surroundings of this former racetrack provided especially
fertile soil for gardeners, who planted flowers and vegetables by their liv-
ing units, which previously had stabled horses. Flower shows were often
held at the site of a community garden, with each attendee receiving a
bouquet arranged by internee artists.75
Classes of course were more monolithic in size and duration than
exhibits, but just as varied in terms of art form, training of the teach-
ers, and skill of the students. Like exhibits, classes created connections
between persons of diverse backgrounds and interests, serving as webs
of collectivities where internees developed new attachments and created
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

art that sustained already established relationships. Attempts by intern-

ees to organize classes were not always welcomed by camp officials. A
group of Japanese Americans imprisoned at Heart Mountain submitted
a petition to the camp director requesting permission to form an Art
Students League. Arguing that art was neither “a necessity or necessar-
ily a public interest,” War Relocation Authority officials initially denied
this request, but after continued pressure, officials granted internees
the temporary use of one-half of a barrack, with the stipulation that all
classes be “educational.” Heart Mountain’s crafters struggled for nearly
a year, hoping to secure a permanent site for their activities. Only after
agreeing to produce 4,000 silk-screened posters for the U.S. Navy did the

42. Heart Mountain art class, January 11, 1943. Photographer: Tom Parker.
Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.

Art Students League gain legitimacy in the eyes of camp administers and
a permanent space for art classes.76 A letter addressed to camp adminis-
trator Guy Robertson from U.S. Navy Captain Fink expressed apprecia-
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

tion to the War Relocation Authority for completing a “rush” job on the
government posters.77 Kasen Noda, an Issei man imprisoned at Poston,
experienced similar obstacles when he was approached by members of
the women’s club in his block about teaching calligraphy classes. Plans
were halted when a camp administrator informed the group that they
must first seek permission.78
Many Heart Mountain internees ignored the reluctance of camp
administrators to support art activities by organizing their own informal
classes. Only fifteen days after opening, more than 200 girls and women
were participating in flower-arranging classes taught by Mary Shigeo
Homma. Morning and afternoon classes were the most popular, but the

Heart Mountain Sentinel informed internees on waiting lists that evening

classes were planned for the future.79 Heart Mountain internees inter-
ested in learning to make artificial flowers from cloth began meeting on
September 14. By late September, Rosa Sato and Masako Sugihara were
teaching fashion illustration and dress design from nine in the morning
until four in the afternoon, six days a week, with Sunday their only day
off.80 Although admitting that there were severe shortages of materials
and tools, Ben Torigumi continued organizing classes for model air-
plane, boat, and train builders, as well as for wood and linoleum carvers.
Meeting each day between nine and five, students were crowded into a
small room but were fortunate to have an aeronautical engineer and an
industrial design specialist among their volunteer teachers. Youngsters
over the age of ten were especially urged to enroll in classes organized
by Torigumi.81
Although plans for a ceramics factory at Heart Mountain never mate-
rialized, internees harnessed equipment and training provided by the
U.S. government to establish a small pottery center where classes were
offered. Originally conceived of by War Relocation Authority officials
as a means of producing tableware for the armed forces and all ten con-
centration camps, the factory was to have a labor force of one hundred
internees and mass-produce 6,000 pieces of tableware weekly. Efforts to
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train workers began in late September 1942, when a ceramics specialist

visited the camp. Motorized pottery wheels and electric kilns were later
shipped to an administrative garage, where a small group of internees
learned to make clay, glazes, and molds and became skilled at creating
vessels on the wheels. Minnie Negoro, an art student at the University
of California, Los Angeles, before internment, became an accomplished
potter while in the camp, whereas Clem Oyama applied his pre-internment
work experience as a chemist in his father’s Los Angeles cosmetic plant to
Heart Mountain’s ceramics project. As an expert analyzer of mud,
Oyama was responsible for determining which mixtures of clay con-
tained appropriate levels of both elasticity for shaping and density

for withstanding kiln temperatures that reached 2,500 degrees. Allowed

to search within a sixty-mile radius of the camp, internees hit pay dirt
when they located an extensive deposit of pottery-making clay at the site
of a canal project three miles north of Cody, Wyoming.
In late May 1943, the Heart Mountain Sentinel announced that War
Relocation Authority plans for a thousand-square-foot factory were
suddenly being abandoned. Although circumstances surrounding this
“change in policy” remain unclear, we can only hope that government
officials came to their senses and were troubled by the thought of exploit-
ing the labor of unjustly imprisoned people. Perhaps this explanation is
excessively optimistic, but regardless of the government’s motivations,
imprisoned Japanese Americans found valuable art-making resources
at their disposal. Instead of working in an industrial setting, Heart
Mountain’s crafters began taking classes from teachers trained at the
expense of the government. In less than eight months, internees mined
and transformed over a thousand pounds of mud into clay from which a
wide range of forms were created. Having weathered high temperatures
in the kiln, camp-made teapots, bowls, and cups were ideal for making
snacks and hot drinks on potbellied stoves and hotplates located in living
quarters. These works of art allowed the prohibition against cooking in
living quarters to be defied, with some internees appreciating the privacy
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

afforded by eating alone and others inviting friends over to share simple
meals. Small figurines and decorative vases were also produced, along
with especially popular ashtrays. Located in the south wing of block 16’s
community activities barrack, the flourishing pottery school also served
as the site of high school arts and craft classes.82
Some art classes were taught by professional artists. Three days after
arriving at Tanforan, Chiura Obata, a professor of art at the University of
California, Berkeley, approached administrators hoping to obtain space
for an art school. Although camp officials were initially hesitant to grant
such a request, coaxing on the part of internees was successful, and the
Tanforan Art School opened on May 25 in what had formerly been mess

hall 6. Supplies were provided by friends, students from the university,

and the American Friends Service Committee. With Obata as its direc-
tor, the Tanforan Art School was open daily from nine in the morning
until seven in the evening, offering classes in figure drawing, composi-
tion, still life, pencil drawing, landscape, sculpting, cartoon drawing,
commercial art, fashion design, interior decorating, and brushwork.
Many of the sixteen teachers were professionally trained artists who were
well equipped to teach elementary, high school, and college students as
well as the general adult population of the camp. Nearly all of the stu-
dents enrolled in classes had little previous experience creating art. In
the opening week of operation, the art school was a thriving center of
artistic expression boasting 300 students.83
Santa Anita’s art activities were supervised by Bob Kuwahara, who
before December 7, 1941, had worked in the animation departments of
Disney and MGM studios. Trained at the Otis Art Institute in Los Ange-
les, now known as the Otis College of Art and Design, Kuwahara was one
of the primary artists contributing to the production of the movies Snow
White and Bambi. Teaching classes of his own on Mondays and Wednes-
days at barrack 36-E, better known as Handicraft Haven to internees,
this Nisei artist was a populist when it came to artistic expression. Com-
menting on the opening of the art school in early June 1942, Kuwahara
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explained: “Art is not only cultural, but practical as well. It is a natural

part of our existence.”84 Part of his job was allocating adequate space and
time to competing art forms. Once demand outstripped these resources,
organizers likely expected tensions between crafters to follow.
In July, Mrs. Sumi Kashiwagi, a needlecraft teacher, was busy assuag-
ing the worries of 175 women knitters and crocheters concerned that the
increasing interest in sewing would cause their classes to be discontin-
ued. Instead, Santa Anita’s art center decided to offer beginning sewing
classes for over one hundred internees on a waiting list and to postpone
advanced classes for over 450 students graduating from a two-month
class covering the basics of sewing. Anxieties among knitters were likely

rooted in an earlier May meeting at which 250 women needleworkers

voted to establish the most popular art form and thereby garner the
majority of resources. Knitters outnumbered sewers, with crocheting
coming in third and pattern drafting placing fourth. Just over two
months later, this hierarchy was reversed, with sewing replacing knitting
as the most practiced needlecraft.85
Novices joined professionally trained artists in teaching a wide range
of crafting classes. At Jerome, Mary Tsukamoto was surprised to see a
friend teaching women the art of artificial flower making. “All I knew
was that she was a strawberry grower’s wife and I knew she could pick
strawberries. Here she was a teacher of this crepe-paper flower mak-
ing class.”86 Many art forms were developed in specific camps, spon-
taneously producing teachers who were inexperienced artists before
imprisonment. Tule Lake and Topaz women were the most common
practitioners of shell art, creating lapel pins, earrings, brooches, and
artificial flowers from tiny shells, some as small as a grain of rice. An
Issei woman imprisoned at Tule Lake explained in a letter to a friend that
she had to dig five or six feet into the ground to find acceptable speci-
mens. Teachers of this art form were active experimenters, developing
techniques on the spot that included bleaching the shells and coloring
the creations with fingernail polish. Japanese Americans imprisoned at
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

Rohwer created jewelry by flattening pieces of tin cans salvaged from

mess hall trash cans. Innovators of this art form taught other internees
to stencil the metal with carpenters’ nails and further shape the material
into bracelets and rings.87
Beginning in June 1942 and under the supervision of internees, a wide
variety of classes got under way at Manzanar, with two barracks reserved
for painting, sketching, lettering, poster designing, and fashion drawing
and another two barracks reserved for crafts made with wood, metal,
leather, and linoleum. An additional woodcraft center for children was
planned to open in the coming month.88 Needlecraft and flower-arranging
classes were gender specific, with the camp newspaper informing

43. Jewelry created from

discarded tin cans at
Rohwer. Courtesy of the
Rosalie Santine Gould
Collection.

internees that sessions for men and boys were a “no women’s land.”
“There,” the reporter continued, “the stalwarts are taught the womanly
arts of knitting, sewing, crocheting, embroidery and flower making.” If
the class schedule was any indication, the “men only” classes were a big
hit. Needlework classes were offered on Monday and Friday evenings and
again on Saturday afternoons. Flower making was scheduled for three
hours on Friday evenings and four hours each Saturday afternoon.
Although needlecraft and flower-making classes for men were
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confined to evening and weekend hours, women were able to choose

from a wider selection of times. The efforts of Yumi Ogura and Linda
Kinoshita, who offered sewing classes every day and evening except
Sunday, were matched by Katsuko Asaka’s commitment to teaching
artificial flower making every day and for two hours on Tuesday and
Thursday evenings. Women laboring at camp jobs were the focus for
Mary Tamaki, who accommodated work schedules by offering classes
exclusively in the evenings between six and nine. Rather than teaching
women how to create decorative items, Tamaki’s specialty was more
practical, with students learning to create socks, sweaters, caps, mittens,
and gloves. Women getting off work were encouraged by the Manzanar

Free Press to “dash over” to block 16, barrack 15, for an evening of
productive crafting.89 These classes were added to those offered since
June 6 at 16–15’s art center. At this location Takeo Itokawa supervised
lettering, sketching, and painting classes, while Grace Ito was in charge
of teaching needlework and flower making. Roy Satow had his hands
full organizing the many woodcraft sessions.90
As the experiences of imprisoned Japanese Americans illustrate, art
can be used to create a myriad of connections that enhance chances of
survival. Through and with art, internees connected with each other
in complicated and overlapping webs of connections embedded in the
details of everyday life. By sewing clothes for one another, creating crafts
as gifts, and participating in classes and exhibits, internees operated
within these webs, which encompassed countless points and forms of
connections. Although the idea of community often legitimizes existing
social hierarchies and exclusionary ways of thinking that manufacture
insiders and outsiders, connection is offered as a framework for identi-
fying linkages between people in environments of difference and even
dissent. These bonds maybe fluid, momentary, and unstable but no less
powerful than identities grounded in the idea of community. In our
search for community, we can blur everyday lived experiences in which
people manage conflict and heterogeneity to create connections with one
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

another. Ideas such as community can fabricate consensus and structure

our thinking so we miss identifying moments of connections that are
critical to surviving in oppressive environments such as those of the Jap-
anese American concentration camps. Imprisoned Japanese Americans
used art to create these connections and to identify with others within
and outside the confines of barbed wire, an especially vital activity con-
sidering that heterogeneity among internees defined camp life.
Thinking about camp artists with the idea of connections rather than
community can also help us understand how people create bonds when
physically isolated from one another. Some camp crafts were made in
the absence of others, an important experience to think about because

it reveals that creating connections between people through art can be

accomplished in solitude. An Issei women imprisoned at Tanforan and
later Topaz preferred the art of knitting because she longed for “quiet
moments to reflect.” Although Iku Uchida enjoyed knitting because
this activity allowed her to work alone, this act of crafting was part of
a larger collaborative project. By knitting sweaters, Uchida was creating
important connections with her daughters, who, in the context of intern-
ment, were especially grateful to their mother for devoting time to their
wardrobe concerns.91 Many other works of art were created in isolation
and later given as gifts and exhibited at camp art shows. These crafting
activities formed vital webs of connection and placed difference at the
center of human experience. Thinking with the idea of connection can
help us as we identify how people create linkages outside structures that
legitimize hierarchies and at least partially escape a prevalent under-
standing of commonality as the sole foundation on which people create
socially productive alliances. In environments of difference, Japanese
Americans connected with each other through art to help negotiate and
articulate their experiences as internees.
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Mental Landscapes
of Survival

Just as internees enhanced their chances of survival by employing art to

create more livable physical places, they also linked crafting with solace
to remake emotional, psychic, and mental landscapes of survival. For
internees, art was a coping mechanism, and they combated depression
by keeping their hands and minds busy. But imprisoned Japanese Ameri-
cans also created an understanding of mental survival that joined aes-
thetic considerations with emotional well-being. Art activities served as
spaces where personal visions of individual artists evolved into collective
considerations and social life. With art, some internees articulated men-
tal landscapes of survival for themselves and then offered these visions
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

to other internees by participating in classes and shows, and by giving

art as gifts. With classes, exhibits, and gifts, Japanese Americans created
agency in their lives by participating in collective dialogues that revealed
artful identifications between individuals and collectivities, the psychic
and the material, art and politics, oppression and change. In this chapter
I ask readers to think about camp-made material objects not as static
reflectors or containers of the past but as items that enhanced psychic
health even in environments where mental and emotional well-being
were under constant assault. Art created spaces where ideas and strategies
for survival could be revealed and refined. Here we can view internee-
created art as both material and psychic practices of agency.

125
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126 a r t i fac t s o f l o s s

Imprisoned Japanese Americans were aware that unoccupied time

posed threats to their emotional and mental health because these
moments were too often filled with thoughts and feelings of despair,
hopelessness, and intense anxiety. Feelings of personal psychological
vulnerability were reinforced as internees witnessed friends and fam-
ily members develop crippling mental illnesses.1 At Santa Anita, Lillie
McCabe’s former dentist filled his days with endless walks around the
guarded fence. Concerned about his declining physical and mental con-
dition, McCabe advised her old friend to avoid getting “too caught up
in this situation.” But after months of continuously walking in circles,
the dentist began hallucinating and eventually “lost his mind.” Once
McCabe was shipped to Amache, she followed her own advice, always
“fighting to keep happy” rather than focusing on “morose” feelings.2
A young woman imprisoned at Stockton watched her older sister
gradually slip into a severe depression, which intensified once they were
shipped to Rohwer. Active and engaged before internment, Mary Sugit-
achi’s sister arrived at Rohwer, after a long four-day train trip, with few
psychic reserves and was soon unable to muster the energy or focus to
cope with the many routine hardships of camp life. Long mess hall and
latrine lines, combined with crowded and degraded living conditions,
produced frequent anxiety attacks that made life even more difficult for
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

Sugitachi’s sister and those who cared for her.3 A teenage girl became
psychotic and was hospitalized soon after being transported to Puyal-
lup. Interviewed for an “incident report,” the teenager’s friend frankly
informed a camp administrator that although the girl had been a quiet
person before imprisonment, “the events of evacuation were more than
[her friend] could adjust to.”4 Depression was so common among intern-
ees that easily treated physical illnesses were often incorrectly diagnosed
as “melancholia.” Mabel Ota’s father was sent to the Phoenix Sanitarium
from Gila and died after six weeks of shock treatment intended to treat
catatonic depression. Granted a travel permit because of her father’s
impending death, Ota arrived at the sanitarium and was informed by the

attending physician that her father was not suffering from melancholia
but from diabetes. Accepting the camp doctor’s diagnosis, the psychia-
trist proceeded with treatment and only conducted a thorough exam
once Ota’s father slipped into a fatal comma.5
For some Japanese Americans, the thought of internment drove them
to consider suicide. Orphaned when she was in elementary school and
with her older sister dead from tuberculosis just before imprisonment,
fifteen-year-old Helen Murao assumed the position of authority for her
family of three, which included herself and two younger brothers. Real-
izing she was about to be shipped off to the temporary center located
near Portland, Oregon, Murao was overwhelmed by negative thoughts
and a debilitating depression. “I really entertained, at fleeting moments,
some feelings that maybe I’d be better off if, you know, I tried to, I felt it
might be a solution if I just did away with my brothers and my own life.”6
Imprisoned at Minidoka, Hanaye Matsushita struggled with a similar
depression and often found summoning the energy to write letters an
impossible task. Explaining a recent dearth of letters, Matsushita wrote
to her husband incarcerated at a Department of Justice facility in Fort
Missoula, Montana: “I have many things to tell you, but in the after-
noons I am worthless because of the horrible heat. When I dwell on the
situation, I have suicidal feelings.”7
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

For others these thoughts tragically came to fruition. Hideo Murata,

an Issei from Pismo Beach, killed himself and was found holding a
Certificate of Honorary Citizenship. Awarded to him at a Fourth of July
celebration the previous year, the certificate read: “Monterey County
presents this testimony of heartfelt gratitude, of honor and respect for
your loyal and splendid service to the country in the Great World War.
Our flag was assaulted and you gallantly took up its defense.”8 Although
the focus of Artifacts of Loss remains on how internees managed to sur-
vive the brutalities encompassed by Executive Order 9066, it is critical to
remember that many Japanese Americans did not emerge from this tragic
experience emotionally, mentally, or physically intact. Even decades after

44. Some Japanese Americans were driven to suicide by their internment

experience. Rohwer, January 1944. Courtesy of the National Archives and
Records Administration.

being released, many former internees continue to bear emotional scars

as well as physical problems caused by their imprisonment in concentra-
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

tion camps, where health care rarely reached minimal standards.

With everyday life providing convincing evidence that internment
encompassed persistent and continuous assaults on mental health, many
internees filled even limited moments of unoccupied time with activities
that engaged their minds and bodies. Reacting to the traumas of impris-
onment by doing anything less translated into long days that, in the
words of one internee, “dragged endlessly.”9 Explaining the plethora of art
activities organized by internees, a woman imprisoned first at Fresno and
later at Jerome recalled that “we hastily tried to keep everybody busy.”10 In
this context, “free” time became the enemy, with art serving as a powerful
medium through which internees could at least partially focus on hope

and new possibilities rather than on despair and anguish. Filling her first
difficult days at Tanforan with furniture building, Mine Okubo recalled:
“Many of the discomforts of the camp were forgotten in this activity.”11
Gladys Ishida Stone remembered her mother filling every spare moment
at Amache by crocheting tablecloths and interpreted her mother’s artful
activities as doing “battle with the policy of internment and evacuation.”12
As the director of the Tanforan and later the Topaz art schools, Chiura
Obata firmly believed in the power of art to raise the spirits of imprisoned
Japanese Americans. Communicating the mission of the Tanforan Art
School, Obata wrote that by creating art, “the general moral of the people
will be uplifted.”13 For many internees creating, exhibiting, consuming,
and thinking about art became embedded in the everyday patterns of
camp life and helped ensure mental and emotional survival.14
Camp-made art helped internees reveal and cope with the many losses
they were forced to endure, an important psychic exercise considering the
scope and depth of despair that defined the implementation of Execu-
tive Order 9066.15 Many art forms were used to express both temporary
and permanent human losses. As young male internees traded impris-
onment for service in a newly formed all-Nisei U.S. Army combat unit,
Heart Mountain women and girls hurriedly sewed and embroidered
one-thousand-stitch belts and vests or senninbari to protect their friends,
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

husbands, sons, and brothers.16 An art form based in Japanese culture,

these “charmed” belts were made with long strips of white cloth and a
single unbroken red thread knotted and stitched by one thousand women
to represent their collective strength and power. Perhaps the most divi-
sive and painful internment experiences for many imprisoned Japanese
Americans, the decision by the U.S. War Department to recruit soldiers
from the camps, provoked heated and frequent debates among internees
throughout the winter and spring of 1943. Women sewing and embroider-
ing senninbari at Heart Mountain likely encompassed special significance
since only the Wyoming camp had an organized resistance movement—
first referred to as the Heart Mountain Congress of American Citizens and

45. Senninbari vests were made to protect friends,

husbands, sons, and brothers who joined the U.S.
armed forces. Courtesy of the Japanese American
Archival Collection, Department of Special Collections
and University Archives, at the Library, California State
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

University, Sacramento.

later the Fair Play Committee. Senninbari served as important artifacts

of loss as Nisei males left their loved ones behind in the barbed-wire con-
centration camps to join the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and later to
fight and die on battlefields of France and Italy.
Insulting loyalty questionnaires were instituted by the U.S. govern-
ment as a method for supposedly determining the “resettlement” suit-
ability of internees. More importantly, the questionnaires served as the
basis for registering all Nisei men of draft age. Questions 27 and 28 on

the government form asked if respondents were willing to serve in the

U.S. armed forces and if they swore allegiance to the United States of
America. Affirmative responses to both questions earned young men
the “right” to fight and die for a country whose government continued
to incarcerate their parents, wives, and siblings in concentration camps.
As difficult as this decision was for many men, the possibility of serv-
ing as American soldiers was an attractive alternative to imprisonment.
Joining the military also represented the ultimate expression of national
allegiance, with many young men linking service in the U.S. armed
forces with their hopes for a better future at the conclusion of the war.
For a camp especially divided over the issue of sending young Nisei men
to war, senninbari likely served as an important display of patriotism
and support for Japanese American soldiers.
Imprisoned at Amache and worried about her two sons serving in
the army, forty-six-year-old Kotono Kato purchased two pieces of silk
and embroidered the image of a tiger on each. Symbols of strength and
luck, tigers are described in a Japanese proverb as traveling one thou-
sand miles but always safely returning to their homes. To achieve the
perfect color, Kato dyed thread already on hand and purchased a black
marble from a small boy to use as eyes. Assisted by her husband, who
split the marble and made an embroidery frame from scraps of wood,
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

Kato quickly completed the tigers and mailed them to her sons, Roy
and Alfred. Despite a life marked by hardships that encompassed arriv-
ing in San Francisco at the age of eighteen as a picture bride, working
as a farm laborer picking prunes, grapes, and apples, losing two of her
six children, and being imprisoned at Merced and Amache, Kato would
later understand her past as filled with good fortune because eventually
Roy and Alfred returned safely to her. Instead of being shipped overseas,
the boys uncharacteristically completed their tours on U.S. soil, never
parting with their embroidered good luck charms. When last checked in
1989, Roy’s and Alfred’s wallets still contained the tigers made by their
mother. Returning to California when released from Amache, Kato

continued making art by creating new designs for knitting, crocheting,

and embroidery projects.17
Jerome’s Buddhist community also employed art as expressions of
both the temporary and permanent loss of loved ones. Over five hundred
miniature omyoge (Buddhist scrolls) were created by Denson’s Young
Buddhist Association and given to departing soldiers and the families
they were leaving behind. Inserted into small cardboard carriers the
size of a business card, these scrolls were inscribed with “Namu-amida
butsu,” a Buddhist expression of gratitude. These artifacts of loss were
printed in beige and yellow with a template made from floor linoleum.
Once the ink was dry, rayon covers were pasted over the thick cheviot
paper to preserve these gifts of remembrance.18 Creating less devout art
was a high priority for an Issei mother imprisoned at Tule Lake, who
often included knitted socks and artificial flowers in packages mailed
to her soldier son.19 These material objects of loss aided in creating new
mental spaces in which unspeakable fear, worry, and despair were con-
tained and navigated. Working together, these new landscapes of the
mind and art aided internees in materializing and communicating their
losses. Here, loss evolved into public sculptures rather than remaining
solely the material of individual psyches left to ferment in isolation. In
this way psyches were made more flexible, and they exhibited the ability
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

to turn individual experiences of sorrow and emotional pain into collec-

tive life, an important step in expressing agency and power.
An especially touching use of artwork occurred when children’s cre-
ations were mailed to their fathers imprisoned in Department of Justice
facilities. Three-year-old Masahiro Iwata’s art was often a topic of discus-
sion in letters exchanged between his mother and father. Separated from
his wife and three children, who were incarcerated at Poston, Shigezo Iwata
was among thousands of Issei rounded up by the FBI in the aftermath of
December 7, 1941. In a separate but parallel incarceration, these men
and women were held in facilities controlled by the Justice Department.
Imprisoned first at Sante Fe and later in Lordsburg, New Mexico, Shigezo

46. Masahiro’s artwork was often mailed to his father, who was
imprisoned in a Department of Justice facility. Courtesy of the Balch
Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania Archives.

relied on his wife, Sonoko, to keep him informed about his children. On
June 15, 1942, she wrote: “Every morning he comes home with something
he has done at school and today he brought home a cut-out horse. Some
are torn by the time he reaches home but I am enclosing two which I was
able to save.”20 Agreeing with his mother’s assessment of Masahiro as a
prolific crafter, a teacher reported in 1944 that drawing remained a favorite
activity of Masahiro’s.21
Although the Student Relocation Program sponsored by the Ameri-
can Friends Service Committee provided imprisoned college-age Nisei
with welcome opportunities for release, their experiences encompassed a
strange, unsettling mix of relief, regret, and loss. Although young Japa-
nese American men and women embraced the chance to earn a college
education, they left family members behind in bleak environments where
imagining hopeful futures was difficult at best. Providing money for visits
was beyond the means of many parents, who struggled as truck farmers
to makes ends meet before internment or lost accumulated wealth in the
economically exploitive atmosphere created by Executive Order 9066. But
making and selling art provided one Minidoka mother with the means to
finance a reunion with her absent child. Tomae Tamaki earned her daugh-
ter Esther’s train fare from St. Paul, Minnesota, to Minidoka by making
“Indian moccasin pins” for a local man, who sold them at souvenir stands
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

and state fairs. As a participant in the Student Relocation Program, Esther

was released from Portland’s temporary imprisonment facility on Septem-
ber 8, 1942, to attend Macalester College in Minnesota, while her mother,
father, and two sisters were shipped to Minidoka. After nearly a year of
creating one-inch moccasins out of tiny beads and chamois cloth, Tamaki
saved enough money to purchase a round-trip ticket for her daughter. To
add insult to injury, the War Relocation Authority demanded that Tamaki
pay for her daughter’s meals during the much-anticipated visit. Euphoric
over being reunited with her family after a year’s separation, Esther later
remembered seven nights of sleeping on a straw-filled mattress in her fam-
ily’s cramped Minidoka living unit as the “best vacation of my life.”22

Using art to materially memorialize permanent human losses was

often an excruciating mental exercise for camp artists. An Issei woman
who had learned to make paper flowers from her mother in Japan began
teaching classes in this art form once she was imprisoned at Amache.
Soon she was applying her skills to making funeral wreaths out of
crepe-paper flowers for internees whose soldier sons who were killed
in action. Although this task was emotionally wearing because it pro-
voked disturbing thoughts about her own two sons serving in the army,
this mother and artist fought back her fears to complete many funeral
wreaths and provide solace for mourning parents. Wreaths made for
dead soldiers usually included streamers made from red, white, and blue
ribbons, which were attached to an eagle created by a camp wood-carver.
Frames for the funereal wreaths were made with sagebrush collected on
camp grounds.23
With over 700 Nisei soldiers killed in 225 days of combat, and over
2,000 wounded, religious leaders in all camps were busy as they prepared
for funeral ceremonies and comforted relatives of wounded soldiers.24
When Heart Mountain families received letters notifying them that their
sons, husbands, and fathers had been killed in action, they placed gold
star banners in barrack windows, with one internee commenting that
Heart Mountain “started to look like Christmas time.” These memorials
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

where accompanied by funeral services, which included floral arrange-

ments made from crepe paper by Buddhist women. Having attended
many of these funerals, a nineteen-year-old Nisei from Mountain Valley,
California, noted that these wreaths “added dignity to the memorials
held for the deceased and their families.”25
But artificial flowers sometimes accentuated feelings of marginal-
ization, as in the case of a teenage daughter who watched the health of
her diabetic mother worsen at Poston. Having successfully controlled
her blood sugar before imprisonment, this fifty-two-year-old wife
and mother of five found the camp diet of rice, potatoes, and maca-
roni disastrous, and eventually it led to her death. Women internees

47. Funeral wreaths at Heart Mountain. Courtesy of the Ethel Ryan

Collection, John Taggert Hinckley Library, Northwest College, Powell,
Wyoming.

attempted to comfort surviving family members by making funeral

flowers from Kleenex, but Akiyo Deloyd looked back on her mother’s
funeral with enduring regret because she was unable to place a fresh
flower on her grave.26 Another Nisei woman, however, found solace in
the paper flowers made by Issei women. After having been released from
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

camp on a program sponsored by the National Japanese American Stu-

dent Relocation Council, a daughter returned to Topaz from a college
in Colorado for the funeral of her father, thankful that his coffin was
covered with “cascades” of crepe-paper flowers “painstakingly” made
by Issei women.”27
Paper flower makers were at the center of a collective response to the
murder of James Hatsuki Wakasa. Shot in the twilight hours of April 11,
1943, by a guard as he approached the barbed-wire fence surrounding
Topaz, sixty-three-year-old Wakasa died immediately. A soldier sta-
tioned at sentry tower 8 in the southwest corner of the camp had fired
at Wakasa, who was nearing the western portion of the fence. Accounts

Dusselier, Jane E.. Artifacts of Loss : Crafting Survival in Japanese American Concentration Camps, Rutgers University Press, 2008.
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m e n ta l l a n d s c a p e s o f s u r v i va l 137
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48. Women making artificial flowers, which often provided comfort for
those who had experienced a death in their family. Amache, March 6, 1943.
Photographer: Pat Coffey. Courtesy of the National Archives and Records
Administration.

of the shooting vary, but an autopsy confirmed that Wakasa was shot
in the chest while facing the guard rather than while trying to escape.
Although insisting that the shooting was justified because Wakasa was
attempting to crawl under the fence, administrators and military leaders
revealed a convoluted and misapplied sense of culpability when military
police stationed at Topaz were placed on “general alert” and armed with

machine guns, tear gas, and gas masks. Such an order was an overreac-
tion of enormous proportions when we recall that Japanese Americans
imprisoned at Topaz were isolated in the middle of a desert, with little
support or resources. As was clear to Japanese Americans incarcerated
at Topaz, including Wakasa, an escape attempt in this environment was
suicidal. Although Gerald B. Philpott, the guard who shot Wakasa, was
reassigned and avoided punishment for his actions, internees impris-
oned at Topaz protested by holding a public funeral for the Issei bachelor
on April 20, near the location where he was murdered. Women of every
block contributed time to creating “enormous” funeral wreaths made
with paper flowers. In the context of Wakasa’s murder, these works of art
were provocative and compelling visual discourses of protest and loss.28
Although these art objects expressed the human losses endured by
internees, other camp-made art replaced items that had been lost. As
Japanese Americans packed up their homes and prepared for the imple-
mentation of Executive Order 9066, they made difficult decisions about
what to eliminate from overstuffed duffle bags, trunks, and luggage.
With Japanese Americans limited to bringing only what they could
carry, toys were among the first items left behind in church basements,
padlocked barns, and trash piles. Concerned for the well-being and sur-
vival of over 60,000 imprisoned youngsters, many internees remained
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

focused, throughout the long years of imprisonment, on creating art

objects that engaged the imaginations of youngsters while adsorbing
their energy. Enthusiasm for model planes was high among boys of all
ages, with youngsters, teenagers, and grown men often joining together
to attend classes, compete in meets, and enjoy exhibits. As part of the
Anita Funita Festival, an all-camp Fourth of July celebration, Henry
Ohye organized a model plane meet that included enthusiasts of all ages
and skill levels. Those who participated were separated into four divi-
sions: the hand-launched glide category was best suited for beginners;
more experienced crafters found that the flight endurance and speed
classes challenged their skill levels; and a “free-for-all” division ensured

that any and all internees interested in participating were included. With
a large group of crafters and plenty of entries, winning models were dis-
qualified from further competition.29
Model plane crafters also gathered informally to enjoy the first flights
of newly constructed models, as was the case of a group of twenty-five
little boys chasing the latest creation of Tets Kawakami. Made from
Kleenex tissue, glue, and balsa wood, the small red plane had taken
Kawakami four days to create. Flying over the infield of Santa Anita’s
racetrack, model planes like Kawakami’s were magnets for boys who,
anxious to arrive at landing areas, raced along underneath these air-
borne toys. Always eager to examine the planes up close, youngsters
arrived out of breath but insisted on peppering the builder with ques-
tions.30 Model plane enthusiasts at Topaz braved the cold, holding an
impromptu “model airplane flying and glider exhibit” on December 27,
1942. Spectators were encouraged to spend an enjoyable Sunday after-
noon outside in the frigid air watching camp artists Kenneth Ozawa and
Henry Fujita Jr. fly their gliders of balsa wood. Gathered on the grounds
of the Topaz high school after lunch, a large crowd of children also wit-
nessed M. Yamashita expertly guide his gas-propelled, motorized model
through the sky.31
A Tanforan internee ensured a steady stream of supplies by making
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

airplane models for a program sponsored by the U.S. government that

trained civilians to identify enemy aircraft. Other interested internees
were encouraged to participate with the organizer of the effort, and they
reported to the camp newspaper: “If we make the models good enough,
we’ll be provided with an unlimited supply of materials.”32 Model plane
builders at Puyallup likely devised a similar strategy. Launching an all-
camp plane-building contest sponsored jointly by the Seattle Civilian
War Commission and Frederick and Nelson’s department store, Rube
Hosokawa announced the arrival of paint, glue, design plans, sandpaper,
and pine. Open to internees of all ages and lasting a single week, the compe-
tition required participants to choose from a list of Japanese, German, and

49. Boys carving model planes at Poston, October 1943. Photographer

unknown. Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.

American warplanes. Completed models were used by civilian air wardens

of western Washington in distinguishing between enemy and friendly
aircraft. Although models submitted for judging remained the property
of the War Commission, the winning entrant received a twenty-five-dollar
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

war savings bond. But the biggest prize was securing more than ample
plane-building supplies for Puyallup’s crafters.33 At Manzanar, obtain-
ing model plane supplies from government sources was more difficult.
Announcing the formation of classes for making “civilian spotter” models,
the Manzanar Free Press reported that daily sessions were open to young-
sters over the age of twelve. Unfortunately attendance was low because
participants were required to provide their own materials and tools for the
first batch of planes.34
Despite a slow start, Manzanar evolved into one of the most active
airplane-model-building camps, with the imaginations of young and
old alike perhaps fueled by an active airport directly across Highway

395 from the camp. Built as a U.S. Army facility in 1941, the airport was
used to train bomber pilots and test experimental aircraft. When civil-
ian planes traversing western portions of the United States experienced
in-flight emergencies, they were rerouted to this isolated airfield with
long runways located near Death Valley, California. Most model plane
building and flying activities were organized by Manzanar’s Wing Nuts
club, which held frequent exhibits, classes, and flying demonstrations.
Youngsters interested in the art form met every evening from six until
dark at block 16, barrack 15, under the supervision of Richard Kunazawa,
an expert plane builder.35 Kunazawa advised his young charges to pay
careful attention to the maneuverability, velocity, and appearance of
their creations, the three basic precepts of this art form. The gas-propelled
and glider models entered into competitions were judged on these
elements.36 Planes of another sort were the concern of Kamso Yamashiro,
who built a giant stationary airplane for Santa Anita children. With
materials scavenged from mess halls and communal laundry facilities,
and using a camp-made hammer, saw, and pocket knife, he fashioned the
fuselage out of three apple crates and plated the cowling with flattened
tin cans. The wheels were made from round pieces of wood placed inside
large tin cans.37
Model boats created by incarcerated Japanese Americans were
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

replacements for lost toys, which aided children as they created mental
landscapes of survival. In addition to more conventional boat models,
a sailboat capable of carrying a skipper and two passengers was built at
Lake Tanforan. With an eight-foot-long hull, two outrigger pontoons,
a mast eleven feet high, and a sail with a spread of twenty-eight feet,
the vessel was the creation of Hisaichi Tsugawa, who before internment
had been a fishing boat captain. Made by hallowing out an abandoned
telephone pole found on the outskirts of camp, the boat was both buoy-
ant and leak proof, thanks to the materials Tsugawa bought for twelve
dollars. After applying five coats of paint and repairing rotten portions
of the pole with six pounds of putty, the captain began offering rides to

eager children. By July 15, 1942, the vessel was making it’s seventy-fifth
journey, having capsized three times. In water one-foot deep, the captain
reacted to these “spills” by easily hoisting youthful passengers on his
shoulders and pulling the boat safely to shore.38
Along with model boats and planes, camp-made dolls and kites were
perhaps the most common art objects replacing lost toys, and they
articulated the internees’ need to restore some semblance of childhood
to imprisoned youngsters. Most dolls were hand sewn and made with
paper, scraps of cloth, and straw, with buttons serving for eyes. A thir-
teen-year-old girl incarcerated at Rohwer reported in an autobiographi-
cal essay for her English class that she spent many happy hours designing
clothes for her creations.39 Making and flying kites were memorialized
in an Estelle Ishigo painting titled Boys with Kite, which portrayed two
little boys untangling their newest creation from a barbed-wire fence.
Although Sundays at Lake Tanforan were reserved for model boat enthu-
siasts, kite crafters took over the area on Saturday afternoons. Prizes
were often awarded for the highest flyer as well as the largest, smallest,
and most artistic kites. Winners were required to keep their kites air-
borne for a minimum of ten minutes.40
An especially engaging toy for Minidoka’s children were painted
stones arranged into scenes that communicated fairytales. Ranging in
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sizes measuring as small as a fingernail to two inches high, these stone

toys were played with by children as they learned important life lessons
provided by Japanese culture.41 Although other forms of camp-made toys
were less conventional, they were equally popular among imprisoned
youngsters. A young women concerned about the lack of toys available
to Santa Anita’s children raised eyebrows when she rummaged through
mess hall trash cans. Concerns were allayed when a reporter for the
camp newspaper informed readers that the scavenger, an internee super-
visor for the YWCA girls club at Santa Anita, was gathering milk bottle
tops, empty cans, and discarded cereal boxes for a toy-making project.
Midori Kasai also organized an art class in which imprisoned girls used

50. Girls proudly display the dolls they made at the Labor Day Festival,
Newell, California, September 7, 1943. Photographer: Francis Stewart.
Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.

these scavenged materials, along with scraps of yarn, cloth, and wire, to
make artwork that decorated the interior walls of living quarters.42
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Nisei teenagers who worked on Santa Anita’s camouflage-net project

also scavenged materials for toys. Under the direction of the Army Corps
of Engineers, over 800 young internees performed dusty and tiring tasks.
These workers used their rest periods to collect excess threads from
gunny sacks, which they later wound into balls. Through this process,
tangled strips of burlap were transformed into tightly wound balls used
to play games of catch, dodgeball, soccer, and baseball. Rest periods
consumed with making balls can be explained by the demographic of the
workers, who were primarily teenagers. According to Kiyoko Ike, cam-
ouflage factories were good places to make friends because “hundreds
and hundreds of young boys and girls were drafted as workers.”43

To many readers the task of making balls from these materials may
appear mindless, but it was meticulous and intricate work demanding
that threads be sorted according to thickness and length. Ball makers
also became skilled knot tiers as they connected and tied off end after
end. Along with making hundreds of balls for children to play with, Santa
Anita’s camouflage workers devoted nearly 3,000 work hours to produc-
ing over 2,200 nets for the military. The nets varied from between 22 by
24 feet to 36 by 60 feet. With the money saved by producing these nets
in such an exploitive work environment, the U.S. government offset the
cost of all food consumed at Santa Anita. Even with this contribution by
young Nisei internees, working conditions were atrocious, provoking the
only strike at any of the temporary imprisonment facilities. A major com-
plaint by these youngsters was a persistent weakness caused by hunger.44
Mothers also made and sold crafts as a way to finance what most
think of as typical experiences for free youngsters, but in the context of
the internment camps these were rare and special events for imprisoned
children. At Denson, Arkansas, YWCA Fujin Kai (women’s club) mem-
bers made chenille flowers that were sold by Y members in Little Rock,
and the proceeds went toward financing activities for interned young-
sters. On rare occasions and only with the approval of camp administra-
tors, these funds paid for trips by young internees to Y activities held
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beyond the confines of the camp.45 On August 4, 1943, a member of the

Denson Fujin Kai reported to the national office that two members of
the Girls’ Reserve were permitted to attend a conference in Little Rock
and that the group was looking forward to sending another three girls to
Gulf Port Summer Camp.46 At Rohwer women made and sold carnations
for Mother’s Day gifts, and they used the eighty dollars in profit to send
nine girls to the same summer camp.47
The loss of pets was an emotionally wrenching experience for children
and adults alike. Aiko Tanamachi Endo, who was fifteen years old at the
time of internment, later recalled that her saddest memory was disposing
of the family dog, a “mutt” with the appearance of a German Shepard.

Because their dog never took kindly to strangers, the Endos realized that
their only option was contacting the Humane Society. With all the pack-
ing and turmoil in the household, the dog sensed something was wrong
and retreated under the house, refusing to come out even to eat. Once
the Humane Society arrived, Endo’s brother crawled to the frightened
animal’s hiding place and forcibly dragged the dog to a waiting truck, a
depressing scene that left the entire family with disturbing and lasting
memories of their loyal and cherished pet.48
Another family imprisoned at Tanforan and Topaz was fortunate to
find a home for their pedigreed Scotch collie. With most of their friends
also destined for the camps, Yoshiko Uchida placed an ad in the Uni-
versity of California, Berkeley, student newspaper, reading: “I am one of
the Japanese American students soon to be evacuated and have a male
Scotch collie that can’t come with me. Can anyone give him a home?”
A boy who seemed especially caring was chosen as the new owner of
Laddie, but not without much consternation. Especially upsetting for
the oldest daughter who was the animal lover of the family, the Uchida’s
packed up Laddie’s doghouse, leash, food bowl, and brushes and sadly
said goodbye. Many weeks later the family learned that their loved pet
never adapted to his new home and died shortly after the Uchidas were
transported to Tanforan.49
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Sixty years after seeing his dog for the last time, Yoshito Wayne Osaki
recalled this painful memory in detail. The dog had been a present from
his father, and Osaki named his new “best friend” Teny. A few days
before this eighteen-year-old from Courtland, California, was shipped
to Tule Lake, Teny vanished, only to reappear when a pickup truck con-
taining the Osaki family pulled into the street to begin the journey that
would end with incarceration. Sitting in the back of the pickup on a pile
of luggage, Osaki wept as Teny attempted to chase down the truck but
failed. Osaki’s lasting memory was watching his “constant companion”
fall farther and farther behind and finally, after a mile of all-out effort,
sitting down in the middle of the road panting heavily.50 A ten-year-old

imprisoned at Rohwer was forced to leave behind her turtle, dogs, cats,
canaries, and goldfish. She wrote in her diary: “The pet I liked best was
our dog. We gave her to a man but she cut the rope and came home.
When we finally left, she cried like anything. We did too.”51
A teenage girl imprisoned first at Stockton and later Jerome was forced
to give her dog to a white neighbor. The knowledge that her pet was going
to a good home did not console the young owner, who fought back tears
for a second day in a row after saying goodbye to her “best friend.”52
Estelle Ishigo, in her book of drawings and text documenting the lives of
internees incarcerated at Pomona and Heart Mountain, memorialized
the difficult decisions forced on the pet-owning Japanese Americans. At
the very beginning of Lone Heart Mountain, Ishigo describes the experi-
ence of six-year-old Kenji, who took his dog on one last walk before the
boy was shipped to an “assembly center.” Disturbingly, the destination of
the walk was a veterinarian’s office because no one was willing to take in
the aging dog and, according to Ishigo, “because his master is Japanese.”
Accompanying the text is a drawing of a small boy kneeling by a small
mound of dirt grasping a ball once used to play fetch.53
Camp crafters addressed these traumas and painful losses by creating
works of art. A wooden yard sculpture of a dog created by Karon Sanda
was known as the “pet of the neighborhood” and became a favorite of
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children, who, passing by on their way to and from mess halls, left scraps
of bread behind for their new canine friend.54 A father and his son impris-
oned at Tanforan and later at Topaz spent many of their days carving
small animal figures from wood and distributing them to children. For
internees, especially children, who lost cherished pets, these art forms
allowed very personal moments of grief and mental pain to be placed in
the open, permitting broader collectivities to bear some of the weight.
Children who carried wooden representations of lost pets in their pockets
where encouraged to remember and reveal their losses. Here, grief, sor-
row, and anguish were materially memorialized for all to see and handle,
rather than being pondered and thought out in mental seclusion.

Dusselier, Jane E.. Artifacts of Loss : Crafting Survival in Japanese American Concentration Camps, Rutgers University Press, 2008.
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m e n ta l l a n d s c a p e s o f s u r v i va l 1 47
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51. Father and son carve small wooden animals, San Bruno, California,
June 1, 1942. Photographer: Dorothea Lange. Courtesy of the National
Archives and Records Administration.

In this way, enormous pain was partially subdued, even if momen-

tarily, providing spaces in which internees found the strength to open
their minds and imagine new mental landscapes and possibilities. Over-
whelming sadness and depression caused by experiences such as losing
pets was thought over by creating and consuming art. Camp-made art
that revealed the loss of pets aided internees in imagining the possibility of

surviving their imprisonment experiences with some level of emotional

and mental health intact. These works of art helped some internees to
create mental spaces of survival that generated new ideas and cultural
practices, allowing individual mental anguish to be considered collec-
tively. These works of art addressed the loss of pets and they likely
evoked wistful feelings among internees accustomed to warm furry bod-
ies and wet kisses from cherished pets.
Vocational and business losses were pervasive internment experiences,
and many internees responded by establishing thriving enterprises in the
camps. A Manzanar geta maker who had been a landscape gardener before
imprisonment reported that he found purpose in his crafting activities.
(Getas, as mentioned earlier, are traditional Japanese footwear, similar to
raised wooden sandals, that allow feet to stay dry and mud free.) Japanese
American concentration camps were barren and wind-torn landscapes.
Most internees recognized getas as “indispensable” because dusty walk-
ways and paths quickly turned to mud during rainy seasons.55 During their
imprisonment many internees began wearing getas for the first time, most
commonly as shower clogs, because they allowed the muddy paths between
communal bathing facilities, latrines, and living units to be more easily
traversed.56 Even after rock, pebble, and wooden walkways were completed,
getas remained popular, with internees using them to combat ever-present
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foot funguses by wearing the elevated footwear while bathing in communal

showers.57 During the long hot dusty summer days, rain showers were rare
and welcome occasions, with internees happily replacing their everyday
shoes with getas in order to better navigate muddy areas and carry on their
daily activities.58 Although geta making became a widely practiced art form
in the camps, the carving of this footwear was beyond the skills of many
imprisoned Japanese Americans. After several “amateurs” at Puyallup,
Washington, produced getas that caused shower goers to “endanger life and
limb,” Toyonosuke Fujikado converted a portion of his already cramped
living quarters into a workshop, and during the first few months of impris-
onment he provided seven hundred pairs free of charge.59

52. Manzanar craftsman making getas, April 2, 1942. Photographer: Clem

Albers. Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.

Having lost a thriving sewing business in Stockton, California, Kaoru

Instead she taught ikebana and needlework classes, charging twenty-five

cents for each session.60 In 1919, at the age of fourteen, Ito immigrated to
the United States with her parents and soon began working as a “school-
girl,” a term used for young domestic workers, in the home of Alameda’s
mayor. On a salary of fifty dollars a month, Ito saved enough money
in a single year to attend the Goto Sewing School in Oakland and later
the McDowell Sewing School in San Francisco.61 Concentrating on the
arts of design and drafting at McDowell, Ito gained enough experience
by 1924 to open her own sewing school in Oakland. As proprietor of
the Aileen Sewing School, Ito served a clientele composed primarily of
immigrant women who spoke little English.62 At the age of twenty-five

and still single, Ito was encouraged by her parents to marry, and they
arranged a meeting for her with her future husband, who resided in
Stockton. Although at first hesitant “to move to a town in the hinter-
lands,” Ito finally relented, but not before she notified her future in-laws
that she had no intention of working at the family’s grocery store and
gaining permission to move her sewing business to Stockton. Along
with giving birth to three daughters and successfully reestablishing her
business in Stockton, Ito was credentialed in 1933 as a teacher of ikebana
by the Seizan Goryu school. In 1937, Ito returned to Japan to visit her
birthplace, Ota Village in Gunma prefecture, located about one hundred
kilometers northwest of Tokyo, but the real purpose of her trip was to
receive further training in the art of ikebana.
While interned at Stockton and Rohwer, Ito taught crocheting,
knitting, sewing, and ikebana classes, relying on Sears Roebuck and
Montgomery Ward mail order catalogs for her needlework supplies
and on a wide range of vegetation found in the Arkansas woods for
her flower-arranging materials. Located just over one hundred miles
southeast of Little Rock and five miles east of the Mississippi River
in swampy woodlands, Rohwer was known for its diverse plant life,
including many species of wildflowers, shrubs, berries, ferns, vines,
and trees, which ikebana enthusiasts eagerly exploited.63 Ito’s crochet-
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ing and knitting classes were also popular with women, who were
now pressed to quickly make their own sweaters and suits. After being
released from Rohwer, Ito returned to Stockton with her family and
began working as a domestic, while her husband found employment
as a gardener. Ito continued teaching ikebana at the Stockton Buddhist
temple, where she and her husband also served as baishakumin or
matchmakers. As Ito’s experience illustrates, some internees found a
way to continue their vocational interests while imprisoned. Although
the focus of these art-centered enterprises was not profitability, they
helped replace other practical losses endured by internees, such as
clothes, curtains, and linens.

Because they were forced by armed soldiers to adhere to a two-bag

limit, internees arrived at camp carrying only the necessities of life.64
Left behind was a whole range of personal possessions, which internees
attempted to replace by creating art. Jewelry in the form of shell brooches,
bracelets made with flattened pieces of tin cans stenciled with nails, and
bird lapel pins made with scrap lumber replaced lost personal items and
spoke to internees’ needs to add physical and visual diversity to their
lives.65 For persons confined in dry, desolate, and beige environments, the
creation of so many colorful and diversely textured artworks likely dis-
turbed the monochrome landscape that enveloped most camps. Portrait
drawing evolved into a popular art form, perhaps compensating for the
prohibition on cameras enforced by War Relocation Authority officials
and armed soldiers. In addition, this practice of creating portraits likely
mediated the permanent loss of family photographs left behind when
Japanese Americans were forcibly removed from their homes. Crayoned
pictures created by imprisoned children replaced cherished artworks
carried home from school before internment and saved in scrapbooks
and trunks, and hung on the walls of homes. Camp-made carved and
polished wooden boxes replaced trinket boxes commonly found in most
homes and holding such items as coins, stamps, and writing utensils. In
concentration camps these containers were often filled with scavenged
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nails, playing cards, flower and vegetable seeds, salvaged wire for arti-
ficial-flower-making activities, and marbles purchased from mail order
catalogs and cherished by many imprisoned children. Containers were
also woven from grass gathered on camp grounds and filled with ciga-
rettes, toothpicks, shells for making jewelry, and sewing supplies.
The creation of clothing and fashion accessories such as belts and
hats not only addressed the loss of personal possessions but also spoke
to practical needs, as in the case of a dress created by an Amache
woman, Yukino Tashiro. An enduring memory of Tashiro’s daughter
was her mother transforming a hundred-pound rice sack into a dress.
Struggling with the unruly material, Tashiro was careful to place the

red rose decorating the sack on the front of the dress. As her daugh-
ter recalled, Tashiro “drew straight lines, cut straight edges, stitched
straight seams, just like Yott-chan [her instructor] taught her.” Tashiro
typically ordered sewing supplies from the Denver Post’s Household
Arts Department, but for this dress she relied on heavy-duty white
mercerized thread brought with her from home. After a long and tiring
day taming uncooperative materials, Tashiro hurriedly threw on her
newly made garment and rushed to her job bussing tables at one of the
mess halls. Responsible for collecting silverware from tables, this mess
hall worker found that the addition of a large front pocket proved well
worth her time and trouble. Tashiro received a certificate for complet-
ing sixty hours of sewing classes, an accomplishment that served her
well.66 Camp-made art often replaced objects left behind as Japanese
Americans were forced to dramatically pare down their possessions.
Robbed of aesthetics, memories, and functionality encompassed by
these objects, internees made camp art to partially recuperate these
“things” and the meanings attached to them.
My hope is that this chapter provokes readers to think about art as
critical to the mental and psychic health of people living in oppressive
conditions. Internees endured losses that ranged from sending family
members off to World War II battlefields and the forced abandonment
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of beloved pets to being deprived of vocational focus and personal

belongings. To cope with these losses, some internees linked making
and consuming camp-made material cultures with psychic energy. In
the context of these immense losses and the attacks on mental well-
being that defined everyday life in Japanese American concentration
camps, art served as mental spaces of survival by helping internees
articulate their most hopeless thoughts and desperate feelings. Art was
one method by which internees placed their personal mental struggles
in collective arenas, where the loss and psychic agony of individuals
were engaged with as a group.
Rather than remaining within the solitary confines of individual
minds, personal torments evolved into social behavior, collective

53. Bird lapel pins made from scrap wood. Courtesy of the Rosalie
Santine Gould Collection

considerations, and cultural practices. As the most basic exercise of

identity building, this process illuminates how art urged individu-
als to construct new understandings of themselves and then connect
these understanding to larger collectivities. A strategy for holding on
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in desperate circumstances, camp crafting activities improved the

likelihood that internees would avoid complete mental devastation.
Art aided in forming mental spaces where all-consuming sadness was
quieted, even if fleetingly, allowing some internees to think about how
to establish some level of agency in their lives. Difficult to capture in
words, internment losses and mental anguish were perhaps best artic-
ulated through art that varied dramatically in form, aesthetics, and
materials. Here, we again see difference playing out materially, allow-
ing a heterogeneous group of people to choose and construct visions
and discourses that best suited their interests and concerns.

Contemporary Legacies
of Loss

As this book concludes, I urge readers to think about art created in Japa-
nese American concentration camps with five ideas. First is the function
and purposes of this work for internees, a historical view grounded in
the realities of everyday life and imprisonment. Second is the idea of
loss, which is critical for moving camp-made art into the present and
future instead of understanding these artifacts as belonging solely to
the past. Third is the idea of art, broadly defined, as creating portable
spaces in which a sense of place can be at least partially recuperated. This
framework addresses transnational flows of people as they are forced to
ground themselves in often hostile and unfamiliar landscapes. Through
this lens, we focus on understanding the historical and cultural contexts
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that inform global, national, and local movements (or non-movements,

as the case may be) of people and resources.
The final two ideas involve more intellectual issues that likely will
resonate most deeply with students of material culture but are equally
applicable for museum goers. Addressing the meanings and uses of
artifactual evidence, this fourth idea urges readers to think about how
museums often have conservative influences on artifacts by constructing
narrow narratives to be consumed by the public. My fifth and final idea
proposes a more active perspective, suggesting that artifacts encompass
powers that evoke responses from people. Here, we find artifacts encom-
passing agency. Instead of constructing a singular narrative, artifacts can

154
Dusselier, Jane E.. Artifacts of Loss : Crafting Survival in Japanese American Concentration Camps, Rutgers University Press, 2008.
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c o n t e m p o r a r y l e g ac i e s o f l o s s 155

generate ideas and be employed to confront present-day conditions of

marginalization and exploitation. As I suggest in these concluding pages,
each of these ideas is central to the historical meanings and contempo-
rary uses of art created in Japanese American concentration camps.
Camp-made art held critical meanings and served essential func-
tions for both makers and consumers. As internees employed art to
remake interior places and outside spaces, maintain and create human
connections, and construct new psychic landscapes, they bolstered
their prospects of physically and mentally surviving the many traumas
encompassed by Executive Order 9066. By studying the lived experiences
of internees, we see that art is about more than aesthetics. Camp-made
material cultures turned the individual and personal into the social,
allowing internees to construct visual conversations about matters
perhaps too painful to discuss verbally. Serving as critical spaces of
survival and revealing contexts of overwhelming loss, camp-made art
encompassed ideas, strategies, and practices ranging from the practical
to the political. Drawing on losses rooted in the historical and oppressive
histories of Japanese Americans, these artifacts can be connected with
injustices occurring in contemporary contexts. In much the same way
that internees offered their art to each other for collective consideration,
they also provided lasting inheritances for succeeding generations to
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think with. In this way, those of us interested in advancing progressive

social justice causes can reconsider our collective present and future.
Although these artful practices were firmly rooted in the past and have
specific historical meanings, camp artists also created narratives of loss
and melancholic agency for the present.
Recent scholarship based on Sigmund Freud’s theory of mourning
and melancholia points to the intellectual, cultural, and political mean-
ings of loss. Freud described mourning as a temporary reaction to loss.1
While mourning is a process in which the mourner eventually moves
on, melancholia is a loss that one cannot get over. Melancholia is an
enduring condition, a mourning without end, and according to Freud,

pathological.2 But some cultural scholars such as David Karzanjian and

David Eng suggest that “melancholic attachments to loss” encompass
creative impulses that reveal social contexts and political possibilities. By
depathologizing and reinterpreting Freud’s melancholia, we are offered
views of unresolveable and politicized struggles with loss. Exploring the
practices through which loss is melancholically materialized, we can
begin to understand art created by imprisoned Japanese Americans as
encompassing half lives that continue to work in the present and future.
As much as we may want to escape memories and realities of histori-
cal loss, avoidance is an impossible task. In the words of Judith Butler,
“the past is not past.”3 This interpretation of melancholia challenges
assumptions that loss and grief reside solely in the psychological realm
and moves these matters to the social and political. Although the losses
of Japanese Americans are irrecoverable, we can employ them to inform
our futures.
Losses experienced by Japanese Americans resonate in the present
because they keep melancholic struggles alive and relevant. With their
melancholic attachments, internees revealed and asserted their many
losses for all to see. Past injustices are remembered and revisited through
works of art created in environments of loss such as the Japanese Ameri-
can concentration camps. As a former fisherman from Terminal Island,
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

California, recounted, the model boat he made at Manzanar from orange

and apple crates was built as a “reminder of the imprisonment of one
hundred and twenty thousand innocent Japanese Americans.”4 Camp-
made art helps us recognize that we must continually revisit past losses
not with the goal of resolution but by acknowledging that these losses
will never be totally erased, exorcized, or banished. Rather, we must
embrace these engagements with loss because this process helps us as we
attempt to imagine and create more humane futures.
It is through these exercises of returning to historical losses that we
think out new social, cultural, economic, and political possibilities. Just
as some internees employed art to piece together alternative dialogues

and generate new ideas to survive with, contemporary readers can draw
on these visual conversations to construct more options for the future.
These artifacts, often thought of as belonging to the past, can kindle new
thoughts, practices, and tactics to deal with current challenges. As resi-
dues of loss, camp-made works of art provoke our memories and raise
questions about present-day conditions of oppression. We must continue
to look back with melancholic visions, like those provided by camp art-
ists, as we learn to create enduring social change. Loss, in its many forms,
must therefore be an ever-present shadow around our hearts and minds
as we seek to enact new visions for human liberation.
These accounts of loss are especially critical when we consider current
environments that are similar to those experienced by Japanese Ameri-
cans imprisoned in U.S. concentration camps during World War II. Civil
rights infringements targeted at Arab and Muslim Americans have been
carried out by the U.S. government most specifically through the autho-
rization of the Patriot Act in 2001 and its reauthorization in 2006. The
increase in hate crimes and media bias directed toward these groups has
been well documented, as has the use of census data to racially identify
Americans of Arab descent. Attacks on Arab and Muslim Americans
continue to rise in post-9/11 environments. During 2005 the Council on
American-Islamic Relations processed 1,972 complaints of anti-Muslim
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harassment, violence, and discriminatory treatment, an all time high

in reported civil rights abuses. These numbers represent a 30 percent
increase from 2004, when 1,522 such events were recorded. Reports of
anti-Muslim hate crimes rose to 153, a nearly 10 percent increase over
those reported in 2004 and a 65 percent increase over the 93 such crimes
reported in 2003. Racial profiling and unreasonable detention were the
most common civil rights complaints. Hate crimes included the bomb-
ing of a Cincinnati mosque, the beating by teenagers of an elderly man
as he left an Arizona mosque, and the assault on a pregnant woman in
Virginia by three men who shouted anti-Muslim slurs. According to
several public opinion surveys, anti-Muslim sentiment continues to rise,

with over half of those polled expressing negative views of Islam and one
in four openly conveying “extreme” hate of Muslims.5
Government surveillance of Muslim and Arab Americans has been
easily accomplished through the Patriot Act, which expanded executive
branch power. As a result, the gathering of domestic intelligence is a
common, everyday occurrence in the United States. Electronic eaves-
dropping and almost unfettered access to phone records have led to a
National Security Agency database of domestic phone calls. Using what
is believed to be the largest database in the world, intelligence officials
can easily track the telecommunications of Americans. The collection of
this type of information is a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment’s
protection against “unreasonable searches and seizures,” and before leg-
islative enactment of the Patriot Act such activities had required a search
warrant.6 Justifying that the compilation of this data was needed to fight
terrorism, the government has yet to explain why millions of Americans,
most whom were not suspected of any illegal activity, found themselves
targets of such draconian measures.
Comparisons with civil rights abuses inflicted on Japanese Americans
are impossible to ignore in light of the 2002 and 2003 decisions of the
Census Bureau to give the Department of Homeland Security detailed
information on Arab Americans.7 With the Census Bureau’s apology in
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

2000 for allowing census information to be used as a method of quickly

and efficiently tracking down and imprisoning innocent Japanese
Americans after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, these recent collabora-
tions between U.S. intelligence services and census takers are especially
troubling. In response to a Freedom of Information Act inquiry, heavily
redacted documents were provided to the Electronic Privacy Information
Center, a public interest research group focused on civil liberties issues.
One document included a tabulation of over a thousand pages that cor-
relates zip codes with people of Arab ancestry. These statistical data were
further broken down into ethnic categories, including Egyptian, Iraqi,
Jordanian, Lebanese, Moroccan, Palestinian, Syrian, Arab/Arabic, and

Other Arab.8 Compiled from the 2000 census and specifically for the
Department of Homeland Security, these special tabulations suggest that
census data could once again assist in serious breaches of human rights
based on racial identity.
Recalling visual dialogues of loss such as those created by camp-
made art can help us as we challenge the human suffering encompassed
by present-day displacements and oppression. Refugee emergencies in
Laos, Burma, and Sudan, along with many others, continue to challenge
human rights organizations and structures of nation-states. A good
example are the experiences of the Hmong, an ethnic minority in Laos,
many of whom fought alongside U.S. soldiers against Communist forces
during the Vietnam War. With the United States’ withdrawal from Sai-
gon in April 1975, these Hmong were left in Laos to defend themselves.
Hoping to escape genocide, many undertook arduous and life-threaten-
ing journeys, fleeing on foot into the high Laotian mountains or across
the Mekong River into Thai refugee camps. For those who survived the
journey, life in refugee camps was harsh at best, with the Hmong endur-
ing crowded physical environments and food shortages for months and
in some cases years.
Although many Hmong now live in diasporic contexts around the
world, including communities in the United States, Australia, France,
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

Germany, and Canada, others continue to escape oppressive conditions

in Laos by finding their way to refugee camps in Thailand. What the
Thai government refers to as an “unofficial refugee settlement” is grow-
ing on the roadsides surrounding Huay Nam Khao. Located in northern
Thailand’s Phetchabin province just across the border with Laos, Huay
Nam Khao has drawn what some estimate to be 8,000 Hmong fleeing
Laos, many of whom hope to eventually gain U.S. citizenship. Huddled
along the roadside and under shelters made from plastic sheathing
and corrugated metal panels, these new Hmong refugees endure hun-
ger, crowding, and unsanitary conditions. Recently, 163 were forcibly
returned to Laos.9

Many Hmong refugees, like the Japanese Americans imprisoned in

U.S. concentration camps, have created art that both reflects and shapes
their experiences as refugees and speaks to their many losses. For cen-
turies, Hmong women have created embroidery and textiles known as
pa ndau. Before the refugee experience, pa ndau were embroidered on
clothing to mark rites of passage such as courtship, marriage, birth, and
death. During the refugee experience, the art of pa ndau changed from
geometric designs embroidered on brightly colored clothes to what are
now known as story cloths, which detail narratives of escape and exile
from Laos to refugee camps in Thailand. Story cloths entered the eco-
nomic realm when they were created as commodities for sale to Western-
ers. These works of art have become the material means of survival for
many Hmong living in refugee camps and continue to represent a means
of support among Hmong Americans.
Burma’s Karen refugees, who were driven from their rural villages
by Burmese military forces, are currently surviving in camps along the
Thai-Burmese border. Seven camps house 140,000 Karen refugees, while
another 150,000 are internally displaced just inside Burma’s border.
As an ethnic minority, the Karen population is fighting for political
autonomy and hoping to establish a state of its own free from repression
by the Burmese government. In Darfur, genocidal conditions also high-
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

light challenges we must address as more than two million people are
currently displaced from their homes. And of course there are the more
than four million Iraqis who are on the move as result of the Iraq War.
Half of these refugees currently live in neighboring countries such as
Syria and Jordan, while the other two million endure internal displace-
ment, fleeing to safer regions within Iraq.10 Finally, in the United States
we have examples of severe losses that accompanied the displacement of
more than one million Katrina survivors who were separated from fam-
ily members and scattered across the South.
As the world confronts the many losses created by these and many
other forced displacements, historical narratives such as those produced

in Japanese American concentration camps provide vital ideas, strategies,

and tools. Those of us concerned with addressing global oppressions will
be well served to revisit the artful dialogues created by imprisoned Japa-
nese Americans. Along with contemporary accounts of Karen, Hmong,
Darfur, and Iraqi refugees, artwork created in Japanese American con-
centration camps helps us to reveal political possibilities and create more
liberative futures for people who find themselves in environments of loss.
All of these experiences reckon back to the imprisonment of Japanese
Americans, who struggled to reveal and mediate the many losses caused
by Executive Order 9066. As in the case of imprisoned Japanese Americans,
residues of the immense losses created by contemporary oppressions and
displacements will be melancholically revealed for years to come.
Placing art in transnational contexts, the third idea this book offers
readers, helps us understand how displaced groups of people establish
portable senses of place. By pushing our understanding of place beyond
fixed and confined space, we set place in motion. Thinking with the idea
of movement loosens place making from physical boundaries, to incor-
porate and reflect the diverse experiences of displaced refugee and immi-
grant populations. In the case of some imprisoned Japanese Americans,
a sense of place was carried with them and then enacted in the spaces
of camp-made material cultures. Creating art aided internees in a pro-
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

cess of re-territorialization by altering living units, collective gathering

spaces, and outside landscapes into more survivable places. Although life
remained difficult and painful, creating art helped internee crafters take
advantage of rare opportunities where exerting even limited amounts of
control was possible. Many camp artists utilized the resources offered by
particular landscapes and relied on found materials. At Topaz and Tule
Lake, women sifted through prehistoric lake beds to gather tiny shells
from which brooches and decorative plaques were made. Kobu evolved
into a meaningful art form at Rohwer and Jerome, Arkansas. Discarded
fruit crates were critical to furniture makers, weeds and grasses were
used by weavers to make hats, and mud provided material for sculptures

and dishes. In this way, imprisoned Japanese Americans employed physi-

cal landscapes to remake place.
As marginalized groups of people become increasingly mobile in
response to the labor demands of global capitalism, we are urged to
think about how place is carried with them and to consider the political
and ideological meanings of place and space. Material culture created
by such groups may help us better understand the meanings of place to
people on the move. Gaining this knowledge is critical because it can
help create liberative spaces for displaced people confronting harsh and
exploitive environments. Essential to this goal is understanding place
as fluid and operating in conditions that are contingent on diverse his-
torical, economic, cultural, and political contexts. Here, conventional
thoughts about place as bounded and static are disturbed to create
knowledge about how people experiencing dislocations recuperate a
sense of place and express some level of agency in their lives, even when
this power is severely restricted.
The final two ideas I laid out earlier in the chapter are closely related
and address the power infused in artifacts and how physical objects are
employed by curators who create exhibits. In museum settings, artifacts
are often accompanied by contextualizing text that teaches a specific and
unified history to the masses. As especially powerful discourses of nation
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

building, these interpretations are fixed and usually communicate a lin-

ear narrative grounded in melting pot ideology. Here we must ask whose
story is being told and who is doing the telling. Rather than using artifacts
to think with and generate ideas that can be applied to contemporary
challenges, museum administrators appear more comfortable plac-
ing their collections firmly in the domain of professionals and experts.
Physical objects that are rich in ambiguities, gray areas, and questions are
presented as encompassing more static and frozen meanings.
Kristine Yuki Aono’s 1991 installation “Relics from Camp” illustrates
how museums can project more fluid and ruptured interpretations of
artifacts.11 Displayed in a large rectangular wooden container sitting

flat on the floor, camp-made objects were arranged in a grid of twelve

boxes organized into three rows. Resembling the rows of pine and black
tar-papered barracks that characterized camp architecture, the grid was
made from wood and painted black. In these boxes lay “camp relics”
such as a Tule Lake baseball jersey, a nameplate, carved wooden panels,
lapel pins, and dolls made by imprisoned Japanese Americans. That
these artifacts were resting in sand implies their grounding in a mate-
rial that defined camp landscapes and suggests the “undeniable physical
reality” of internment. Contextualizing narratives for each object are
absent, allowing multiple meanings to be more easily created. With this
exhibit of artifacts, museum goers are offered more open interpretations
of culture and history. Artifacts displayed in this manner urge museum
goers to be more active makers of meaning and more energetic consum-
ers of history. This encouragement to vigorously engage and think with
artifactual evidence creates a dialogue between museum curator and
museum goer. Exhibits such as Aono’s provide an atmosphere where we
can value difference and variation in human experience rather than rely-
ing so heavily on sameness to interpret the past and present.
Leaving room for the creation of multiple narratives leads us to devel-
oping theories and frameworks that assign some level of agency or power
to artifacts. Agency is a concept firmly associated with humans. Although
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

most contemporary scholars remain comfortable with the notion that

material culture reflects or mirrors history, many are hesitant to argue
that artifacts exert agency in shaping culture and human behavior.
But this position raises important questions: If the physical world and
artifacts do not have the power to create change, why are we studying
them? Are we only interested in artifacts for their value as mirrors of his-
tory? And more important, is creating knowledge for knowledge’s sake
a justifiable position for scholars of material culture? Perhaps thinking
from new frameworks of agency will help us create politically charged
scholarship aimed at revealing new options and strategies that challenge
present-day injustices. This is not to argue that artifactual agency is the

same as human agency. Rather it is a call to create new theories of agency

that relate to material culture and physical objects.
E. McClung Fleming pointed to these possibilities in his 1974 essay
titled “Artifact Study: A Proposed Model.” While outlining an exhaus-
tive blueprint for interpreting artifacts, Fleming raised the question of
agency by writing: “In some cases functional analysis will indicate the
ways in which the artifact became an agent of major change within its
culture.” Here, he introduces the idea that artifacts not only reflect but
also shape history and culture.12 Few have taken up this call to reveal
artifactual agency, possibly because of this concept’s connection to
humans, but it may represent a significant direction for future research.
Although practitioners of material culture studies are skilled at identify-
ing moments of artifactual significance, we are less successful at linking
these seemingly isolated instances to broader, politically progressive
change. We can begin by asking ourselves how we create material cul-
ture scholarship that transports liberative change beyond specific loca-
tions, historical eras and contemporary moments, and groups of people?
Reworking this idea of human agency may help material culture scholars
better understand the power infused in artifacts.
Japanese American concentration camp art provides fertile evidence
of artifactual agency. Many internees used art to express counternar-
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

ratives and improve their lives. Without enlisting a diverse range of

art forms to create survivable mental and physical landscapes, many
imprisoned Japanese Americans would have found their lives even more
difficult and trying. By visually and materially enacting what was in
their minds, internees revealed social contexts and political possibilities.
This argument, of course, challenges understandings of art as frivolous
activities that serve only to occupy leisure time. Instead of assuming
this trajectory, let us employ art created by Japanese Americans to reveal
alternative and liberative practices for creating changes that reach beyond
immediate needs, locations, and isolated points of identity. Camp-made

art, broadly defined, offers powerful examples of how people with little
institutionalized power confront complex systems of oppression.
Thinking with art may aid those of us interested in creating endur-
ing social change to find a wide range of voices, strategies, and practices
in an often hostile world. My hope is that camp-made material cultures
urge contemporary readers to think about the significance of creative
expression for marginalized people. Rather than contributing to one
grand, linear narrative of Japanese Americans or, on a broader scale, of
Asian America, my hope is that Artifacts of Loss encourages readers to
reveal radical possibilities infused in Japanese American concentration
camp art. But this book represents only one interpretation to think with.
I encourage you to use this work to develop other readings and to think
about art, material culture, and craft making with different eyes and
motivations. Beginning to conceive of art as critical to mental and physi-
cal survival may help us better understand how people identify fissures
in complex systems of oppression, where even limited levels of agency
can be expressed. There is much left to study and learn about art and its
political trajectories.
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

chapter 1 — visual accounts of loss

1. Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, on July
18, 1906, of Japanese immigrant parents. Hayakawa immigrated to the United
States in 1926 and received a Ph.D. in English and American literature from the
University of Wisconsin in 1935. Hayakawa supported the internment of Japa-
nese Americans but avoided imprisonment himself, instead spending the years
between 1939 and 1947 at the Armour Institute of Technology (now the Illinois
Institute of Technology) in Chicago as an English professor. Best known aca-
demically for his work in linguistics, Hayakawa published Language in Action in
1941. Between 1955 and 1968 he was a professor of English at San Francisco State
College, and in 1968 Governor Ronald Reagan appointed him president of the
college. Hayakawa quickly garnered national attention by severely restricting
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

student protests on campus. After retiring from this position in 1973, Hayakawa
successfully ran as a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in 1976. As a
single-term senator from California, Hayakawa introduced a constitutional
amendment designating English as the official language of the United States.
In 1983, he founded U.S. English, Inc., an organization presently comprised of
1.8 million members. See the organization’s Web site, http://www.us-english.
org (accessed March 21, 2008). Biographical Directory of the American Congress,
1774–1996, s.v. “Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa,” http://library.cqpress.com (accessed
March 21, 2008).
2. The power of language is a central issue in internment research, with schol-
ars and the public debating use of the words internment, relocation, evacuation,
and concentration camp. I use internment and concentration camps interchange-
ably, but by this choice I do not intend a comparison with Nazi concentration

1 67
Dusselier, Jane E.. Artifacts of Loss : Crafting Survival in Japanese American Concentration Camps, Rutgers University Press, 2008.
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Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2025-05-02 14:33:54.
168 n o t e s t o pag e s 1 – 5

camps, which I would argue are more accurately described as death camps.
Japanese American internment camps were spatial expressions of race based on
concentrating people of Japanese ancestry in geographically specific sites. With
this definition in mind, it seems to me that concentration camp best describes
the outcome of Executive Order 9066 signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt
on February 19, 1942.
3. Sam Hayakawa, testimony before the Commission on Wartime Relocation
and Internment of Civilians, Los Angeles, August 4, 1981, reel 2, 5–22, National
Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD.
4. My understanding of reterritorialization is grounded in the work of Akhil
Gupta and James Ferguson, who urge scholars to consider the conditions of glo-
balization and postmodernity as they relate to the relationships among geogra-
phy, culture, and identity formation. Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson, “Beyond
‘Culture’: Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference,” Cultural Anthropology
7 (1992): 6–9. Rick Bonus took up Gupta and Ferguson’s challenge by studying
the experiences of first-generation Filipino Americans in San Diego and Los
Angeles. In his work, Bonus suggests that identities be conceptualized as fluid
and contingent upon movements between physical locations. In this context, a
singular, unifying Filipino American identity is reconceptualized as multiple
Filipino American identities formed in specific times and spaces. Re-territorial-
ization thus becomes the process by which hostile spaces are altered into arenas
of identity articulation where marginalized people declare differences and enact
subjectivity. Rick Bonus, Locating Filipino Americans: Ethnicity and the Cultural
Politics of Space (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000), 4–5, 77.
5. Gupta and Ferguson, “Beyond ‘Culture,’ ” 17.
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

6. Miranda Joseph, Against the Romance of Community (Minneapolis: Univer-

sity of Minnesota Press, 2002), xxiii.
7. I base my thinking here on Sigmund Freud’s theory of mourning and
melancholia and recent scholarship pointing to the intellectual, cultural, and
political meanings of loss. Freud described mourning as a temporary reaction
to loss. Whereas mourning is a process in which the mourner eventually moves
on, melancholia is a loss that one cannot get over. Melancholia is an enduring
condition, a mourning without end, and according to Freud, pathological. But
some cultural scholars such as David Kazanjian and David Eng suggest that
melancholic attachments to loss encompass creative impulses that reveal social
contexts and political possibilities. By reinterpreting Freud’s melancholia, we
are offered new views of unresolvable and politicized struggles with loss. David
L. Eng and David Kazanjian, eds., Loss: The Politics of Mourning (Berkeley: Uni-
versity of California Press, 2003).

8. Cambridge Dictionary, http://dictionary.cambridge.org (accessed March 21,

2008). Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary defines art as the “conscious use of
skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects.”
Webster’s Eleventh New Collegiate Dictionary (Springfield, MA: G. and C. Mer-
riam, 2005), 63. The word art derives from the Latin word meaning “to arrange.”
The 1994–2002 Encyclopedia Britannica offers that art is “the use of skill and
imagination in the creation of aesthetic objects, environments, or experiences
that can be shared with others.”
9. Deborah Gesensway and Mindy Roseman, Beyond Words: Images from
America’s Concentration Camps (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987); Kimi
Kodani Hill, Topaz Moon: Chiura Obata’s Art of the Internment (Berkeley:
Heyday Books, 2000); Kristine Kim, Henry Sugimoto: Painting an American
Experience (Berkeley: Heyday Books, 2000); Karin M. Higa, The View from
Within: Japanese American Art from the Internment Camps, 1942–1945 (Seattle:
University of Washington Press, 1992). Other examples of scholarship on intern-
ment art include Karin M. Higa, Living in Color: The Art of Hideo Date (Berke-
ley: Heyday Books, 2001); Robert J. Maeda, “Isamu Noguchi: 5–7-A, Poston,
Arizona,” Amerasia Journal 20, no. 2 (1994): 61–76; Dominique Leblond, “The
Sacralization of the American Deserts in the War Relocation Authority Camps
for Japanese Americans,” American Studies in Scandinavia 31, no. 22 (1993): 1–12;
Kristine C. Kuramitsu, “Internment and Identity in Japanese American Art,”
American Quarterly 47 (December 1995): 619–658; Josephine Withers, “No More
War: An Art Essay,” Feminist Studies 7, no. 1 (Spring 1981): 76–88.
10. Allen H. Eaton, Beauty behind Barbed Wire: The Arts of the Japanese in Our
War Relocation Camps (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1952); Delphine Hira-
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

suna, The Art of Gaman: Arts and Crafts from the Japanese American Internment
Camps, 1942–1946 (Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 2005).
11. Eaton, Beauty behind Barbed Wire, 16; Elaine Kim, “Interstitial Subjects:
Asian American Visual Art as a Site for New Cultural Conversations,” in
Fresh Talk/Daring Gazes: Conversation on Asian American Art, ed. Elaine H.
Kim, Margo Machida, and Sharon Mizota (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2003), 9; Hill, Topaz Moon, 46; Valerie Matsumoto, “Japanese American
Women during World War II,” in Unequal Sisters: A Multi-Cultural Reader in
U.S. Women’s History, ed. Vicki L. Ruiz and Ellen Carol DuBois (New York:
Routledge, 1994), 441; Higa, View from Within, 22; Edward H. Spicer, Asael T.
Hansen, Katherine Luomala, and Marvin Opler, Impounded People: Japanese-
Americans in the Relocation Center (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1969),
217–18; Audrie Girdner and Anne Loftis, The Great Betrayal: The Evacuation of
the Japanese-Americans during World War II (New York: Macmillan, 1969), 308;

Kuramitsu, “Internment and Identity in Japanese American Art,” 637; Charles

Kikuchi, The Kikuchi Diary: Chronicle from an American Concentration Camp
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 135, 204.
12. Fred Barbashi, “Manzanar: Internees’ Lives Amid Barbed Wire and Bar-
racks,” Washington Post, December 6, 1982, A4.
13. Eaton, Beauty behind Barbed Wire, 4, 18.
14. Kim, “Interstitial Subjects,” 2.
15. Helaine Fendelman and Jonathan Taylor, Tramp Art: A Folk Art Phenom-
enon (New York: Stewart, Tabori and Chang, 1999).
16. Paul Arnett and William Arnett, eds., Souls Grown Deep: African American
Vernacular Art of the South (Atlanta: Tinwood Books, 2000), 1:270.
17. Rhode Island School of Design, Museum of Art, Mountain Artisans: An
Exhibition of Patchwork and Quilting, Appalachia (Providence: Rhode Island
School of Design, 1970).
18. Jacqueline L. Tobin and Raymond G. Dobard, Hidden in Plain View: A
Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad (New York: Anchor Books,
2000), 67.
19. Brian Niiya, ed., Encyclopedia of Japanese American History: An A–Z Refer-
ence from 1868 to the Present (New York: Checkmark Books, 2001), 126; Jeffery
Burton, Mary Farrell, Florence Lord, and Richard Lord, Confinement and Eth-
nicity: An Overview of World War II Japanese American Relocation Sites (Seattle:
University of Washington Press, 2002), 376, 352.
20. Haru Isaki, public testimony before the Commission on Wartime Reloca-
tion and Internment of Civilians, Seattle, September 9, 1981, reel 4, 267, National
Archives and Records Administration.
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

21. “One must walk a full block to the laundry, then carry the wet wash back a
block to hang out on lines. Really, it is quite an ordeal” (Kikuchi, Kikuchi Diary,
204). “Dusty roads. Dusty room. Everything is dust-covered: clothing, bed-
ding, our body. Everything soils so easy, it seems washing must be done daily”;
Hatsuye Egami, The Evacuation Diary of Hatsuye Egami, ed. Claire Gorfinkel
(Pasadena, CA: Intentional Productions, 1996), 39, 40. “For mothers with babies
and the very old or sick, living was especially hard. With day and night trips to
the laundry for water, the mess halls and the latrine barracks”; Estelle Ishigo,
Lone Heart Mountain (Los Angeles: Baker and Taylor, 1972), 25.
22. Yoshiko Uchida, Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese-American Family
(1982; repr., Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000), 69–70, 114.
23. Letter to Rose Terlin, May 11, 1942, YWCA Records, no. 025–18, box 48,
folder 2, 2, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.

24. Jack Matsuoka, Poston: Camp II, Block 211 (San Mateo, CA: Asian American
Curriculum Project, 2003), 67–68.
25. Lillie Y. McCabe, interview by Jeffrey B. Yamada, October 19, 1987, Nisei
Experience, O.H. 1949, 2, Oral History Program, Japanese American Project,
California State University, Fullerton.

chapter 2 — remaking inside places

1. “Comfort was uppermost in the minds of the people”; Mine Okubo,
Citizen 13660 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1983), 137. William
Kimura, public testimony before the Commission on Wartime Relocation and
Internment of Civilians, Anchorage, September 15, 1981, reel 6, 84, National
Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD. Martha Inouye
Oye, in Reflections: Memoirs of Japanese American Women in Minnesota, ed.
John Nobuya Tsuchida (Covina, CA: Pacific Asia Press, 1994), 294. As Mar-
tha Inouye Oye remembered of her experiences at Minidoka: “Comfort was
uppermost in the minds of the people when they first arrived here. As at the
assembly centers, talented and creative evacuees built partitions and furniture
from discarded lumber and material picked up around the barracks to make
their rooms more habitable.”
2. Akiyo Deloyd, public testimony before the Commission on Wartime
Relocation and Internment of Civilians, Los Angeles, August 4, 1981, reel 2, 87,
National Archives and Records Administration.
3. Monica Sone, Nisei Daughter (Seattle: University of Washington Press,
2000), 173–174.
4. Mas Ueysugi, interview by John McFarlane, April 16, 1971, Japanese Ameri-
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

can Evacuation, O.H. 1071, 5, Oral History Program, Japanese American Project,
California State University, Fullerton (OHP-CSUF).
5. Violet De Cristoforo, in And Justice for All: An Oral History of the Japanese
American Detention Camps, ed. John Tateishi, 124–140 (Seattle: University of
Washington Press, 1999), 126.
6. Tsuyako Kitashima, public testimony before the Commission on Wartime
Relocation and Internment of Civilians, San Francisco, August 13, 1981, reel 3,
168, National Archives and Records Administration; Okubo, Citizen 13660, 106.
7. Roy Nagata to Alice Sinclair Dodge, July 30, 1942, box 1, Correspondence
1942–1946 file, Alice Sinclair Dodge Collection, Hoover Institution, Stanford
University.
8. For especially vivid descriptions of the train trip from Tanforan to Topaz,
see Okubo, Citizen 13660, 116–120; and Yoshiko Uchida, Desert Exile: The

Uprooting of a Japanese-American Family (1982; repr., Seattle: University of

Washington Press, 2000), 102–105.
9. Uchida, Desert Exile, 75, 93. Known for her optimistic view of life at Tulare,
Hatsuye Egami described her new home as “a rustic barrack of rough boards
put together with five windows and a concrete floor. Eight people occupy our
room.” Egami’s positive outlook is mentioned in the introduction to Hatsuye
Egami, The Evacuation Diary of Hatsuye Egami, ed. Claire Gorfinkel (Pasadena,
CA: Intentional Productions, 1996), 15; quote at 26.
10. Minoru Kiyota, Beyond Loyalty: The Story of a Kibei, trans. Linda Klepinger
Keenan (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1997), 76.
11. Http://www.nps.gov/manz/cctopaz (accessed February 15, 2008).
12. Estelle Ishigo, Lone Heart Mountain (Los Angeles: Anderson, Ritchie, and
Simon, 1972), 19–22.
13. Fusaye Hashimoto, interview by Mary Tamura, February 1994, Terminal
Island History Project, Japanese American National Museum, Los Angeles, 7–8;
Tomitaro and Mrs. Marumoto, interview by Toshiro Izumi, March 10, 1994,
Terminal Island History Project, Japanese American National Museum, 9.
14. Anonymous, interview by Richard Curtiss, March 4, 1966, Japanese Ameri-
can Evacuation, O.H. 11, 9, OHP-CSUF.
15. Carey McWilliams, “What about Our Japanese-Americans?” Catholic
Digest, May 1944, 22.
16. Himi Hashimoto, Rohwer autobiography no. 57, English 11-B, December 10,
1942, Gould/Vogel Collection, McGehee, AR.
17. Egami, Evacuation Diary, 60.
18. “From Cooking to Carpentry,” Tanforan Totalizer, June 20, 1942, 5.
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

19. Sone, Nisei Daughter, 175.

20. Ibid., 182. Other references to illegal hotplates are found in Okubo, Citizen
13660, 67; Ishigo, Lone Heart Mountain, 12.
21. With limited ingredients and no refrigeration, internees relied on catalog
orders and supplies sent from friends back home to make dishes such as choco-
late ice cream from cans of condensed milk, honey, and chocolate flavoring.
Once the chocolate was melted, the ingredients were whipped together and left
outside to freeze. A recipe for “rum tum ditty” suggested combining tomato
soup, tuna, and Parmesan cheese, while a complete dinner was composed of
mushroom soup, toasted cheese sandwiches, pickles, coffee, jello with canned
fruit, and cookies for dessert. Successful completion of the cheese sandwiches
required “inveigling your dining hall into giving you a loaf of bread.” Marii Kyo-
goku, “A la Mode,” Trek, December 1942, 27; and Evelyn Kirimura, “Food Fan-
cies,” Topaz Times, January 16, 1943, 5; February 6, 1943, 5; March 20, 1943, 5.

22. Janet Sato, Rohwer autobiography no. 162, period 2, December 1942,
Gould/Vogel Collection.
23. U.S. Army, Western Defense Command and Fourth Army, Final Report:
Japanese Evacuation from the West Coast, 1942 (Washington, DC: Government
Printing Office, 1943), 227.
24. Kimura, public testimony, 84.
25. Nobuko Hanzawa, Rohwer autobiography no. 135, English 4, period 2,
December 1942; George Kobayashi, Rohwer autobiography no. 67, English 11-B,
December 14, 1942; both in the Gould/Vogel Collection.
26. Florence Miho Nakamura, “Barrack in Tanforan,” in From Our Side of the
Fence: Growing Up in America’s Concentration Camps, by the Japanese Cultural
and Community Center of Northern California, ed. Brian Komei Dempster
(San Francisco: Kearny Street Workshop Press, 2001), 42.
27. “Out of the Horse’s Mouth,” Tanforan Totalizer, May 15, 1942, 2.
28. Tule Lake and Manzanar served as both temporary and permanent impris-
onment facilities.
29. Charles Kikuchi, The Kikuchi Diary: Chronicle from an American Concen-
tration Camp, ed. John Modell (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 248,
250.
30. Uchida, Desert Exile, 99–100.
31. Yoshio Matsuda, Rohwer autobiography no. 70, December 14, 1942, Gould/
Vogel Collection.
32. Louise Ogawa to Miss Breed, September 27, 1942, accession no. 93.75.31N,
Japanese American National Museum (gift of Elizabeth Yamada).
33. Lillie Y. McCabe, interview by Jeffrey B. Yamada, October 19, 1987, Nisei
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

Experience, O.H. 1949, 2, 6, OHP-CSUF.

34. Kikuko Nakagiri Ishida, in Blossoms in the Desert: Topaz High School Class
of 1945, ed. Darrell Y. Hamamoto (South San Francisco: Giant Horse Printing,
2003), 56.
35. McCabe, interview, 2.
36. Yoshie Mary Tashima, interview by Pat Tashima, February 15, 1974, Japa-
nese American Evacuation, O.H. 1360, 5, OHP-CSUF.
37. Yasumitsu “Yas” Furuya, in Hamamoto, Blossoms in the Desert, 27–28.
38. “She Makes ’Em Herself,” Manzanar Free Press, June 2, 1942, 4.
39. Oye, in Tsuchida, Reflections, 294. As Martha Inouye Oye remembered
of her experiences at Minidoka: “Comfort was uppermost in the minds of the
people when they first arrived here. As at the assembly centers, talented and
creative evacuees built partitions and furniture from discarded lumber and
material picked up around the barracks to make their rooms more habitable.”

40. Okubo, Citizen 13660, 132, 137–138.

41. Egami, Evacuation Diary, 78.
42. Noboru Shirai, Tule Lake: An Issei Memoir (Sacramento: Muteki Press,
2001), 54–55.
43. Maye Mitsuye Oye Uemura, in Tsuchida, Reflections, 347; and Edith Wata-
nabe, public testimony before the Commission on Wartime Relocation and
Internment of Civilians, Seattle, September 9, 1981, reel 4, 217, National Archives
and Records Administration.
44. Minoru Yasui, in Tsuchida, Reflections, 77.
45. Yukiko Furuta, interview by Arthur Hansen and Yasko Gamo, June 17 and
July 6, 1982 Issei Experience in Orange County, CA, O.H. 1752, 39, Historical
and Cultural Foundation of Orange County, Japanese American Council, and
OHP-CSUF.
46. Uchida, Desert Exile, 78.
47. McCabe, interview, 2.
48. Kimi Yamada Yanari, in Tsuchida, Reflections, 162–163.
49. Egami, Evacuation Diary, 60; and Yuri Kochiyama, Fishmerchant’s Daugh-
ter: An Oral History (New York: Community Documentation Workshop, 1981),
1:13. At Tulare, furniture crafters were described as “menfolk” who skillfully
transformed discarded apples boxes and orange crates into couches, ironing
boards, and tables; at Santa Anita, internees made furniture from cardboard
cartoons.
50. June Igaue, interview by Nancy Aweimrine, November 12, 1984, Intern-
ment Experience in World War II, O.H. 1769, 9, OHP-CSUP.
51. “The Boom Town, Part III: A Day in the Relocation Center,” YWCA Records,
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

no. 025–18, box 50, folder 5, 47, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.
52. Noriko S. Bridges, written testimony to the Commission on Wartime
Relocation and Internment of Civilians, San Francisco, August 11, 1981; also in
U.S. Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, Personal
Justice Denied: Report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment
of Civilians, ed. and with a foreword by Tetsuden Kashima (Seattle: University
of Washington Press, 1997), 161.
53. Shuzo Chris Kato, testimony before the Commission on Wartime Reloca-
tion and Internment of Civilians, Seattle, September 9, 1981, reel 4, 201, National
Archives and Records Administration.
54. Igaue, interview, 11.
55. Yanari, in Tsuchida, Reflections, 163.
56. Nomi, Nisei Odyssey: The Camp Years (Fountain Valley, CA: Bowder Pub-
lishing, 1991), 184.

57. Okubo, Citizen 13660, 137.

58. Kasen Noda, in Internees: War Relocation Center Memoirs and Diaries, ed.
Takeo Kaneshiro (New York: Vintage Press, 1976), 15.
59. George Fukasawa, interview by Arthur Hansen, August 12, 1974, Japanese
American Evacuation, O.H. 1336, OHP-CSUF; and Arthur A. Hansen, ed., Japa-
nese American World War II Evacuation Oral History Project, Part I: Internees
(Westport, CT: Meckler, 1991), 242,
60. Shiro Nomura, “Inside Manzanar during World War 2,” Inyo Museums
News Bulletin, February 1975, pt. 5, 3.
61. Shirai, Tule Lake, 54.
62. Kazutoshi Mayeda, testimony before the Commission on Wartime Relo-
cation and Internment of Civilians, Chicago, September 22, 1981, reel 5, 220,
National Archives and Records Administration.
63. “Taking Lumber without Proper Authority Banned,” Denson Tribune, May
25, 1943, 1; Yuki, “Your Home and Mine,” Heart Mountain Sentinel, November
14, 1942, 3.
64. Egami, Evacuation Diary, 60, 78; “From Cooking to Carpentry,” 5.
65. Allen H. Eaton, Beauty behind Barbed Wire: The Arts of the Japanese in Our
War Relocation Camps (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1952), 66–67.
66. Tami, “Women’s Mirror: Cloth Giraffe,” Topaz Times, January 16, 1943, 5;
Tami, “Women’s Mirror,” Topaz Times, January 23, 1943, 5.
67. Tomoye Ta, “Women’s Mirror: Pot-Holder,” Topaz Times, February 27,
1943, 5.
68. Kumiko Ishida, in Hamamoto, Blossoms in the Desert, 60.
69. Tashima, interview, 5.
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

70. Kochiyama, Fishmerchant’s Daughter, 13.

71. Uchida, Desert Exile, 78.
72. Sone, Nisei Daughter, 177, 196.
73. Ishigo, Lone Heart Mountain, 48; Eaton, Beauty behind Barbed Wire,
164–165.
74. Fusa Tsumagari to Clara Breed, November 23, 1942, accession no. 93.75.31IH,
Japanese American National Museum.
75. Miwako Oana, “Scratch Pad,” Heart Mountain Sentinel, February 6, 1942,
5.
76. Kudo Masanobu, The History of Ikebana (Tokyo: Shufunotomo, 1986);
Patricia Massy, The Essentials of Ikebana (Tokyo: Shufunotomo, 1978).
77. Eaton, Beauty behind Barbed Wire, 22–23, 58–59.
78. Ibid., 82–83.
79. Ibid., 136–137.

80. Molly Miyako Kimura, interview by Hiroko Tsuda, February 2, 1995, Sac-
ramento, Oral History Project of the Japanese American Citizens League (Florin
chapter), and Oral History Program, California State University, Sacramento
(OHP-CSUS).
81. Shigeno Hoka Nishimi, interview by Marion Kanemoto, September 22,
1992, Sacramento, Oral History Program of the Japanese American Citizens
League (Florin chapter), and OHP-CSUS.
82. See examples of futoi at http://www.hana300.com/futoi (accessed March
21, 2008).
83. Fletcher Bowron to John Toland, April 27, 1942, in Report by the U.S. House
Select Committee Investigating National Defense Migration (Tolan Committee
report), 77th Cong., 2nd sess., 1942, H.R. 2124, ser. 10668, 40.
Private property owned by Japanese Americans was confiscated by both
legal and illegal means. The assets of most Issei were frozen and controlled by
a complicated and opaque web of bureaucracy created by the Federal Reserve
Bank, the Farm Security Administration, and the Office of the Alien Property
Custodian. To retain ownership of private property, Issei were required to
complete inventory forms referred to as TRF-300, an obligation of which many
were unaware. Property owned by Nisei was pilfered and stolen, with many
Caucasians obtaining “legal” title through corrupt means. Regardless of the
method used for the pilfering, the uncompensated economic losses of Japanese
Americans equaled nearly $400 million in 1945 dollars, as estimated by the
congressional Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians
(CWRIC). When adjusted to 1985 standards, this amount was the equivalent
of $2 billion. For more discussion of economic losses, see U.S. Commission
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, Personal Justice Denied,

60–61, 122, 131–132; Michi Nishiura Weglyn, Years of Infamy: The Untold story of
America’s Concentration Camps (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995),
76. Proceedings and Extension of Remarks, Congressional Record, December 12,
1985, 99th Cong., 1st sess.; Continuation of House Proceedings, Congressional
Record, December 11, 1985, 99th Cong., 1st sess.; http://bss.sfsu.edu/internment/
Congressional%20Records/1985 (accessed March 21, 2008
84. Nishimi, interview.
85. Eaton, Beauty behind Barbed Wire, 68–69, 158–159.
86. “Artistic Talent Shown,” Denson Tribune, March 2, 1943, 2; YO, “Tree
Knobs Exhibit Opens,” Communique, February 23, 1943, 3; Eaton, Beauty behind
Barbed Wire, 10–11, 32–33, 106, 114.
87. Eaton, Beauty behind Barbed Wire, 16, 88–89.

88. Yoshito Wayne Osaki, “The Paper Christmas Tree,” in Japanese Cultural
and Community Center of Northern California, From Our Side of the Fence, 53.
89. Ishigo, Lone Heart Mountain, 23.
90. Okubo, Citizen 13660, 136.
91. Nomi, Nisei Odyssey, 52–53.
92. Kikuchi, Kikuchi Diary, 84.
93. Okubo, Citizen 13660, 83; Uchida, Desert Exile, 96.
94. Fusa Tsumagari to Clara Breed, July 16, 1942, accession no. 93.75.31JA, Japa-
nese American National Museum.
95. Ueysugi, interview, 5, 7.
96. Jeffrey F. Burton, Mary M. Farrell, Florence B. Lord, and Richard W. Lord,
eds., Confinement and Ethnicity: An Overview of World War II Japanese American
Relocation Sites (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000), 101–128; U.S.
Army, Final Report, 1942, 273.
97. Burton et al., Confinement and Ethnicity, 154.
98. John Hirohata, “Attractive Nameplates Adorn Center Apartments,” Den-
son Tribune, March 12, 1943, 3.
99. Eaton, Beauty behind Barbed Wire, 26–27.
100. T.O., “Plain and Fancy Mailboxes Decorate Homes,” Communique, Feb-
ruary 16, 1943, 5.
101. Ishigo, Lone Heart Mountain, 48; and Eaton, Beauty behind Barbed Wire,
138–139.
102. Burton et al., Confinement and Ethnicity, 163.
103. “Resident Makes 1000 ‘Shakushi,’ ” Heart Mountain Sentinel, May 1,
1943, 8.
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

104. “Tanforan Tour,” Tanforan Totalizer, June 27, 1942, 6; Eaton, Beauty behind
Barbed Wire, 14–15.
105. “Ingenuity Used in Decorations,” Communique, December 24, 1942, 2.
106. Ishigo, Lone Heart Mountain, 52.
107. Shiro Nomura, “Inside Manzanar during World War 2,” Inyo Museums
News Bulletin, December 1975, pt. 14C, 5.
108. Grace Morioka to Esther ___, Poston, AZ, September 10, YWCA Records,
no. 025–18, box 50, folder 2, 2, Sophia Smith Collection.
109. Alice ___ to Kimi Mukaye, YWCA national secretary, Amache Young
Women’s Christian Association Hospitality House, April 13, 1943, YWCA I, box
49a, folder 2, 2, Sophia Smith Collection.
110. Winona Chambers, report of local visit, Gila Relocation Center, Rivers,
AZ, May 9–14, 1944, YWCA I, box 49a, folder 1, 3, Sophia Smith Collection;

“Narrative Report for Quarter ending December 31, 1944, Canal Advisory
Board, 2,” Gila River Relocation Center, Rivers, AZ, YWCA I, box 49a, folder 1,
Sophia Smith Collection.
111. Uchida, Desert Exile, 126.
112. Egami, Evacuation Diary, 89.
113. Our Daily Diary, May 26, 1943, MSS A 1031, Utah State Historical Society,
Salt Lake City.
114. Sheryl Ritchie, “School Life in Poston,” in Through Innocent Eyes: Writings
and Art from the Japanese American Internment by Poston I Schoolchildren, ed.
Vincent Tajiri (Los Angeles: Keiro Services Press, 1990), 46.
115. Hisako Watanabe to Clara Breed, January 7, 1943, accession no. 93.75.31JG,
Japanese American National Museum.
116. Aiko Tanamachi Endo, interview by Marsha Bode, November 15, 1983,
Nisei Experience in Orange County, CA, O.H. 1750, 34, Historical and Cultural
Foundation of Orange County, Japanese American Council, and OHP-CSUF.
117. Igaue, interview, 10; Burton et al., Confinement and Ethnicity, 221–223;
Alexander H. Leighton, The Governing of Men: General Principles and Recom-
mendations Based on Experience at a Japanese Relocation Camp (New York:
Octagon Books, 1964), 104.
118. Fusa Tsumagari to Clara Breed, October 9, 1942, accession no. 93.75.31FB,
Japanese American National Museum.
119. John Hirohata, “Cabinet Shop Is One of the Busiest in Center,” Denson
Tribune, March 16, 1943, 3.
120. “Carpenter Shop Products Varied,” Denson Tribune, April 9, 1943, 3.
121. Butte Community Quarterly Report, YWCA, October 1–December 31,
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

1944, YWCA I, box 49a, folder 1, 4, Sophia Smith Collection.

122. Igaue, interview, 8.
123. Oye, in Tsuchida, Reflections, 294.

chapter 3 — re-territorializing outside spaces

1. Rick Bonus, Locating Filipino Americans: Ethnicity and the Cultural Politics
of Space (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000), 4.
2. Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson, “Beyond ‘Culture’: Space, Identity, and
the Politics of Difference,” Cultural Anthropology 7 (1992): 11.
3. Mary Tsukamoto, in And Justice for All: An Oral History of the Japanese
American Detention Camps, ed. John Tateishi (Seattle: University of Washington
Press, 2001), 12–14.
4. Hatsuye Egami, The Evacuation Diary of Hatsuye Egami, ed. Claire Gorfin-
kel (Pasadena, CA: Intentional Productions, 1996), 61–62.

5. Yuri Kochiyama, Fishmerchant’s Daughter: An Oral History (New York:

Community Documentation Workshop, 1981), 1:13.
6. Charles Kikuchi, The Kikuchi Diary: Chronicle from an American Concentra-
tion Camp, ed. John Modell (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 132–133.
“In the infield there is an interesting garden. It is laid out beautifully and has
some fragrant flowers already blooming. Around it is a sort of bamboo-like
fence and right in the middle on a post is one of those Japanese lanterns. The
whole thing looks like old Japan. Some people just can’t divorce themselves from
Japan and cling to the old traditions and ways. The garden is an outward indica-
tion of this sentiment for Japan. The odds are that the builder of the garden is
pro-Japan, although he may have built it for cultural reasons” (ibid.).
7. Ibid., 34, 53.
8. “Model Planes, Tins, Tubes, Gardens,” Tanforan Totalizer, June 13, 1942, 4;
Kikuchi, Kikuchi Diary, 203; Mine Okubo, Citizen 13660 (Seattle: University of
Washington Press, 1983), 97; Nay, “Tanforan Tour,” Tanforan Totalizer, August
1, 1942, 8.
9. Nay, “Tanforan Tour,” Tanforan Totalizer, August 15, 1942, 8. “Although we
knew that Tanforan was only a temporary home, we all worked constantly to
make the windswept racetrack a more attractive and pleasant place. Dozens of
small vegetable and flower gardens flourished along the barracks and stables,
and a corner of camp that once housed a junk pile was transformed into a color-
ful camp garden of stocks, sweetpeas, irises, zinnias, and marigolds. A group of
talented men also made a miniature park with trees and a waterfall, creating a
small lake complete with a wooden bridge, pier, and an island. It wasn’t much,
but it was one of the many efforts made to comfort eye and heart.” Yoshiko
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

Uchida, Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese-American Family (1982; repr.,

Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000), 93–94.
10. “The Reviewing Stand,” Tanforan Totalizer, June 20, 1942, 2.
11. “Center Scenic Spot: North Lake,” Tanforan Totalizer, August 5, 1942, 4;
“Lake Opening,” Tanforan Totalizer, August 1, 1942, 2.
12. Okubo, Citizen 13660, 98–99; “Tanforan Calendar,” Tanforan Totalizer,
September 12, 1942, n.p. (appears under August heading).
13. “Regatta,” Tanforan Totalizer, July 11, 1942, 9.
14. “Tanforan’s Sail Fleet,” Tanforan Totalizer, June 27, 1942, 7.
15. Kikuchi, Kikuchi Diary, 2, 135.
16. In camp newspapers, published diaries, and War Relocation Authority
photographs, images emerge of lonely, isolated, and powerless old men whiling
away the hours by carving nameplates, model boats, and canes. Rather than
framing model shipbuilding and the subsequent sailing activities of Issei men

at Lake Tanforan as vital elements of place making, Charles Kikuchi observed:

“The Issei haven’t anything else to do and I see them around all day long pains-
takingly carving out these boats” (ibid., 135). In a 1943 Trek article reporting on
conditions at Poston, this image of emasculated Issei men was even more pro-
nounced. “In many cases, once respected heads of families have been reduced to
the status of futile old men, who spend their leisure hours cackling over choice
bits of gossip, or polishing ironwood to wow the customers at the next Art and
Hobby show, in the hope of perhaps regaining a part of their lost prestige.” Jim
Yamada, “Report from Poston,” Trek, June 1943, 36. Another internee remem-
bered a cane that her father carved and polished as a “sad, homemade version of
the samurai sword his great-great-grandfather carried in the land around Hiro-
shima, at a time when such warriors weren’t much needed anymore.” Jeanne
Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston, Farewell to Manzanar (New York:
Bantam Books, 1973), 40.
A more subtle and especially revealing representation appeared in the Camp
Harmony Newsletter, in which a fifty-four-year-old grandfather and prolific
wood-carver was described as a compliant, “unpretentious little man.” As the
article reported to those imprisoned at Puyallup, Washington: “The thermom-
eter may rise to 110 degrees, and the rains may beat down in furious assault,
but there is one man who never complains. He sits whittling on a slab of rough
thick bark—a picture of quiet contentment.” Beyond his role as a grandfather,
the carver is also identified as a former agricultural worker, with the internee
reporter informing readers that “the carefully tended acres of lettuce and peas
and berries are no longer his immediate environs.” Tadako Tamaura, “Okitsu
Pride of ‘C’ Carvers Has Made Hobby into Art,” Camp Harmony Newsletter,
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

July 10, 1942, 3. Here we are offered an image of a man sitting alone, devoid
of community, occupation, and role as family patriarch. No mention is made
of the product of his activity or the contribution his work made to improving
camp life. Even the functional craft activity of furniture making was sometimes
portrayed negatively. Commenting on the vast array of furniture made by men
imprisoned at Tulare, Hatsuye Egami observed: “The creator of each piece looks
upon each finished product with a sense of pride. But when I realize that these
bits of salvaged wood are shaped into such pieces partly to while away the idle
hours, I am overtaken with sadness” (Evacuation Diary, 60).
17. Gary Okihiro, “The Japanese in America,” in Encyclopedia of Japanese
American History: An A–Z Reference from 1868 to the Present, ed. Brian Niiya
(New York: Checkmark Books, 2001), 15.
18. Kikuchi, Kikuchi Diary, 203; “Center Garden,” Tanforan Totalizer, July 11,
1942, 4; “Garden Exhibit,” Tanforan Totalizer, August 22, 1942, 3.

19. Uchida, Desert Exile, 93–94.

20. Ibid., 100.
21. Miyuki Aoyama, “Flower Garden Adds Color to Center,” Santa Anita Pace-
maker, May 26, 1942, 3.
22. Fred Yamamoto, “Ingenuity Produces Unique Center Rock Garden,” Santa
Anita Pacemaker, July 15, 1942, 4; Aoyama, “Flower Garden Adds Color,” 3.
23. Miyuki Aoyama, “Tin Cans Used,” Santa Anita Pacemaker, July 18, 1942,
2.
24. Eddie Shimano, “Who’s Zoo,” Santa Anita Pacemaker, July 4, 1942, 6;
Miyuki Aoyama. “Spruce Use of Wood Good: Creation Is Sensation,” Santa
Anita Pacemaker, June 27, 1942, 4.
25. “First Harvesting at Santa Anita,” Manzanar Free Press, July 24, 1942, 2;
“We’ll Grow ’Em and Eat ’Em,” Santa Anita Pacemaker, July 1, 1942, 2; Anna
Sakaizawa, “Center Radishes,” Santa Anita Pacemaker, July 15, 1942, 2; “First
Crops Harvested,” Santa Anita Pacemaker, July 18, 1942, 2.
26. Scott Wong, “Rhyme of Her Life: Local Poet, Survivor of Japanese Intern-
ment Camp, Turns 100,” Los Altos Town Crier, December 18, 2002, 1.
27. Kitty Nakagawa, Jean Kariya, and Mari Eijima, interviews by Sandra Tay-
lor, June 14, 1988, Leonia, NJ, acc. 1002, box 3, folder 16, 21, Topaz Oral Histories,
Special Collections, University of Utah Marriott Library. “My first perception
was one of bleakness, that there was just black nothingness and dryness and
I guess you might call it death, and little by little life began to appear as they
imported those boxes of shrubs, you remember they were planting all over, and
then little by little some semblance of life began to resume” (ibid.).
28. Hiromoto Katayama, interview by Sandra Taylor, October 27, 1987, Berke-
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

ley, CA, acc. 1002, box 2, folder 3, 28, Topaz Oral Histories; Iijima Kazu, inter-
view by Sandra Taylor, October 6, 1986, New York City, acc. 1002, box 2, folder
1, 6, Topaz Oral Histories; Minoru Kiyota, Beyond Loyalty: The Story of a Kibei,
trans. Linda Klepinger Keenan (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1997),
76; Okubo, Citizen 13660, 192–193, 149–150.
29. “Our Daily Diary,” May 28, 1943, MSS A 1031, Utah State Historical Society,
Salt Lake City.
30. Leonard J. Arrington, The Price of Prejudice: The Japanese American
Relocation Center in Utah during World War II (1962; repr., Delta, UT: Topaz
Museum, 1997), 24, 25, 37.
31. Uchida, Desert Exile, 138.
32. Yoshie Mary Tashima, interview by Pat Tashima, February 15, 1974,
Japanese American Evacuation, O.H. 1360, 5, Oral History Program, Japanese
American Project, California State University, Fullerton (OHP-CSUF). “There

weren’t any trees, or shrubs, or greenery—just barracks out in the middle of

the desert and a great, big wire fence around there so we wouldn’t escape. . . .
We finally landscaped that desert into something beautiful. It’s just remarkable
what people can do to a nothing place. We planted trees, flowers, and a lawn.”
33. Mas Ueysugi, interview by John McFarlane, April 16, 1971, Japanese Ameri-
can Evacuation, O.H. 1071, 7, OHP-CSUF.
34. Mas Tanibata, interview by Mary Tamura, March 4, 1994, 10, Termi-
nal Island Life History Project, Japanese American National Museum, Los
Angeles.
35. Tom Watanabe, in Tateishi, Justice for All, 94–99.
36. Roy Nash, “From the Project Director Roy Nash,” Manzanar Free Press,
July 27, 1942, 2.
37. Caleb Foote, “Outcasts!” in The Lost Years: 1942–1946, ed. Sue Kunitomi
Embrey (Los Angeles: Moonlight Publications, 1972), 40.
38. Anonymous, interview by Richard Curtiss, March 4, 1966, Japanese Ameri-
can Evacuation, O.H. 11, 17, OHP-CSUF. “Oh yes, the people planted shrubbery
and improved the place to make it more livable. It got better all the time. When
we first went there, it was dusty and nothing there” (ibid.).
39. As part of the deal, the WRA agreed to develop agricultural land and build
roads.
40. Jeffrey F. Burton, Mary M. Farrell, Florence B. Lord, and Richard W. Lord,
eds., Confinement and Ethnicity: An Overview of World War II Japanese American
Relocation Sites (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000), 61.
41. U.S. Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians,
Personal Justice Denied: Report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

Internment of Civilians, ed. and with a foreword by Tetsuden Kashima (Seattle:

University of Washington Press, 1997), 168.
42. Paul Vokota, “At Random: Victory Gardens,” Denson Tribune, April 16,
1943, 2.
43. Paul Vokota, “At Random: Green Lawn,” Denson Tribune, March 30, 1943,
2; and “ ‘Green Lawn’ Turns Out to Be Chives,” Denson Tribune, April 2,
1943, 2.
44. “Variety of Plants Sold at Center Stores,” Denson Tribune, March 12, 1943, 4.
45. Allen H. Eaton, Beauty behind Barbed Wire: The Arts of the Japanese in Our
War Relocation Camps (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1952), 50–51, 160–161.
46. “Tin Cans Used by Resident for Victory Garden,” Heart Mountain Sentinel,
March 27, 1943, 8.
47. Estelle Ishigo, Lone Heart Mountain (Los Angeles: Anderson, Ritchie, and
Simon, 1972), 47–48, 50, 62.

48. Katsu Oikawa, “Combined Victory Garden Grows under Heart Mountain
Shadow,” Heart Mountain Sentinel, July 3, 1943, 8.
49. “Actual Work on Hotbeds Begun,” Heart Mountain Sentinel, March 27,
1943, 8.
50. “Topsoil,” Heart Mountain Sentinel, April 17, 1943, 5. Ed Tokeshi, “2000
Acre Victory Garden Rises in Midst of Desert,” Heart Mountain Sentinel, May
8, 1943, 5.
51. Random House Unabridged Dictionary (New York: Random House, 1997), at
Infoplease, http://www.infoplease.com (accessed March 22, 2008).
52. Ed Tokeshi, “West Coast Pioneers Toil on Virgin Land,” Heart Mountain
Sentinel, May 8, 1943, 5.
53. “Local Farm Program Is Speeded,” Heart Mountain Sentinel, June 26, 1943,
8; Ishigo, Lone Heart Mountain, 76.
54. “Caravan on Way North; Autos Piled High with Goods,” Los Angeles Daily
News, March 23, 1942, 1, 8.
55. “1000 Japs Leave L.A. by Car, Train as Big Exodus On,” Los Angeles Daily
News, March 23, 1942, 1.
56. Jeff Putman and Genny Smith, eds., Deepest Valley: Guide to Owens Val-
ley (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1995), 254; and Phil Garrison, “Evacuees
Challenged to Equal Valley Pioneers,” Los Angeles Daily News, March 25, 1942,
3, 17.
57. Putman and Smith, Deepest Valley, 256.
58. Jeffrey F. Burton, Three Farewells to Manzanar: The Archeology of Man-
zanar National Historic Site, Publications in Anthropology 67 (Tucson: Western
Archeological and Conservation Center, National Park Service, U.S. Depart-
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

ment of the Interior, 1996), 1:3.

59. “Planning a Lawn?” Manzanar Free Press, July 7, 1942, 4. Internees plant-
ing lawns at Manzanar were able to borrow rakes and shovels, and obtain seed
from block leaders.
60. “Gardens: Harvest Time to Be Here Soon,” Manzanar Free Press, June 9,
1942, 4.
61. Sue Kunitomi Embrey, Arthur A. Hansen, and Betty Kulberg Mitson, eds.,
Manzanar Martyr: An Interview with Harry Y. Ueno (Anaheim, CA: Shumway
Family Historical Series, 1986), 28–30.
62. “Harvest Time Near for Local Farms,” Manzanar Free Press, July 4, 1942, 3.
63. “Watermelon Seeds Planted” and “125 Acres Cultivated,” Manzanar Free
Press, June 4, 1942, 3.
64. Shiro Nomura, “Inside Manzanar during World War 2,” Inyo Museums
News Bulletin, April 1975, pt. 7, 3; “Harvest Time Near for Local Farms,” 3.

65. “Harvesting of Pears from Orchard Begins,” Manzanar Free Press, August
26, 1942, 1.
66. Shiro Nomura, “Inside Manzanar during World War 2,” Inyo Museums
News Bulletin, May 1975, pt. 8, 7, and June 1975, pt. 9, 6.
67. Houston and Houston, Farewell to Manzanar, 85–87.
68. Ibid., 95.
69. “Children’s Village,” Manzanar Free Press, July 7, 1942, 4.
70. Takatow Matsuno, interview by Noemi Romero, March 13, 1993, Japanese
American Experience, O.H. 1080, 17, OHP-CSUF; and Lisa N. Nobe, “The
Children’s Village at Manzanar: The World War II Eviction and Detention of
Japanese American Orphans,” Journal of the West 38, no. 2 (April 1999): 65–71.
71. “Tule Produce Arrives Here,” Poston Chronicle, December 16, 1943, 2;
Noboru Shirai, Tule Lake: An Issei Memoir (Sacramento, CA: Muteki Press,
2001), 116.
72. Esther Briesemeister, “America’s Children: What Happened to Us,” Japa-
nese Evacuee Project Report, September 1946, YWCA Records, no. 025–18, box
9, folder 18, 8, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.
73. John Bird, “Our Japs Have Gone to Work,” Country Gentlemen, August
1942, 7.
74. “Relocation Camps Will Close as Disloyal Japs Are Interned and Others
Take Jobs,” St. Joseph News-Press, July 194?, contained in YWCA Records, no.
025–18, box 221, folder SB3, 84, Sophia Smith Collection.
75. “Japanese-American Evacuees Not Mistreated nor Pampered,” Monitor,
July 16, 1943, 3.
76. Tanibata, interview, 8. Kikuchi, Kikuchi Diary, 203.
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

77. “Reviewing Stand,” 2.

78. “Divotmakers’ Delight,” Tanforan Totalizer, August 1, 1942, 4.
79. “Open Golf Tourney in ‘A’ Sun,” Camp Harmony Newsletter, July 18, 1942, 6;
“Golf Course Opens in ‘A,’ ” Camp Harmony Newsletter, July 10, 1942, 4.
80. Elaine S. Okimoto, interview by Betty E. Mitson, April 4, 1972, Japanese
American Experience, O.H. 1080, 13, OHP-CSUF; “The Compass: Poston
Chronicle,” Denson Tribune, March 2, 1943, 2; “Unit III Swimming Pool Is Not
Officially Opened to Public,” Poston Chronicle, April 20, 1944, 2; “Swimming
Pool Opens,” Poston Chronicle: Poston III, July 2, 1944.
81. Ishigo, Lone Heart Mountain, 78.
82. Burton et al., Confinement and Ethnicity, 205.
83. Camp Harmony Newsletter (special souvenir ed.), August 14, 1942; uniden-
tified Japanese American woman, interview by Anne O. Freed, April 17, 1943,
reel 1, War Relocation Authority records, Puyallup Assembly Center, 1942–1946,

Field Basic Documentation, National Archives, Washington, DC. Also online

at http://www.lib.washington.edu/exhibits/harmony/Documents (accessed
March 22, 2008).
84. “New workers and apprentices” were paid $12 a month for WRA-sponsored
jobs; “common labor requiring hard physical work” was valued at $16 a month;
and internees in jobs “requiring responsible supervision, professional train-
ing, and exceptional skills received $19 a month (Ishigo, Lone Heart Mountain,
24, 78). Sears, Roebuck and Company Catalogue, Fall/Winter 1942, 887. Stanley
Hayami, diary (1941–1944), 36r, Japanese American National Museum (gift
from the estate of Frank Naoichi and Asano Hayami, parents of Stanley Kunio
Hayami).
85. Hayami, diary (1941–1944), 19v, 22r, 23v, 64r.
86. Miwako Oana, “Scratch Pad,” Heart Mountain Sentinel, February 6, 1943, 5.
87. Kumiko Kariya Matsumoto, in Blossoms in the Desert: Topaz High School
Class of 1945, ed. Darrell Y. Hamamoto (South San Francisco: Giant Horse
Printing, 2003), 125; Okubo, Citizen 13660, 158; “Landscapists Stake Out Rink,”
Topaz Times, December 5, 1942, 20. Uchida, Desert Exile, 122, 124, 128.
88. John Hirohata, “Spring Comes to Denson,” Denson Tribune, April 6, 1943,
2; H.K., “Where 2000 Baseball Fans Came to See Opener,” Denson Tribune, May
14, 1943, 7; Shiro Nomura, “Inside Manzanar during World War 2,” Inyo Muse-
ums News Bulletin, August 1975, pt. 10B, 9; “Softball Diamonds Ready,” Heart
Mountain Sentinel (suppl.), General Information Bulletin, series 10, September
14, 1942, 4.
89. “Three Youthful Basketball Fans Invent Miniature Cage Game,” Santa
Anita Pacemaker, June 2, 1942, 2.
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

90. Kikuchi, Kikuchi Diary, 73.

91. Monica Sone, Nisei Daughter (Seattle: University of Washington Press,
2000), 173.
92. Okubo, Citizen 13660, 33–35, 161.
93. Hiromoto Katayama, Fumi Hayashi, and Eiko Hosei Katayama, interview
by Sandra Taylor, October 27, 1987, Berkeley, CA, acc. 1002, box 2, folder 3, 56,
Topaz Oral Histories.
94. Okubo, Citizen 13660, 148.
95. Russell Bearden, “Life inside Arkansas’s Japanese-American Relocation
Centers,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 48, no. 2, (1989): 169–196.
96. “Women Work on Landscaping Job,” Communique, November 22, 1942, 1.
97. Uchida, Desert Exile, 109.
98. “If Mud Sticks to Your Shoes, It’s Good,” Communique, December 11,
1942, 4.

99. “Evacuees Produce Own Vegetables,” Topaz Times, April 1, 1944, 1.

100. H.K., “Popular Place in Block 17,” Denson Tribune, May 14, 1943, 3.
101. “Arbors Must Be Removed,” Denson Tribune, May 21, 1943, 1.

chapter 4 — making connections

1. My critique of community is heavily influenced by Miranda Joseph’s work,
especially Against the Romance of Community (Minneapolis: University of Min-
nesota Press, 2002).
2. Charles Kikuchi, The Kikuchi Diary: Chronicle from an American Concentra-
tion Camp, ed. John Modell (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 10–11, 62.
3. Ibid., 116, 236.
4. Allen H. Eaton, Beauty behind Barbed Wire: The Arts of the Japanese in Our
War Relocation Camps (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1952), 98–99.
5. June Igaue, interview by Nancy Aweimrine, November 12, 1984, Internment
Experience in World War II, O.H. 1769, 8, Oral History Program, Japanese
American Project, California State University, Fullerton (OHP-CSUF); and
Elaine S. Okimoto, interview by Betty E. Mitson, April 4, 1972, Japanese Ameri-
can Experience, O.H. 1080, 13, OHP-CSUF.
6. Kikuchi, Kikuchi Diary, 241.
7. Mine Okubo, Citizen 13660 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002),
104.
8. Katherine Tasaki to Helen McNary, March 5, 1943, accession no. 93.75.31AJ,
Japanese American National Museum, Los Angeles. Photograph by Dorothea
Lange, June 30, 1942, WRA no. C-901, Manzanar, NARA Record Group 210-
G-10C-901, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD.
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

Lillie Y. McCabe, interview by Jeffrey B. Yamada, October 19, 1987, Nisei Experi-
ence, O.H. 1949, 18, OHP-CSUF.
9. Fusa Tsumagari to Clara Breed, August 20, 1942, accession no. 93.75.31JB,
Japanese American National Museum.
10. Kikuchi, Kikuchi Diary, 217.
11. Yoshiko Uchida, Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese-American Family
(1982; repr., Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000), 78.
12. Fumi Hayashi, interview by Sandra Taylor, October 28, 1987, Berkeley, CA,
acc. 1002, box 3, folder 11, 8, Topaz Oral Histories, Special Collections, Univer-
sity of Utah Marriott Library.
13. Seiko Akahoshi and Baba Brodbeck, in Blossoms in the Desert: Topaz High
School Class of 1945, ed. Darrell Y. Hamamoto (South San Francisco: Giant
Horse Printing, 2003), 15–16.

14. Daisy Uyeda Satoda, in From Our Side of the Fence: Growing Up in America’s
Concentration Camps, by Japanese Cultural and Community Center of North-
ern California, ed. Brian Komei Dempster (San Francisco: Kearny Street Work-
shop Press, 2001), 69.
15. Katsumi Kunitsugu, interview by Sherry Turner, July 15, 1973, Nisei Experi-
ence, O.H. 1333, 12, OHP-CSUF.
16. Tosie Kusama, Rohwer autobiography no. 43, English 11-A, period 5,
December 17, 1942, Gould/Vogel Collection, McGehee, AR.
17. Fusa Tsumagari to Clara Breed, October 9, 1942, accession no. 93.75.31FB,
Japanese American National Museum.
18. Stanley Hayami, diary (1941–1944), 25r, Japanese American National
Museum (gift from the estate of Frank Naoichi and Asano Hayami, parents of
Stanley Kunio Hayami).
19. Noboru Shirai, Tule Lake: An Issei Memoir (Sacramento, CA: Muteki Press,
2001), 146.
20. Bill Hosokawa, Nisei: The Quiet Americans (New York: William Morrow,
1969), 377–378.
21. Dorothy S. Harada Oda, in Hamamoto, Blossoms in the Desert, 170.
22. Seiko Akahoshi and Baba Brodbeck, in Hamamoto, Blossoms in the Desert,
14.
23. Shirai, Tule Lake, 145.
24. “Food Committee Awaits Suggestions,” Santa Anita Pacemaker, May 26,
1942, 3; “Menu,” Topaz Times, December 24, 1942, 2; “New Mess System to Start
Monday,” Santa Anita Pacemaker, July 18, 1942, 1; “Mess System Reorganized,”
Manzanar Free Press, July 18, 1942, 1; “Mess: Greatest Feeding Problem of Evacu-
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

ation Movement,” Santa Anita Pacemaker (final and souvenir ed.), 10; “New
Work, Meal Sked Will Begin Monday,” Topaz Times, April 8, 1944, 1.
25. Okubo, Citizen 13660, 89.
26. Toyo Suyemoto, “Another Spring,” in Last Witnesses: Reflections on the
Wartime Internment of Japanese Americans, ed. Erica Harth (New York: Pal-
grave, 2001), 22.
27. Shiro Nomura, “Inside Manzanar during World War 2,” Inyo Museums
News Bulletin, April 1976, pt. 18C, 4.
28. Fumiko Fukuyama to Eddie ___, Santa Anita, June 14, 1942, YWCA
Records, no. 025–18, box 48, folder 2, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.
29. Kikuchi, Kikuchi Diary, 62, 90, 122, 182, 225.
30. Nobuko Hanzawa, Rohwer autobiography no. 135, English 4, period 2,
December 1942, Gould/Vogel Collection.

31. Asami Kawachi, “Feminine Forum,” Santa Anita Pacemaker, July 8, 1942, 3;
“The Finishing Line,” Camp Harmony Newsletter, July 10, 1942, 3.
32. “Tailoring Project Opens,” Communique, November 20, 1942, 4; “Sewing
Project Moved to 36–1, Communique, December 4, 1942, 3.
33. “Sewing Orders Will Not Be Accepted,” Communique, February 2, 1943, 6.
34. “Alterations Department Kept Busy,” Denson Tribune, April 13, 1943, 2;
“Sewing Machines Placed in Each Block,” Denson Tribune, May 25, 1943, 4; Paul
Yokota, “At Random: Sewing Machines,” Denson Tribune, April 9, 1943, 2.
35. Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston, Farewell to Manzanar
(New York: Bantam Books, 1973), 29; Shiro Nomura and Mary Nomura, inter-
view by Cathryn Piercy, October 10 and 11, 1973, 4–5, O.H. 32.2, Eastern Califor-
nia Museum, Independence, CA.
36. “Shower Curtains Promised,” Manzanar Free Press, June 13, 1942, 4.
37. Hatsuye Egami, The Evacuation Diary of Hatsuye Egami, ed. Claire Gorfin-
kel (Pasadena, CA: Intentional Productions, 1996), 45–46.
38. Shiro Nomura, “Inside Manzanar during World War 2,” Inyo Museums
News Bulletin, April 1975, pt. 7, 3, 4.
39. Mrs. Mary Tsukamoto to Miss Briesemeister, Denver YWCA, May 4, 1943,
YWCA 1, box 49A, folder 4: Jerome, 3, Sophia Smith Collection.
40. “Embroidery Exhibit in Powell Proves Big Hit,” Heart Mountain Sentinel,
January 9, 1943, 2; “Embroidery Class Meets at 17–26-S,” Heart Mountain Senti-
nel, December 11, 1943, 8.
41. Roy Nakata to Alice Sinclair Dodge, July 30, 1942, box 1, Correspondence
1942–1946 file, Alice Sinclair Dodge Collection, Hoover Institution, Stanford
University.
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

42. Kei Ichihashi to Mrs. Treat, August 1, 1943, in Morning Glory, Evening
Shadow: Yamato Ichihashi and His Internment Writings, 1942–1945, ed., anno-
tated, and with a biographical essay by Gordon H. Chang (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1997), 245.
43. Margaret Ishino to Clara Breed, May 15, 1942, accession no. 93.75.31 GZ,
Japanese American National Museum.
44. Margaret Ishino to Clara Breed, October 19, 1942, accession no. 93.75.31
CQ, Japanese American National Museum.
45. “Knitting Exhibit Scheduled,” Poston Chronicle: Poston III, May 11, 1944,
3.
46. “Exhibit to Hold Furniture Sale,” Manzanar Free Press, January 1, 1943, 1;
“Carpentry Class to Hold First Annual Exhibit,” Manzanar Free Press, January
6, 1943, 3.

47. Kotono Kato, interview by Mary Tsukamoto, May 3 and 10, 1989, Sacra-
mento, CA, Oral History Project of the Japanese American Citizens League
(Florin chapter) and Oral History Program, California State University, Sacra-
mento.
48. “Pupils to Display Work in Flowers,” Heart Mountain Sentinel, June 12,
1943, 3.
49. “Flower Classes Display Talent,” Denson Tribune, May 21, 1943, 5.
50. T.O., “Beauty Is Not Only Bark Deep,” Communique, January 26, 1943, 3.
51. Jeffrey F. Burton, Mary M. Farrell, Florence B. Lord, and Richard W. Lord,
eds., Confinement and Ethnicity: An Overview of World War II Japanese American
Relocation Sites (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000), 150; “Wood
Carving Fans,” Communique, November 13, 1942.
52. YO, “Tree Knobs Exhibit Opens,” Communique, February 23, 1943, 3.
53. “Artistic Talent Shown,” Denson Tribune, March 2, 1943, 2.
54. “Another Kobu Show Opens,” Denson Tribune, March 16, 1943, 6.
55. “Arts Exhibit,” Communique, December 31, 1942, 2.
56. “Three Life Sized Busts Featured in Conference Exhibit,” Communique,
November 17, 1942, 3.
57. “Kobu Exhibit,” Denson Tribune, April 18, 1943, 6.
58. “Midget Violin Features Exhibit,” Denson Tribune, March 9, 1943, 1; “Kobu
Show Scheduled,” Denson Tribune, March 5, 1943, 6.
59. “Art Students League Draws Large Crowd to Exhibit,” Heart Mountain
Sentinel, December 19, 1942, 8.
60. “Display of Art Works Slated,” Manzanar Free Press, August 12, 1942, 3.
61. “Denson High School to Hold Open House Tonight,” Denson Tribune,
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

April 30, 1943, 1; “Open House Draws 2000,” Denson Tribune, May 4, 1943, 1.
62. “2000 Attend School Exhibit,” Heart Mountain Sentinel,” August 28, 1943,
6.
63. Egami, Evacuation Diary, 79.
64. Miyuki Aoyama, “Creativeness Shown in Handicraft Exhibit,” Santa Anita
Pacemaker, July 4, 1942, 4; “Handicraft to Be Shown at Funita,” Santa Anita
Pacemaker, June 27, 1942, 3.
65. “Handicraft Show a Hit,” Santa Anita Pacemaker, June 9, 1942, 1, 3.
66. “Director England to Open Handicraft Show,” Santa Anita Pacemaker,
June 6, 1942, 2.
67. “Art Exhibit Draws Crowd,” Manzanar Free Press, June 2, 1942, 4.
68. “Visual Education Department Sponsors Exhibit until Saturday,” Man-
zanar Free Press, December 25, 1942, 5.

69. “Museum in ‘Hand-Made’ Exhibit,” Manzanar Free Press, January 6, 1943,

3.
70. “Art Exhibit Attracting Crowd,” Manzanar Free Press, January 27, 1943, 1.
71. “Visual Education Museum in Exhibit,” Manzanar Free Press, February 3,
1943, 2; “Art Exhibit in Block 2 Office,” Manzanar Free Press, August 5, 1942, 2.
Block 2’s office at Manzanar was the site of an exhibit featuring eighty pieces of
art ranging from posters to wood etchings and pencil sketches.
72. “Handicraft Exhibit Scheduled for May 20–21 at Auditorium,” Poston
Chronicle: Poston 1, May 16, 1944, 2; “Exhibit Today,” Poston Chronicle, May 20,
1944, 1; “Thousands Jam Exhibit,” Poston Chronicle, May 25, 1944, 1.
73. “Kobu Entries Still Taken,” Denson Tribune, April 13, 1943, 1; “Throngs
View Kobu,” Denson Tribune, April 23, 1943, 1; “Takesako Chest Entry Wins
‘Kobu’ Show Prize,” Denson Tribune, April 27, 1943, 1.
74. “Handicraft Show Planned,” Denson Tribune, April 20, 1943, 6; “Handicraft
Show Slated,” Denson Tribune, April 27, 1943, 8; “Handicraft Show to Start Here
Friday,” Denson Tribune, May 4, 1943, 1; “Denson Fujin Kai Handicraft Exhibit
Acclaimed Success,” Denson Tribune, May 14, 1943, 6.
75. Uchida, Desert Exile, 87; “Garden Exhibit,” Tanforan Totalizer, August 22,
1942, 3; “Mardi Gras Set for Labor Day Weekend,” Tanforan Totalizer, August 29,
1942, 2; “Art and Hobby,” Tanforan Totalizer, July 11, 1942, 4; Kimi Kodani Hill,
Topaz Moon: Chiura Obata’s Art of the Internment (Berkeley: Heyday Books,
2000), 45–46.
76. Estelle Ishigo, Lone Heart Mountain (Los Angeles: Anderson, Ritchie, and
Simon, 1972), 71–72.
77. “Poster Shop Gets Thank You Letter,” Heart Mountain Sentinel, August
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

14, 1943, 8.
78. Kasen Noda, in Internees: War Relocation Center Memoirs and Diaries, ed.
Takeo Kaneshiro (New York: Vintage Press, 1976), 14.
79. “Flower Arrangement Classes Announced,” Heart Mountain Sentinel
(suppl.), General Information Bulletin, ser. 9, September 11, 1942, 2.
80. “Fashion Classes to Start Monday,” Heart Mountain Sentinel (suppl.), Gen-
eral Information Bulletin, ser. 18, September 26, 1942, 2.
81. “Handicraft Classes Set,” Heart Mountain Sentinel, October 31, 1942, 3.
82. “Ceramics Designer to Speak Tonight,” Heart Mountain Sentinel (suppl.),
General Information Bulletin, ser. 19, September 29, 1942, 3; “300 Hear Rhodes
at Ceramics Meeting,” Heart Mountain Sentinel (suppl.), General Information
Bulletin, ser. 20, October 1, 1942, 5; “Equipment Due Here December,” Heart
Mountain Sentinel, November 7, 1942, 1; “Test Kiln Anticipated for Project,”

Heart Mountain Sentinel, January 1, 1943, 16; “Ceramics Shop Makes Ash Trays,
Tea Cups,” Heart Mountain Sentinel, May 29, 1943, 8.
83. “Enrollment Open for Art Classes,” Tanforan Totalizer, May 15, 1942, 2; “Art
Program Initiated,” Tanforan Totalizer, May 30, 1942, 2; Hill, Topaz Moon, 46.
84. Hiyuki Aoyama, “Former Studio Artist Now Supervises Art Classes,”
Santa Anita Pacemaker, July 1, 1942, 3; “Art Classes,” Santa Anita Pacemaker,
June 6, 1942, 1; “Art Classes,” Santa Anita Pacemaker, July 8, 1942, 3.
85. Asami Kawachi, “Feminine Forum,” Santa Anita Pacemaker, July 15, 1942,
3; “Handicraft Classes Open,” Santa Anita Pacemaker, May 1, 1942, 3.
86. Mary Tsukamoto, in Justice for All: An Oral History of the Japanese Ameri-
can Detention Camps, ed. John Tateshi (New York: Random House, 1984), 13.
87. Chang, Ichihashi and His Internment Writings, 234–245.
88. “Varied Art Classes Offered,” Manzanar Free Press, June 27, 1942, 4.
89. “What’s Knittin’ Kitten?” Manzanar Free Press, June 13, 1942, 4; “For Men
Only,” Manzanar Free Press, June 27, 1942, 4; “Miladies Flock to Classes Daily,”
Manzanar Free Press, August 17, 1942, 3.
90. “Art Center Opens,” Manzanar Free Press, June 6, 1942, 3.
91. Uchida, Desert Exile, 96–97.

chapter 5 — mental landscapes of survival

1. Some examples of mental illness include a mother who suffered a nervous
breakdown, reel 3, August 11, 272, Linda Morimoto, Los Angeles, August 6,
1981, 104, found in U.S. Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of
Civilians, Personal Justice Denied: Report of the Commission on Wartime Reloca-
tion and Internment of Civilians, ed. and with a foreword by Tetsuden Kashima
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997), 408. Another example is that of

Mary Sugitachi, public testimony before the Commission on Wartime Reloca-
tion and Internment of Civilians, San Francisco, August 12, 1981, reel 3, 218,
housed in the National Archives and Records Administration, College Park,
MD.
2. Lillie Y. McCabe, interview by Jeffrey B. Yamada, October 19, 1987, Nisei
Experience, O.H. 1949, 7, 13, 16, Oral History Program, Japanese American Proj-
ect, California State University, Fullerton (OHP-CSUF).
3. Sugitachi, public testimony, 218.
4. Unidentified Japanese American woman, interview by Anne O. Freed,
April 17, 1943, War Relocation Authority records, Puyallup Assembly Center,
1942–1946, Field Basic Documentation, National Archives, Washington, DC.
Also online at http://www.lib.washington.edu/exhibits/harmony/Documents.

5. Mabel Ota, in And Justice for All: An Oral History of the Japanese American
Detention Camps, ed. John Tateishi (Seattle: University of Washington Press,
1984), 111.
6. Helen Murao, in Tateishi, Justice for All, 44.
7. Hanaye Matsushita, in Louis Fiset, Imprisoned Apart: The World War II Cor-
respondence of an Issei Couple (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997),
168.
8. Carey McWilliams, Prejudice: Japanese Americans: Symbol of Racial Intoler-
ance (Boston: Little, Brown, 1944), 133. Also Michi Nishiura Weglyn, Years of
Infamy: The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps (Seattle: University
of Washington Press, 1996), 78.
9. Esther Torii Suzuki, in Reflections: Memoirs of Japanese American Women
in Minnesota, ed. John Nobuya Tsuchida (Covina, CA: Pacific Asia Press, 1994),
102. “In our detention center, days dragged endlessly.”
10. Mary Tsukamoto, in Tateishi, Justice for All, 13.
11. Mine Okubo, Citizen 13660 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1983), 51.
12. Gladys Ishida Stone, in Tsuchida, Reflections, 320.
13. Kimi Kodani Hill, Topaz Moon: Chiura Obata’s Art of the Internment
(Berkeley: Heyday Books, 2000), 3–38.
14. Chisako Joyce Hirabayashi, in Tsuchida, Reflections, 404. “People were try-
ing to organize classes and projects to keep people busy and usefully occupied”
(Tsukamoto, in Tateishi, Justice for All, 13).
15. My use of the word loss is informed by the scholarship of David L. Eng and
David Kazanjian, Loss: The Politics of Mourning (Berkeley: University of Cali-
fornia Press, 2003); and Judith Butler, Psychic Life of Power (Stanford: Stanford
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

University Press, 1997).

16. Yasuko Amano, “Women Make ‘Belts of 1000 Stitches’ for Nisei Soldiers,”
Heart Mountain Sentinel, February 20, 1943, 8.
17. Kotono Kato, interview by Mary Tsukamoto, May 3 and 10, 1989, in Sacra-
mento, Oral History Project of the Japanese American Citizens League (Florin
chapter), and Oral History Program, California State University, Sacramento
(OHP-CSUS).
18. “Buddhists Busy Making Small Scrolls,” Denson Tribune, May 18, 1943, 3.
19. “The Boom Town Part III: A Day in the Relocation Center,” YWCA Records,
no. 025–18, box 50, folder 5, 50, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.
20. Sonoko Iwata to Shigezo Iwata, June 19, 1942, Iwata Papers, MSS 53, 2–3,
Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
21. Kiyoke Kodama to Mr. and Mrs. Iwata, from Poston Elementary School,
January 21, 1944, MSS 53, box 2, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

22. Suzuki, in Tsuchida, Reflections, 94.

23. Kato, interview.
24. The 700 killed include many Japanese Americans living in Hawaii who
were not imprisoned in the camp.
25. Mrs. Mitsuye Kamada, testimony before the Commission on Wartime
Relocation and Internment of Civilians, New York City, November 23, 1981, reel
6, 52–53, National Archives and Records Administration; Brian Niiya, ed., Ency-
clopedia of Japanese American History: An A–Z Reference from 1868 to the Present
(New York: Checkmark Books, 2001), 163–164.
26. Akiyo Deloyd, testimony before the Commission on Wartime Relocation
and Internment of Civilians, Los Angeles, August 4, 1981, reel 2, 88, National
Archives and Records Administration.
27. Yoshiko Uchida, Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese-American Fam-
ily (1982; repr., Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000), 134. See Gary Y.
Okihiro, Storied Lives: Japanese American Students during World War II (Seattle:
University of Washington Press, 1999), for more information about the National
Japanese American Student Relocation Council.
28. For discussions of Wakasa’s death, see Roger Daniels, Asian America: Chi-
nese and Japanese in the United States since 1850 (Seattle: University of Washing-
ton Press, 1988), 228–231; Sandra Taylor, Jewel of the Desert: Japanese American
Internment at Topaz (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 136–147;
Okubo, Citizen 13660, 181; Uchida, Desert Exile, 140. Coverage of the incident can
also be found in the Topaz Times between April 12 and 20, 1943.
29. “Model Plane Meet July 4,” Santa Anita Pacemaker, June 27, 1942, 3.
30. “Model Plane Intrigues Youngsters,” Santa Anita Pacemaker, May 26, 1942, 3.
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

31. “Glider Exhibition and Model Airplane Flying,” Topaz Times, December
24, 1942, 2.
32. “Model Planes, Tins, Tubes, Gardens,” Tanforan Totalizer, June 13, 1942, 4.
33. “Model Airplane Enthusiasts Await Wood,” Camp Harmony Newsletter,
August 1, 1942, 1.
34. “Model Plane Classes Start,” Manzanar Free Press, June 2, 1942, 3.
35. “Aero Club Meets,” Manzanar Free Press, June 13, 1942, 3.
36. “Model Plane Meet,” Manzanar Free Press, July 7, 1942, 4; “Art Center
Opens,” Manzanar Free Press, June 6, 1942, 3.
37. “Rideable Plane Built in Center, Santa Anita Pacemaker, July 15, 1942, 3.
38. BI, “Recreation,” Tanforan Totalizer, August 15, 1942, 9; Charles Kikuchi,
The Kikuchi Diary: Chronicle from an American Concentration Camp, ed. John
Modell (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 224; Okubo, Citizen 13660,
100.

39. Mary Kobayasi, Rohwer autobiography no. 68, English 11-B, period 1,
December 10, 1942, Gould/Vogel Collection, McGehee, AR.
40. “Kite Contest,” Tanforan Totalizer, July 11, 1942, 9.
41. Allen H. Eaton, Beauty behind Barbed Wire: The Arts of the Japanese in Our
War Relocations Camps (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1952), 86–87.
42. Girls Collect Scraps to Make Toys, Gadgets,” Santa Anita Pacemaker June
6, 1942, 2.
43. Kiyoko Ike, Rohwer autobiography no. 66, English 11-B, period 1, Gould/
Vogel Collection.
44. Betty Kanameishi, “Net Workers Make Use of Burlap,” Santa Anita Pace-
maker, June 16, 1942, 2; U.S. Army, Western Defense Command and Fourth
Army, Final Report: Japanese Evacuation from the West Coast, 1942 (Washington,
DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1943), 205–206; U.S. Commission on
Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, Personal Justice Denied, 146.
45. “Brief History of the YWCA: Fujin Kai, Denson, Arkansas,” August 2, 1943,
YWCA I, box 49a, folder 4, 2, Sophia Smith Collection.
46. Mary Tsukamoto to Miss Briesemeister, Denver YWCA, May 4, 1943,
YWCA I, box 49a, folder 4, 1, Sophia Smith Collection.
47. Hoshiko Keenedo to Miss Briesemeister, Rohwer, AR, June 14, 1943, YWCA
Records, no. 02S-18, box 50, folder 3, 1.
48. Aiko Tanamachi Endo, interview by Marsha Bode, November 15, 1983,
Nisei Experience in Orange County, CA, O.H. 1750, 30, Historical and Cultural
Foundation of Orange County, Japanese American Council, and OHP-CSUF.
49. Uchida, Desert Exile, 61–62.
50. Yoshito Wayne Osaki, in From Our Side of the Fence: Growing Up in Amer-
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

ica’s Concentration Camps, by Japanese Cultural and Community Center of

Northern California, ed. Brian Komei Dempster (San Francisco: Kearny Street
Workshop Press, 2001), 52–53.
51. Inside View: Japanese American Evacuee Center at Rohwer, Arkansas, 1941–45
(McGehee, AR: Desha County Historical Center, 1979), 6.
52. Nobuko Hanzawa, Rohwer autobiography no. 135, English 4, period 2,
December 1942, Gould/Vogel Collection.
53. Estelle Ishigo, Lone Heart Mountain (Los Angeles: Anderson, Ritchie, and
Simon, 1972), 5.
54. Miyuki Aoyama, “Spruce Use of Wood Good: Creation Is Sensation,”
Santa Anita Pacemaker, June 27, 1942, 4.
55. Hatsuye Egami, The Evacuation Diary of Hatsuye Egami, ed. Claire Gor-
finkel (Pasadena, CA: Intentional Productions, 1996), 78–79; and “Woodwork
Class,” Manzanar Free Press, February 3, 1943, 2.

56. Egami, Evacuation Diary, 78–79; and “Woodwork Class,” 2.

57. Monica Sone, Nisei Daughter (Seattle: University of Washington Press,
2000), 181.
58. Shiro Nomura, “Inside Manzanar during World War 2,” Inyo Museums
News Bulletin, August 1975, pt. 10A, 8.
59. D.M., “He Kept Their Toes Dry!” Camp Harmony Newsletter, June 17, 1943,
1–2.
60. Kaoru Ito, interview by Dorothy Okura and Chisato Watanabe, December
4, 1997, Stockton, CA, Oral History Project of the Japanese Americans Citizens
League and OHP-CSUS.
61. In 1920 the average annual earnings of teachers in the United States was
$936, or $78 per month. Douglas Paul, Real Wages in the United States, 1890–1926
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1930), 382.
62. Ai translates into English as “love,” and leen translates as “neighbor,” thus
the name Aileen Sewing School.
63. For plant life indigenous to southeastern Arkansas, see the Native Plant
Information Network, http://www.wildflower2.org (accessed March 22, 2008).
64. Yoshie Mary Tashima, interview by Pat Tashima, February 15, 1974, Japa-
nese American Evacuation, O.H. 1360, 4, OHP-CSUF. “We lost all of our belong-
ings, all of out memoirs, all of our annuals. Well we lost everything” (ibid.).
65. Note from MRJ about art classes, box 9, Gould/Vogel Collection. At
Rohwer, tin cans were scavenged from the mess hall trash bins and hammered
into metal sculptures, and discarded buttons were used for jewelry making.
66. Michi Tashiro, “Transformation of a Rice Sack,” in Japanese Cultural and
Community Center of Northern California, Our Side of the Fence, 87–90.
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

chapter 6 — contemporary legacies of loss

1. David L. Eng and David Kazanjian, “Introduction: Mourning Remains,” in
Loss: The Politics of Mourning, ed. David L. Eng and David Kazanjian (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2003), 3.
2. According to Freud, egos mediate the conflicting functions of our ids and
superegos. We are all born with ids, the part of our mind that represents our
impulses. Vital for newborns, the id is intent on filling basic human needs such
as satisfying hunger and avoiding pain. With no consideration for the needs of
others, the id impatiently wants what feels good. By the age of three, the ego
develops to mediate the needs of the id. Firmly rooted in a growing awareness
of external and situational constraints, the ego makes reasoned decisions and
judgment. In the context of mourning and melancholia, the ego is comprised
of the residues of successfully resolved losses. The superego develops by the age

of five and is the moral part of us deciphering right from wrong. Thus the id is
grounded in pleasure and the ego in reality, with the superego representing our
conscience.
3. Judith Butler, “Afterword: After Loss, What Then?” in Eng and Kazanjian,
Loss, 467.
4. Takao Shinitani, interview by Mary Tamura, 1994, Terminal Island Life His-
tory Project, Japanese American National Museum 2001, Los Angeles.
5. Jim Lobe, “Number of Anti-Muslim Incidents Jumps 30 Percent,” Inter
Press Service, September 18, 2006; and Council on American-Islamic Relations,
“Executive Report,” http://www.cair.com/cair2006report (accessed June 27,
2007).
6. George E. Curry, “Bush Lied about Spy Program,” New York Beacon, May
18–24, 2006, 8; Sandy Sorensen, “Will Walls and Wire Tabs Really Keep Us
Safe?” Philadelphia Tribune, June 6, 2006, 5A.
7. To read about the use of census records after Pearl Harbor, see William
Seltzer and Margo Anderson, “After Pearl Harbor: The Proper Use of Population
Data in Time of War,” paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Population
Association of America, Los Angeles, March 2000; also available at the Ameri-
can Statistical Association’s Statisticians in History Web site.
8. Lynette Clemetson, “Homeland Security Given Data on Arab Americans,”
New York Times, July 30, 2004, A14; Eric Lipton, “Panel Says Census Move on
Arab Americans Recalls World War II Internments,” New York Times, November
10, 2004, A19; Electronic Privacy Information Center, “Freedom of Information
Documents on the Census: Department of Homeland Security Obtained Data
on Arab American From Census Bureau,” http://www.epic.org/privacy/census
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

(accessed July 2, 2007).

9. Ambika Ahuga, “Thailand Deports 163 Ethnic Hmong Asylum-Seekers
Back to Laos,” Associated Press (state and local wire), June 9, 2007.
10. Sudarsan Raghavan, “War in Iraq Propelling a Massive Migration,” Wash-
ington Post, February 4, 2007, A01; http://www.washingtonpost.com (accessed
July 5, 2007).
11. Deborah Willis, “Krisitne Yuki Aono: Installing Memories,” in Fresh Talk/
Daring Gazes: Conversations on Asian American Art, ed. Elaine Kim, Margo
Machida, and Sharon Mizota (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003),
83–85.
12. E. McClung Fleming, “Artifact Study: A Proposed Model,” in Material
Culture Studies in America, ed. Thomas Schlereth (Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira
Press, 1999), 169.

agency, 125, 163–164 camp art shows. See exhibits

Akahoshi, Seiko, 92 camp-made art, 1, 4, 5, 7, 125, 155, 164
American Friends Service Committee, camp newspaper: Denson Tribune, 107;
29, 30, 50, 134 Heart Mountain Sentinal, 43, 81, 118,
Aono, Kristine Yuki, 162 119; Manzanar Free Press, 22, 114, 122,
art, 1, 4, 5, 6, 14, 88, 96 141; Santa Anita Pacemaker, 60, 113;
artificial flowers, 5, 29–30, 107, 108; Tanforan Totalizer, 20
funeral wreaths, 135; paper, 4, 50, 98, Cato, Shuzo Chris, 25
136–138 Census Bureau, 158
art shows. See exhibits ceramics, 27; densonware, 84, 107–108
assembly centers: Anita Funita art classes, 3, 116–123; artificial-flower-
show, 112, 138; art school, 119–120, making, 104, 121–122, 123; ceramics,
129; camouf lage-net project, 143– 119; carpentry, 103; crotcheting, 120;
144; classes, 90; Fresno, 11, 16, 53; flower arranging, 117, 121; ikebana,
gardens, 59–60; Handicraft Haven, 105, 149, 150; knitting, 97, 103, 120,
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

113, 120; lakes, 56–58, 79, 141; Mer- 150; needlecraft, 121, 123, 149; paint-
ced, 16; Pomona, 17, 92; Puyallup, ing, 123; sketching, 123; sewing, 92,
15, 39, 80, 83, 98, 126, 139, 148; Santa 120, 122, 150
Anita, 19, 21, 24, 54, 66, 90, 96, 98, classrooms, 43, 45–47
102, 111, 126, 141; Stockton, 19, 24, Colorado River Indian Reservation, 65
126, 150; Tanforan, 12, 16, 20, 21, 24, Commission on Wartime Relocation
27, 39, 40, 56, 89, 115–116, 129; Tulare, and Internment of Civilians, 1,
11, 22, 27, 45, 53, 66, 111; Versed, 16; 176n83
Walegra, 35; concentration camps, 1, 3, 10, 52, 128,
YWCA, 142 157, 167n2. See also individual concen-
tration camps
baseball, 93–94; fields, 53, 78, 82 Council on American-Islamic Rela-
basketball, 78, 82 tions, 157
bathing facilities, 11 crafts. See art
bon-kei, 36–37
Breed, Clara, 102 Darfur, 160
brush covering, 69 DeCristoforo, Violet, 16
Bureau of Indian Affairs, 65 Deloyd, Akiyo, 136

197
Dusselier, Jane E.. Artifacts of Loss : Crafting Survival in Japanese American Concentration Camps, Rutgers University Press, 2008.
ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=413878.
Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2025-05-02 14:33:54.
198 index

Department of Homeland Security, 158 Hatchimonji, Kumezo, 68, 69

Department of Justice facilities, 58, 76, Hayakawa, Senator Samuel Ichiye, 1, 7,
95, 111, 132; Fort Missoula, Montana, 167n1, 168n3
127; Lordsburg, New Mexico, 65 Hayami, Stanley, 81, 93
Department of Justice prisons. See Hayashi, Fumi, 82, 92
Department of Justice facilities Heart Mountain, 11, 27, 33, 39, 43, 44, 80,
depression, 126–128 92, 93, 129, 135; Art Students League,
displays. See exhibits 109, 116; ceramics factory, 118–119;
Doi, John, 59 community garden, 68–70; Congress of
American Citizens (Fair Play Commit-
Egami, Sachi, 99 tee), 129–130; living conditions, 17–18
ego, 195n2 Hibi, Haruko, 115
Endo, Aiko Tanamachi, 144 Hibi, Matsusaburo, 115
Executive Order 9066, 1, 5, 10, 20, 65, Hirahara, Mrs., 32
72, 103, 127, 129, 134, 138, 155, 161 Hmong, 159
exhibits, 3, 22, 101–116, 125 holidays, 43; Christmas decorations,
37, 43–44
farm projects, 69 Homma, Mrs. Mary Shigeo, 33, 117
FBI, 22, 29, 76 Honma, Shigee, 105
Federal Bureau of Investigation. See FBI Hosokawa, Rube, 139
Federal Bureau of Prisons, 95 hospitals, 43
flower making. See artificial flowers hot capping, 69
forced leisure interpretation, 7–8
442 nd Regimental Combat Team, 130 ice skating rinks, 3, 53, 78, 80–82
Fuhara, Kamayashi, 107 identity formation, 51, 84, 87, 88, 153
Fujikado, Toyonosuke, 148 Iida, Lillian, 76
Fujimani, Yeisaku, 115 Ike, Kiyoko, 143
Fujita, Jr., Henry, 139 ikebana, 2, 30–36, 50, 149–150
Fukasawa, George, 26 Ikeda, George, 59
Fukuyama, Fmuiko, 97 Immigration Acts, 10
Furato, Yukiko, 22 Internment camps. See concentration
furniture, 5, 24, 111; making 2, 4, camps
18–21; supplies, 25–27 Ishigo, Estelle, 142, 146
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

Ishino, Florence, 102

gardening. See gardens Ishino, Margaret, 102
gardens, 51, 61; community, 53, 69; issei, 10, 58, 89, 179n16
flower, 53; fruit, 85; rock, 53, 75; veg- Ito, Grace, 123
etable, 53, 85 Ito, Jimmy, 69
getas, 83, 99, 111, 148 Ito, Kaoru, 149–150
Gila (Rivers), 11, 18, 21, 25, 65, 126; Ito, Kimi, 109
Butte Camp section, 48, 65–66; Canal Iwata, Masahiro, 132–134
Camp section, 45, 65–66; YWCA, 45 Iwata, Shigezo, 132–134
golf courses, 3, 53, 78–80 Iwata, Sonoko, 134
Granada (Amache), 11, 12, 18, 21, 24,
29, 41, 43, 135; impressions of, 63; Jerome (Denson), 11, 27, 36, 41, 42, 84,
YWCA, 45 106, 115, 120; cabinet shop, 47–48;
Fujin Kai (mother’s club), 115, 144;
Hanzawa, Nobuko, 20, 98 gardening, 67; Young Buddhist Asso-
Harada, Dorothy, 94 ciation, 132
Hashimoto, Fusaye, 18 jewelry: bracelets, 151; lapel pins, 96,
Hatano, Masao, 105 113, 151; rings, 5, 96; shell, 5, 151

Karen refugees, 160 model boats, 53, 57–58, 89, 141–142, 156
Kasai, Midori, 142 model planes, 113, 138–141
Kashiwagi, Sumi, 120 Monitor, The, 78
Kato, Alfred, 131 Morioka, Grace, 45
Kato, Kotono, 131 Morita, Yeneji, 109
Kato, Roy, 131 Murao, Helen, 127
Kato, Shuzo Chris, 25 Murata, Hideo, 127
Katrina survivors, 160
Kawakami, Tets, 139 Nagumo, Reiko, 109
Kayasaki, Kamekichi, 43 Nakadate, Mrs., 103
Kikuchi, Charles, 20, 89 Nakagawa, Eizo, 109
Kikuchi, Jack, 21 Nakagawa, Kitty, 60
Kikuchi, Tom, 89 Nakamura, Florence Miho, 20
Kimura, William, 19 Nakamura, Molly, 34
Kinoshita, Linda, 122 Nakata, Roy, 102
Kitamura, Ichiro, 109 nameplates, 38–43
Kitashima, Tsuyako, 16 National Security Agency, 158
kobu, 2, 35, 36, 50, 105–107, 109, 161 needlework, 2, 50; crotcheting, 27, 29;
Kunazawa, Richard, 141 embroidery, 27, 37, 50, 97, 111; knit-
Kunitsugu, Katsumi, 92 ting, 27, 90, 93, 111, 124; sewing, 27,
Kuwahara, Bob, 12 29, 90, 98, 151–152; weaving, 27
Negoro, Minnie, 118
landscapes: mental, 50, 164; physical, 5, 1913 Alien Land Law, 67
50, 51, 164 Ninomiya, Mrs., 26
landscaping. See gardens nisei, 10
latrines, 11, 12 Nishi, Akira, 73
laundry, 11–12 Nishimi, Shigeno, 34–36
living units, 2, 14–50 Noda, Kasen, 117
loss, 1, 5, 54, 155–158, 168n7, 192n15; of Nomura, Shiro, 99
business/vocation, 148–149
Obata, Chiura, 115, 119, 129
mailboxes, 38, 41–43 Ogura, Yumi, 122
Manzanar, 11, 18, 25, 44, 99, 113, 121; Ohye, Henry, 138
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

Art Center/Art Institute, 109; chil- Okamoto, Senka, 35

dren’s village, 75–76; community gar- Okubo, Mine, 40, 96, 115, 129
dens, 72–76; impressions of, 63–64, Osaki, Yoshito Wayne, 145
71–72; Visual Education Museum, Ota, Mable, 126–127
113; Wing Nuts club, 141 outdoor play equipment, 89
Marumoto, Fumi, 22 Owens Valley, 71
material culture, 6. See also art Oyama, Clem, 118
Matsuda, Yoshio, 21 Oye, Martha Inouye, 49
Matsumoto, Harry, 76 Ozawa, Kenneth, 139
Matsumoto, Ken, 112
Matsumoto, Kumiko Kariya, 81 painting, 2
Matsuno, Takatow, 76 Patriot Act, 157, 158
Matsushita, Hanaye, 127 pets, 144–148. See also wood carving:
McCabe, Lillian, 125 pets
melancholia, 155–156, 168n7 portrait drawing, 98, 151
mess halls, 11, 43, 50, 105 Poston (Colorado River), 11, 12, 21, 22,
Minidoka (Hunt), 11, 22, 26, 49 80, 134, 26, 65, 80, 93, 114, 117, 135; class-
142; furniture making, 25 rooms, 46; impressions of, 18, 78;

Poston (Colorado River) (continued), Tanamachi, Aiko, 46

Poston I, 45, 46, 65; Poston II, 65; Tanibata, Mas, 63–64, 78
Poston III, 65, 103; YWCA, 45 Tashima, Yoshie Mary, 21, 63
privacy: lack of, 95, 99; screens, 22 Tashiro, Yukino, 151–152
psychic, emotional, mental well-being, Tateishi, Harry, 69
4 Taylor, Paul, 27
Tedera, Duke, 110
Quakers. See American Friends Service temporary imprisonment facilities. See
Committee assembly centers
Terminal Island, 76, 110–111, 156
religion: butsudan, 48; spaces of wor- Toba, Mrs., 19
ship, 43 Tokuda, Sakusaburo, 69
re-territorialization, 2, 3, 21–24, 51, 53, Tolan, John, 35, 176n83
55, 60, 78, 84–87, 161, 168n4 Topaz, 11, 18, 21, 22, 24, 28, 29, 81, 82,
Robertson, Guy, 117 92, 96, 121, 136–138, 139; elemen-
Rohwer, 11, 21, 24, 25–27, 26, 32, 43, tary school, 45–46; high school, 94;
84, 89, 98, 121, 126, 142, 144; garden- impressions of, 60–63, 181n27; living
ing, 67 conditions, 16–17
Roosevelt, President Franklin Delano, Torigumi, Ben, 118
1, 10 toys, 142
transnational understandings, 5, 52
Sanda, Karon, 146 Tsugawa, Hisaichi, 141
Sasaki, Joseph, 84, 107 Tsukamoto, Mary, 53, 101, 121
Sato, Rosa, 118 Tsukimura, Mrs. Alice, 98
Satow, Roy, 123 Tule Lake (Newell), 11, 22, 26, 33–35, 37,
sculptures, 37 89, 93, 102, 121; community gardens,
senninbari, 129–130 76–77
sense of place, 5, 50, 87; portable, 14,
52, 87 Uchida, Dwight Takushi, 23
sewing machines, 92, 99 Uchida, Iku, 124
Shimizu, Tsuyako, 65 Uchida, Yoshiko, 16–17, 145
Shinno, Pat, 108 Ueysugi, Mas, 41, 63
Shirai, Nobori, 26, 94 U. S. government, 10, 46, 52, 60
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

skating rinks. See ice skating rinks

St. Joseph News Press, 78 Wakasa, James Hatsuik, 136
Stone, Gladys Ishida, 129 Wakatsuki, Jeanne, 75
Sugihara, Masako, 118 walkways, 2, 83–84
Sugitachi, Mary, 126, 191n1 War Relocation Authority, 21, 25, 33, 65,
sumo wrestling, 53, 78, 82 87, 98, 116, 118, 134, 149; internal secu-
Supreme Court, 10 rity forces, 26
survival: emotional and physical, 1, 12, Watanabe, Roy, 56, 79
68; mental spaces of, 4, 12; places of West Coast exclusionary areas, 52
14, 49 wood carving, 4, 111, 123; pets, 4, 146–
swimming pools, 3, 78, 80 147; sculptures, 37
Wood crafting. See wood carving
Tahara, Kamaemon, 115
Takahashi, Moto, 81 Yamamoto, Bill, 47
Takahashi, S., 59 Yamashita, M., 139
Takesako, Eidi, 115 Yanari, Kimi, 25
Tamaki, Mary, 122 Young Women’s Christian Association.
Tamaki, Tomae, 134 See YWCA
Tanaka, Mrs. YWCA, 45, 101

Jane E. Dusselier is an assistant professor at Iowa State University with

a dual appointment in the department of Anthropology and the Asian
American Studies Program. Her published works include “Embodied
Identity? The Life and Art of Estelle Ishigo” (Feminist Studies) and “Does
Food Make Place? Food Protests in Japanese American Concentration
Camps” (Food and Foodways).
Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.

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