Art in Japanese Internment Camps

The Japanese have a philosophy: “shikataganai”- “you can’t help it.”  Things happen the way they happen, so live just day by day. On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, the internment of Japanese Americans. This was the relocation of all citizens and aliens of Japanese ancestry from the west coast.  This project will examine the art that was produce within the Japanese interment camps.  By analyzing articles, books, and the actual art that was produced in the camps, I would like to show how big of a role it played to keep the internees’ morale up and help create a community within the camp. The art in the internment camps that was produced really depicts what life was like in the camps.  Many of the paintings and pictures are scenes of everyday camp life. They showed the emotion of the internees, whether it be sad or angry or happy. Many looked to art as a way to express their emotions, an outlet from reality and what was really going on. I think that another reason people turned to art because they weren’t allowed to have cameras and contraband of that sort, to remember what the internment camp was like so no one could forget.  It was an outlet so people could focus on the good instead of the bad. There was art within the schools of the camps and art exhibits. There was all sorts of art made in the camps from painting to toys and dolls, hats made of citrus fruit wrapper woven together. Whatever resource they could get their hands on they would use.  It was a great influence on shaping camp life.  A picture is worth a thousand words, right? The art work whether it is a painting or a bird pin it says so much about the person who made it. 

Through out my process of research I found there was a lot of information about art in Japanese internment camps.   Art was a way for the internees to document the history of the internment camps so it was very easy to find artwork. There was actually so much it was hard to choose what artist and what artwork to show in my presentation.  The first thing I did like any good researcher would was go through of my sources and pick out the ones that were most useful to me. One of my primary sources Beyond Words by Deborah Gesensway, had many pieces of art and to go along with that was an interview of the artist and why they created the art during this time. This book basically was my bible for this research project, put a lot of the pictures on my power point from this book.  It helped to read articles and interviews from the artists because they themselves can best explain there art and why they created it.  In a sense we kind of lucky that a lot of these artist were still around when the art was resurfaced, otherwise we might not have know the full reasons behind the art.