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After Pearl Harbor, Japanese-Americans, primarily on the west coast, were given days to pack their belongings and report to government organized assembly centers. From there, they were transferred to relocation centers around the country. Others, along with German and Italian nationals, thought to be more of a threat, were taken to Department of Justice camps and held as enemy aliens. The youngest evacuee was 3 months old.
Photo of a grocery store owned by a Japanese American
Dorothea Lange - 1942
Map of the Assembly and Relocation Centers
The exhibition displays pieces, from crude furniture to exquisite jewelry to Buddhist shrines, put together often from scraps of wood and metal left behind from construction of the camps. Ironically, paintings were often done on the evacuation orders sent prior to relocation. Some of the objects are so delicate; it is hard to imagine that they were created outside of an art studio, much less in the austere prison environment in which the detainees were held.
I was struck by how many of the interned had sons in the U.S. military while they were detained in the camps. There was reference to children being drafted from the camps when they came of age. How is that possible? How could the government see fit to imprison a parent, yet send their child to war? Similarly striking were the parallels to our post 9/11 world with enemy detainees and anti-Arab sentiment. The exhibit was as much a thought-provoking lesson in history as an impressive display of art and craft and well worth the trip back to the Renwick.
Link to the Renwick: http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/archive/2010/gaman/
Wikipedia Information on Internment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment
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