The Art of Gaman: Crafts from the Japanese Internment Camps

第二次大戦時に於ける、日系アメリカ人の収容所にて、日系人が手作りした、日用必需品から芸術品に至るまでを集めた、Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum での展示の様子。
全く何もない、倉庫のような場所に入れられ、苦痛な生活を強いられても、当時の日系人は器用に美しい物を作り上げ、心の潤いを保っていた様子が伝わってきます。

"We had no furniture," Mineta recalls. "All you get is four blank walls and one light bulb in the middle of the room and a black potbellied stove over in the corner ... and cots. That was it."

And so, in all 10 of the internment camps, people began making what they needed with whatever materials they could find. Scrap lumber became chairs, tables, dressers. Found metal became knives (they weren't allowed to bring sharp objects into the camps). And for fun, scrap wood was carved into small, painted birds.

From the Amache internment camp in Colorado came a silk vest a mother made for her son who was going off to war. (Eventually, some of the internees were drafted or even volunteered for a special combat unit of U.S.-born Japanese-Americans.) The cream-colored vest is decorated with 1,000 red, French-tied knots.

"One person made each knot," explains Robyn Kennedy, chief of the Renwick. "This was passed around in the camp, and this was in order to provide strength and good luck for the person it was given to."

On the back of the vest a ferocious tiger is painted in orange and black ink. His hunched shoulders and sharp teeth show his strength.

"No one is going to go through that tiger to get this person's back," Kennedy says.



Slide Show: Renwick Gallery

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Posted by M. Dolan