The Japanese American Incarceration

The preferred terminology is now “incarceration” rather than “internment” because it is legal to “intern” citizens of enemy nations during wartime, whereas it is unconstitutional to hold American citizens  indefinitely without charge or trial. And two-thirds of the 120,000 Japanese Americans “incarcerated” or “imprisoned” during WWII were loyal American citizens who simply had the misfortune to look like the enemy.

As I think about it, I haven't done much artwork directly about the internment, though I have written extensively about it. Rather than depict the oppression, my artwork has focused on identifying and contradicting internalized oppression—the feeling that many victims carry of being somehow less worthy or deserving of injustice. I was fortunate to have a father who was very proud of his Japanese heritage and culture and to watch grandmothers and aunts put their Buddhist values into daily practice. Much of my Japanese American work has been about celebrating what they taught me.

The Floating World, 36 x 44, oil. The heads of my grandfather and grandmother hover over me at age five, dressed—like all the other children—in an elaborate Buddhist outfit when the Grand Abbot visited from Japan. The gold crown sat atop a silken pillow, on my slippery black hair. I had to hold my head very straight to keep the crown from falling.  My head is wreathed with the lines of a Buddhist prayer, “ I am a link in Amida's golden chain of love that stretches around the world. I must keep my link bright and strong.... I will try to think pure and beautiful thoughts, to say pure and beautiful words, and to do pure and beautiful deeds, knowing that on what I do now depends not only my happiness and unhappiness, but also that of others.”

The title alludes, not simply to the floating world of ukiyoe wood-block prints, but to a certain view of life. I was born a few months after the last concentration camps closed. I grew up with loss as a fact of life. But incarceration had not been the first , now would it be the last hardship for my relatives. Children died, jobs were lost, loved ones were difficult. My relatives knew that NOTHING material can be counted on. We are adrift on a sea where things are dying and being born every minute. The only things we can count on are change, and the sea of existence itself, the unnameable something that sustains us amidst change.

Line of Succession, 18" x 24". Acrylic. Hippies are stereotyped as anti-establishment types who didn't “trust anybody over thirty,” but we were not anarchistic. Although we rejected some of the values and power structures we grew up with, we actively sought and honored models that worked, new or old. We drew inspiration from Thoreau, Emerson, abolitionists, early feminists, and leaders of color, as well as the craftsmanship, culture and spirituality outside the “civilized” world. The nine months I spent on an Indian ashram in the early 1970s helped me truly understand my grandparents’ religion and lifestyle, and  coelesce values into bedrock that continue to ground my life and my children's.

Buddhism in America, 18" x 24". Oil. The Buddhist lessons I learned in India (and continue to learn every day) about self-created suffering, nonattachment, and satori paralleled what my grandparents learned in their journey from Meiji-era Japan to late-20th century America. The integrity with which they lived their lives continues to illuminate my response to today’s challenges.

Jiichan, 11 x 17 photocollage. This is one of the few works that physically shows an internment camp. My grandfather's photo, lost farm fields, karuta poem cards, my grandmother's kimono, scissors to symbolize what was severed, and grasses from a memorial garden symbolize the lessons that do not die, including our duty as Americans to safeguard democracy for everyone.

Trunk of Dreams, photocollage with poem. The text reads, “Dear wife/We were so hopeful/in the first days./How could I know/that the new land/would hollow out/your heart/and fill my mouth/with sand./Gaman/we said/Gambatte./Shikkari nasai./Until the last weed/died in the desert./I never told you/how sorry I was.

Barry in Grade School, 11" x17", digital collage. I'm working on a series entitled “loyal•disloyal” about my father's journey from segreated Stockton to thr Rohwer incarceration camp to a twenty-two year career in U.S. military intelligence. In this first grade photo, he already looks intense, isolated and haunted. Note that the class is mostly children of color, somewhat shabbily dressed. More later.

Labels: Buddhism, internment, Japanese American