Ink and Internment
During the internment of nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II, several art schools were opened within these camps. Among the most high profile of these was the camps to which many Northern California artists were sent: first the Tanforan Assembly Center, and then Topaz. Artists including Chiura Obata, Mine Okubo and Matsusaburo Hibi worked with a variety of art media - including ink -in creating work that reflected images and impressions of their incarceration. Obata's moody image of the barracks is painted with ink and watercolor, while Matsusaburo Hibi's image is in fact a wood-block print. Mine Okubo created an entire book of illustrations in ink, later published as 'Citizen 13660', that is still in print - and carved out time for her art-making by hanging a sign that read 'Quarantined' on her barracks door. Southern California artist Hideo Date was sent to Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Wyoming, where he created an unexpected series of ink drawings of cats.
Images of the Internment have resurfaced in the work of several Japanese American artists since that time, including the San Jose Interment Memorial designed by Ruth Asawa (who spend her high school years in the camps), and in a series of paintings by Roger Shimomura, who was incarcerated as a child (ages 3 to 5).
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