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 These
wooden birds, carved inside World War II-era Japanese American
internment camps, are a sampling of the artwork in "The
Art of Gaman" by Delphine Hirasuna. The bird's tiny
legs were crafted from the surplus snipped off the wire
mesh screens over barrack windows.
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As
a child growing up in the years following
World War II, Delphine Hirasuna (B.A., '68) heard
her mother speak only in vague terms of her time behind the
barbed wire of a Japanese American internment camp. There
were things her family had owned before camp and people they
met in camp, but the details of life inside remained unspoken.
The contents of a dusty box many years later would help bring
her family's experience out of the shadows. Following her
mother's death in 2002, Hirasuna discovered a small wooden
bird among war-year trinkets. The safety pin glued to its
back revealed that the bird had been handmade during her mother's
internment. Hirasuna wondered what "other objects made
in the camps lay tossed aside and forgotten, never shown to
anyone because they might generate questions too painful to
answer."
Her curiosity led her to uncover more than 100 objects from
former internees' attics and garages as well as from museums:
teapots carved from slabs of slate, umbrellas fashioned from
cigarette paper and chopsticks, paintings on shells and rocks,
and weavings of onion skin -- stunningly beautiful creations
made by imprisoned midwives, farmers and fishermen. She also
found more birds carved from scrap lumber, many apparently
inspired by an issue of National Geographic that circulated
through the camps.
Hirasuna teamed with designer Kit Hinrichs and photographer
Terry Heffernan to showcase her finds, along with notes on
their construction, in "The Art of Gaman: Arts and Crafts
from the Japanese American Internment Camps, 1942–1946"
(Ten Speed Press, 2006). The title reveals the spirit that
helped forge each creation. Gaman is the Japanese word for
"enduring the seemingly unbearable with patience and
dignity." |
