Japanese
internment expressed through art
By Oscar Montealegre
On-line Forty-Niner
Information
can be found through books, articles and
memoirs on the occurrence of the U.S. government
sending Japanese-American citizens into
detention and concentration camps. Karen
Higa used a different medium, she used picture
art and artifacts.
 Higa,
a senior curator of the Japanese American
National Museum, spoke about how Japanese
art and artifacts could effectively convey
the distress Japanese people experienced
during World War II in the Family and Consumer
Sciences Building Monday.
The seminar, titled “Probing the World War
II incarceration of Japanese Americans through
art and artifact,” was coordinated and sponsored
by the Odyssey Project.
“The power of using metaphors and art were
used to escape the surroundings,” Higa said.
“Most importantly, they were an expression
of freedom.”
Higa began her lecture by giving a brief
historical introduction. However, she did
not want to thoroughly elaborate on the
complexity of the political history of World
War II or Japanese immigration into the
United States.
Higa mentioned that by the 1940s, at least
two generations of Japanese families called
the United States home.
In a matter of weeks, there was political
and social pressure to find a scapegoat
for the events occurring in the U.S. during
World War II. The Japanese people were selected
and placed in concentration camps.
“The aim was to protect the nation of espionage
and sabotage, this was the U.S. government
reasoning to justify the incarceration of
Japanese people ... just because you looked
like the enemy, you were considered an enemy,”
Higa said.
Higa focused her lecture around the Japanese
artist Henry Sikamudo. Sikamudo is now considered
a prestigious artist; he is viewed as one
of the leading individuals who documented
the experience of the camps.
Sikamudo’s art style consisted of abstract
art, surrealism and modern impressionism.
Higa raised the point that the U.S. government
oversaw the fact that Sikamudo was an artist
and an international traveler. They only
saw him as Japanese, and therefore he was
sent to a concentration camp in Arkansas.
Higa also clarified that Sikamudo was not
the only artist that painted the Japanese
experience. In the camps, a number of artists
that painted their experience in their own
respected style.
“Through art you can get a feel of the textures
of life in the camps. For instance, the
aspects of humiliation in living in the
concentration camps,” Higa said.
“Higa’s lecture was very insightful. It
presented a look at the Japanese experience
in the concentration camps through art,
photographs and artifacts,” said Joan Lafend,
a junior history student. “It gave it a
different perspective, a more intimate one.”
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