Furnishing ‘Not a Forever’ Home
I Visited an Exhibit on Japanese American Detention Camps of World War II
I refinished this dresser, represented in a sketch, decades ago. The experience helped
me relate to the current exhibit.
By Anna Krejci
The wooden dresser I have had since childhood is well
built. About 20 years ago I refinished
it. By hand I rubbed sandpaper over its
exterior to remove peeling paint. In restoring it, I left the dresser a little
diminished, which I realized because sawdust coated my hands and clothes. At
the end of the project, I applied a new stain to the wood. The dresser was the
first piece that I refinished; I worked on it during a time of transition while
I was looking for work early in my career. As it turned out, I moved to take a
job, and I took the dresser with me.
History Told Through Art
I inherited the dresser from my parents. I am fortunate to look at it with nostalgia. Some
people do not have the chance to inherit furniture from childhood. I was
reminded of this recently, when I saw a temporary exhibit at an Oberlin College
and Conservatory library which told the stories of incarcerated Japanese
Americans in prison camps during World War II.
The exhibit was called “Contested Histories” and was fascinating and
heart wrenching in that it told their histories through the art pieces and
other creative products, including furniture, that they made while in
captivity. After being forcibly
incarcerated at one of the camps, innocent Japanese Americans lost their
livelihoods, their homes and businesses, and had to start over again once
released after the war. This was especially hard for the senior citizens who
had already worked their entire lives to save.
From Makeshift to Lasting
My reaction to the exhibit is one of respect for the
Japanese Americans of that time and of anger about my country’s treatment of
them. That they lost their freedom and
property was unjust. Furthermore, the
Japanese Americans in confinement were given few resources by the government,
yet they still made things like chairs and Japanese privacy screens called
shoji, to make themselves feel dignified.
It was not kindness on the part of the government that they had chairs
or shoji. It was up to them to fashion
those pieces out of what they could however they could. One of the Japanese
American men who taught embroidery while at a camp had but scraps of fabric
with which to work. On the one hand,
there were social events in the camps, yet the exhibit underscored in many ways
the lack of support from the federal government for the incarcerated.
Stories to Inherit
In some cases, the Japanese Americans who lived in the detention
camps passed down the artwork to their descendants. They carved their family
names on wood plaques which were hung by their barracks. These were passed down from one generation to
the next long after captivity ended. My family’s history is so different from
that of the Japanese Americans. I have a refinished dresser to hand down. Having cared for it is a happy memory. I humbly acknowledge that as Americans we all
have different family stories and that it is important to respect each
other. I look at the history of the detention
camps, and I think they were an error, a glaring stain on the United
States. At least we have survivors and
their descendants who tell their stories so that we may never forget.
About the Exhibit “Contested Histories: Preserving and
Sharing a Community Collection”
The exhibit at Terrell Main Library at Oberlin College and Conservatory displayed pieces of art created by Japanese Americans confined in camps during
World War II that were also written about in a 1952 book titled, “Beauty Behind
Barbed Wire: The Arts of the Japanese in Our War Relocation Camps,” by Allen
Hendershott Eaton. While Eaton wrote, many people involved in the camps contributed
their artwork to him for his book. Eaton died in 1962. Eventually the Japanese
American National Museum acquired the artwork and artifacts and now maintains
the collection.
For more information about the libraries that sponsored the
exhibit at Oberlin College in Ohio, click on the following links.
For information on how to visit the exhibit, click on the link
below.
Oberlin College Libraries
https://libraries.oberlin.edu/libraries
For more information about the Japanese American National
Museum click on the following link.
https://www.janm.org/exhibits/contested-histories-oberlin
About Our Trip
Corey and I visited the exhibit at the library early on a
Monday in February. We spent more than
an hour at the exhibit. In late morning,
we shopped in Oberlin, although some of the stores were closed on Mondays. For lunch, we ate delicious pizza at Lorenzo’s
Pizzeria, 52 ½ S. Main St., in Oberlin and purchased tasty desserts from Blue
Rooster Bakehouse, 38 S. Main St., to take home. It was such a fun morning, and
we returned home in time to take care of some chores. It was my first time visiting Oberlin, and we
enjoyed the colorful murals – one was outside the bakery, and another was in
view of the pizzeria. We stopped to take
photos of the flags at Tappan Square, which I am happy to say included an
LGBTQ+ Pride flag along with the Ohio state flag and United States flag. We want to go back again in warmer weather,
even though we enjoyed our mini excursion.
