We are actively working to preserve the physical artifacts as well as the stories and memories of life in one of America's concentration camps located at Poston, Arizona. It was named "Poston" or the "Colorado River Relocation Center", located on the Colorado River Indian Reservation during World War II. The Poston Community Alliance is a 501(c)(3)non-profit group.
.....Alert reader Don Hull from Costa Mesa pointed out a bit of untold history regarding the Victory Gardens I mentioned in last week's Garden Trends column.......
Although Victory Gardens were touted as the patriotic thing to do, he wrote, "Victory Gardens were the propagandistic answer to the chaos created by FDR's roundup and imprisonment of 120,000 Japanese-Americans in early 1942."
It was Feb. 19, to be exact, as we remember the anniversary of Executive Order 9066 issued by Franklin D. Roosevelt this month.
The only source that has a bit of news about the Japanese internment/Victory Garden connection is the San Francisco Museum at sfmuseum.org that says Japanese truck farmers in California were responsible for a $40 million a year industry in fruits and vegetables.
By March, 200,000 acres had been confiscated, sold off or given away to "non-Japanese" farmers mostly from Dust Bowl regions. Those farmers weren't nearly as efficient or experienced at growing crops in California. Food and labor shortages followed.
In a San Francisco News story dated March 9, 1942, the government asked that rural schools adjust their vacation schedules so children could help out during the harvest seasons.
These were called "Victory Vacations" and promoted as not only patriotic but also good for health, exercise and fresh air.
Although Japanese internment wasn't mentioned in the report, a photo caption stated that the evacuation of the Japanese farmers resulted in shortages.
A Victory Garden handbook for home growers from 1943 explains, "Our farmers produced a record amount of food in 1940, then broke that record in 1941 and '42. Their goals are still higher in 1943, but civilian and fighting demands keep mounting, while farmers must make out with less labor."
It is interesting to note those Victory Garden pamphlets and other government messages leave out the fact that thousands of experienced farmers were locked up at time.
Gary Hayakawa, a nursery consultant in Irvine, was born in an internment camp in Crystal City, Texas.
"My father was arrested by the FBI because he was active in the Japanese School," he said. "Three of my sisters were interned in Arizona. We lost everything – my parents only took what they could carry. "
Hayakawa's family was in the nursery business and not directly related to the food supply, but thousands of other farmers were.
Still, nurserymen could be relied upon to supply the seeds, fertilizers and tools that 20 million Americans needed in the 1940s to grow more food at home.
Gene Isao Sogioka (Poston 221-10-D), a water colorist
Gene was born in Irvindale, California, and attended 2 years at Ponoma College when he quit and decided to go to Art School. Gene graduated from the Chiounard Art Institute (California Institute of Fine Arts.) In 1939, he married Mine, and he was employed as a animator for the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California before the bombing at Pearl Harbor.
"Accusation Before Administration"
In the early spring of 1942, Gene resided in Covina, California and voluntarily relocated his family to Fresno, to avoid being placed into the Santa Anita Assembly Center with others of Japanese ancestry living in that southern California region. Unfortunately, in less than 2 months later, the family was evacuated to the Poston, Arizona concentration camp 2, block 221.
During the two years that Gene was detained in the Arizona desert concentration camp, he produced more than 100 watercolors depicting life in the camps.
"WRA Officers Assess the Situation"
Gene's daughter, Jean (Sogioka) La Spina, recently contacted me and reported she is working on a book of her family's journey to Poston.She will be using 134 images of her father's watercolor scenes, some which illustrates the discontentment among those imprisoned. In developing her book, Jean was required to title each painting. She developed the titles from her recollections of the narrations her father told her when was a child.
"WRA Officer Gives His Defense"
Jean (Sogioka) La Spinais seeking information from former Poston prisoners about the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the War Relocation Authority administrative personnel.
Please record your feedback in the comment section below. Thank you!
Dear Readers, I am a professor of Art Education at Minnesota State University, Mankato and I am researching the children’s art making in the Japanese American Internment Camps.
I am writing a manuscript and would like to learn as much as possible about school art class, the art teacher(s), or other art activities for children and teens in the camps.
If you have heard stories or have personal memories of school art in camp, please contact me. Any advice or assistance would be most appreciated. Dr. Gina Wenger Minnesota State University, Mankato email: gina.wenger@mnsu.edu phone: (507) 382-8115 website: www.ginawenger.com
Judy Chan is a third-generation Japanese American born and raised in East Los Angeles. Chan has received numerous awards and fellowships and has exhibited widely over the years; yet, for all her present successes, Chan's art is a means by which she confronts painful moments from her past. For Chan, "creating is therapeutic." At the same time, Chan seeks to communicate a message beyond her personal experiences, speaking for others who have suffered similarly.
Chan's work for this exhibit is part of a series of paintings focused on growing up as a Japanese American in the 1940s and 1950s. In Not Welcome There, Chan recreates the setting of a lunch counter, which symbolizes the establishments that Chan and other people of color could not patronize during that time.
After being released from the Poston, Arizona concentration camp in 1943, Chan and her family relocated to Philadelphia. The menus at the top of the painting contain names of restaurants where Chan was denied service and on the right, under the heading "Price," Chan spells out "Loss of Self-Esteem." Thus, what could have been an angry response to this discrimination resulted instead in the internalization of that prejudice. The act of creating this work and returning to that moment in her life becomes a part of Chan's self-healing process.
Philadelphia, 1943 is also about a return to a specific event and reproducing it with the perspective and distance of over fifty years. Chan recalls walking with her sister and mother and being apprehended by men who yelled to them that they were not allowed to walk on the sidewalk. Although she was just a child, the consequences of this event triggered nightmares and a feeling of being threatened and in danger. In Philadelphia, 1943 the figures are all ambiguous, lacking specific features which allows the viewer to place him or herself in the position of the artist and her family. Miniature replicas of the Liberty Bell are suspended at the top of the painting and are meant to be an ironic commentary on Chan's experience in the "City of Brotherly Love."
In both Philadelphia, 1943 and Not Welcome There, the artist reimagines those instances in which she was silenced and made powerless. Through her art, Chan is able to return to those moments and take control over them, not to change the circumstances but to voice her pain and bear witness to these injustices.
In Chan's piece entitled American Beauties, she comments upon the destructive effects of mainstream standards of beauty on her self-image. As a child, Chan went with her family and friends to the Rose Parade in Pasadena. The beauty contestants that she saw riding on the floats had a significant effect on her. She recalls looking at the women with a mixture of admiration and sadness. Even then she recognized that her own Japanese features separated her from those beauty contestants, making it impossible for Chan to imagine herself in the role of the beauty queen.
On the right panel Chan recreates the parade with the beauty contestants. On the opposite panel Chan paints her self-portrait as a young girl, standing on a ladder trying to look over at the parade. Suspended from this is a Japanese doll wearing a kimono made from an American flag. Over the face of the doll Chan has placed a Caucasian doll's face, masking the Japanese features. In this work, Chan reveals the difficulty of trying to reconcile a desire for validation from the larger society with a search for self-acceptance. Although highly personal, American Beauties speaks to the pain endured by anyone whose appearance does not conform to the beauty standards of a particular society.
In What Makes A House A Home?, Chan depicts her childhood home balanced precariously on the edge of a cavern in the earth. Again Chan paints her self-portrait as a child, this time sitting quietly on the opposite panel from the house. Five jars hang from the frame. The jar on the right contains simply dirt and rock. On the left, the first jar is filled with dirt and broken pieces of Japanese dishes, the second with toys, and the third with an American flag and manila tags with the words "Poston, Arizona" inscribed on them. In the final jar, Chan places a broken mirror as a symbol of the splintered image she had of herself as a young girl.
The significance of Judy Chan's art lies in its ability to make the viewer adopt a new perspective, resulting in, at least, a momentary transformation. Certainly the juxtaposition of Chan's work with the other participating artists will open an even broader terrain for further interpretation and transformation.
Since receiving a Master of Fine Arts from California State University, Long Beach in 1986, Judy Chan has worked from her Long Beach studio creating works on paper with a variety of media. Chan recently received a Visual Artists Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and has exhibited her work throughout Southern California. She also teaches fine art printmaking at Long Beach City College.
‘Tag Project’ Exhibit Connects Generations with WWII Internment History
Inspired by her own family history, artist Wendy Maruyama sought to recreate all of the identification tags used during the forced evacuation. The sheer numbers of tags has been shocking to some.
By Christine McFadden, Correspondent
Published November 19, 2010
The black and white photos taken by prolific photographer Dorthea Lange depict Japanese American families waiting by train tracks to be shipped off to concentration camps. They are sitting on the tops of their few suitcases with solemn expressions. All are pinned with matching identification tags that display their name, an identification number, and the isolated camp they are headed toward. The photos with the tags are haunting snapshots of life pre-camp. For artist Wendy Maruyama, they are both haunting and compelling.
Maruyama, the head of the furniture design and woodworking program at San Diego State University has been a Fulbright scholar to England, so she is no stranger to artistic endeavors. But her most recent project is literally a massive undertaking. After making the decision to research her family history, Maruyama, a Sansei, simultaneously found the launching point for her “Tag Project”: a mission to replicate all 120,000 tags worn by the internees during World War II. She began by replicating 1,011 tags from the internees from her hometowns of San Diego and Chula Vista. From there, Maruyama made the commitment to making all 120,000 tags, looking to reflect and educate the public on the sheer scale and numbers of those incarcerated.
Maruyama’s family was directly affected by the WWII incarceration: her mother’s family took the option to leave the West Coast rather than be shipped to concentration camps, but still lived the lives of displaced peoples — “invisible internees,” as Maruyama called them. They had “equally sad and horrible stories about their experiences.”
“The ‘Tag Project’ started at my mother’s dining room table and it was here that she and my aunt shared their stories,” she reflected. “Unfortunately my grandparents never talked about their experiences but I feel fortunate that I was able to hear the stories through my mother.”
The project, now traveling around the nation, has since sparked more dialogue about the internment while bringing generations of JAs together.
Tale of the Tags
“I remember seeing photos and seeing the Nisei and Issei at the train station with these tags,” said Robert Ito, a Sansei San Diego JACL board member. “[I] always wondered what it was.” After hearing Maruyama present her project to the San Diego JACL board in 2008, he knew he had to get involved. “I just totally embraced it.”
Utilizing his expertise in grant writing, Ito volunteered in 2008 to take the lead in writing a grant application for the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program. Earlier this year, the ‘Tag Project’ received news that it had won the $25,000 grant. “I knew that it was going to resonate with whoever read it [the grant proposal],” he said. Both of Ito’s parents were incarcerated at Poston and his father volunteered for the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. His mother is currently involved with helping string the tags.
The tags, still in the making, have traveled to high schools, colleges, and art galleries across the country: from Tennessee to Tule Lake, from Madison to Manzanar. The process of making the tags began with a phone call from Maruyama to the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles to verify the exact dimensions of the tag from their collection.
“These tags are no longer made in this size so I had 120,000 tags custom made to replicate the exact size of the original,” she said. “I then created rubber stamps of the print that was on the tag.” All of the names on the tags are authentic, drawn from the online National Archives and Records Administration (add.archives.gov). Jean Saito, a Shin Nisei graduate student at San Diego State University and recent volunteer for the “Tag Project,” is currently involved in crosschecking the names on the tags with the electronic database.
“The whole project really intrigued me,” Saito said. “[I’m] making sure we don’t miss anybody’s names, just double-checking.”
Sansei volunteer Tami Joplin first encountered the “Tag Project” at an exhibit at the Escondido Center for the Arts. “I must have looked like a crazy person examining the work after that, since I started going all around it, over and over, reading all the tags to see if I could find my mom’s name, or my grandmother’s, or my aunt’s or any of my uncles ... ,” said Joplin. Joplin brought her mother, Connie (Yahiro) Striklen, a week later to see the tags; what she saw moved her and inspired her to sign up to volunteer. “Sometimes my mom and I would work on the tags at my house, and we would laugh, talk, and discuss the names of the people on the tags,” she said. “Even saying each name in our heads was a way of honoring those who were in the camps.”
Making Tags
To make a tag, a volunteer ties a string to the end of the tag, makes a print from the recreated stamp, writes in the name of the former internee, makes another stamp of the ID number assigned to each internee, and finally writes in the camp name. The tags are then scrunched up, dyed with coffee, and dried with some old-fashioned San Diego sunshine to achieve the aged look. The tags are then bundled into groups of 48 and weaved into strands.
Because the camps are so large, Maruyama can only work on one camp at a time. Thus far, the tags for all of those interned in Gila River, Poston, Manzanar, Rohwer, Minidoka, and Tule Lake have been completed; currently, Maruyama is working on Heart Mountain and Amache.
At the various events and schools the tags are taken to, Maruyama says that the size and dimensions of the tags has sometimes been “overwhelming.”
“ … Suddenly the number of Japanese Americans who were removed from their homes in 1942 [has] some physicality to it: the visual weight and sheer numbers of tags was shocking to some,” she said.
Since initiating the project, Maruyama has experienced a seemingly exponential growth of volunteers ranging from people in their 90s down to “8-year-olds who were ‘tag runners’, taking tags from station to station” at volunteer events.
Many young volunteers immerse themselves in the “Tag Project” as a means of respecting their family’s history. “The project is one way that I am honoring and recognizing my grandparents, my grandparent’s friends, my friend’s grandparents and parents,” wrote volunteer Kaity Sakurai, a senior at San Diego State University, in an e-mail. Sakurai’s grandparents were incarcerated in Crystal City, Texas. “We cannot forget all the hard work and sacrifices that our ancestors have done to get us, Yonsei, decent lives.”
Traveling Tags
In addition to bringing generations and communities closer together, the “Tag Project” has helped to open up dialogue about the incarceration. “Initiating the conversation was not directly one of the goals of the project, but certainly it has created an environment of young people working alongside older JA internees and hearing their stories,” reflected Maruyama.
“I wanted to learn more about what happened … I just love to listen to their stories,” said Saito.
In addition to relating stories of the past, the “Tag Project” has helped some to draw comparisons between the JA incarceration and the present. According to Maruyama, some viewers of the massive amounts of tags draw “parallels to 9/11 and the persecution of Muslim Americans, or even the recent controversy with the Arizona immigration laws.” According to Maruyama, the tags will make their complete debut in 2012 at the new SDSU Downtown Gallery. They are currently based at the Japanese American Historical Society of San Diego.
Following the SDSU Gallery unveiling, one of the camps’ tags will make its way to Boston alongside a work project of Maruyama’s called “E.O. 9066”, a woodworking series started when she was awarded an artist-in-residency position at the State University of New York at Purchase. Following Boston, all of the tags will head south to Charlotte, N.C. to be shown at Queen College. Maruyama then hopes to take the project to two more venues on the West Coast. After the tour, she is looking to send each group of tags to their respective camp interpretative centers. Because not all of the camps have centers, Maruyama hopes that camps such as Tule Lake can use the tags in performances or displays during their pilgrimages.
From ages 9 to 12, Chizuko Judy Sugita de Queiroz lived in an internment camp for Japanese Americans atPoston, Arizona (block 38-7-C). Her father, Yutaka "Joe" Sugita, had owned a nursery in Orange County before the family's forced relocation. Chizuko's mother had died when she was born. Three older brothers and two older sisters also were sent to the camp. A married sister lived in Idaho.
Photo: Chizuko Judy Sugita de Queiroz
The atomic bombs dropped in Japan by the United States, on Aug. 6 and 9 in 1945, marked the end of the war for her family, something they eagerly awaited so they could return home. They later learned her father's entire family in his hometown of Hiroshima, except for a cousin and a great aunt, were killed in the blast.
But Chizuko says the happiest day in her father's life came in the mid-1950s when he was sworn in as a U.S. citizen. They all were happy on V-J Day.
We were in the camp waiting to get a sponsor and a place to live. Then V-J Day happened. We thought, oh good, great, we're going to get out of camp and everything would be fine and my dad would get to start his business again.
Well, they gave each person $7 when we left camp, so there was very little money. Everything had been confiscated and taken away at the beginning of the war. And we still had no sponsor.
My sister, who was working in Pasadena, wrote to the Red Cross several times and asked if my brother (serving in) the U.S. Army could come and help us get out of the camp. It took two letters before his commanding officer let him go. They gave him a week's leave of absence before he was to be shipped out with MacArthur's troops to Japan.
First he went to L.A., got us a hostel to live in. Then he came to camp and took us out.
We were just really joyous. The tumbleweeds were coming through the camp and the Indians were walking through the camp – it was their reservation, of course, that the camp was built on. All the barracks were almost empty.
When we did get to L.A., the brownstone that we were staying in was where Skid Row is now.
My dad and the other men in the brownstone would wait on the porch – sort of like the Mexicans on the corner, waiting for a job – waiting for someone to sponsor them. I think about three months passed and we were just getting really discouraged. No one would offer my dad a job. He was 61.
This one man came and said he had three properties and if Dad would take care of the gardening for the three properties we could have a chicken coop to live in. We were just overjoyed. At last somebody wanted us. At last we were going to get to go and start our lives.
We came to Huntington Beach and my sister would come home from her Pasadena house girl job on the weekends and help us get things organized. We had this little hot plate to cook on. My dad and my two brothers made this Japanese bath house outside. And then they had an outhouse.
We had some friends that had relocated earlier and they took us to our property (in Orange County, near what is now Knott's Berry Farm) from before. Well, everything was gone, except my brothers and my dad had taken the tires off two cars and put the cars up on blocks. There was this Model A Ford that my oldest brother had had before the war. My youngest brother was really a mechanical wonder. He could take things apart and put them back together. With the money my sister made as a house girl and the money my brother made in the Army they were able to order parts from Sears.
My dad started doing gardening with this little Model A Ford ...Dad was able to open his nursery in eight years, in Long Beach on Seventh Street, called the Evergreen Nursery. And it was just great.
We had our life back.
"It was the proudest day of his life," says Chizuko Judy Sugita de Queiroz, as she showed a painting she created from a snapshot after her father was sworn in as a American citizen in the 1950s. She is at left of her father Yutaka Joe Sugita, at right is her sister Mariko Frankie Sugita Fukuda. She says of her father's citizenship: "My dad was very proper, he never smiled in pictures. He said only idiots smiled in pictures. I never really saw him laugh a lot because he would contain any kind of emotion. No crying, no smiling, no laughing kind of thing. Very stoic Japanese American. But when he got his citizenship papers he was just smiling all day long. I'd never seen my dad so happy."
Painter Chizuko Judy Sugita de Queiroz attends and sometimes instructs at an annual painting event at California's Manzanar War Relocation Center started by her mentor Henry Fukuhara. Years ago she had given him this three-inch brush and after his passing the family returned it to her. She used it to paint this tribute to him. She says of her time in camp: "It was very, very depressing for a couple of months. But you know you get over things. We started school in the barracks. I was always a person to do my very best, so I did well in school. I was a good reader and I was a good artist. My teacher was Miss Perry, my first teacher. And she sort of recognized that I had some artistic talent. It sort of gave me some confidence. My dad would always say out of every good comes a little bad and out of every bad comes a little good."
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Artist paints the colors of an internment camp.
By Rebecca Villaneda,
Peninsula News
Chizuko Judy Sugita de Queiroz’s exhibit "Camp Days 1942-1945" was on display at the Palos Verdes Art Center in Rancho Palos Verdes which ended March 8, 2009.
The former Peninsula resident’s paintings, which are for sale, illustrate her 3 years in the World War II concentration camp in Poston, Ariz.
The woman behind the brush strokes of Camp Days 1942-1945 tells her life story like every detail was meant to be.
Borrowing from a favorite saying of her father’s — "Out of every bad comes some good, & out of every good comes some bad" — she has turned any negative in her life to positive & wants to share it with the world.
"Those 3 1/2 years in camp changed my entire life," Chizuko said. "I think the good that came out of the feelings of loneliness & despair, & wanting my mom alive & [life] in camp … I think what really worked for me is I started getting more resilient & I started to get more outgoing, because I had to force myself."
Chizuko’s life in camp followed shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, when she was 9. Her family lived in Orange, Calif., at the time & her father, a Japanese-born immigrant, owned a nursery.
Her mother died from childbirth complications after having Chizuko. Having lived with her aunt, then her oldest sister for a few years each, moving again, this time to the camp, wasn’t a big deal for the "fearful, withdrawn & non-social kid."
Noticing everyone in the camp looked similar, her sister, Lil, explained to her the reasons why she & her family were relocated — a moment that she illustrates in a painting. "I was just so depressed, because I realized then that I was a Jap. That I was the enemy & it was a real terrible feeling," she said. "I always thought I could grow up one day or wake up one day & be blue-eyed & blond. Nothing was impossible in my mind."
"And I always thought my mother would come back to life, because my sister said if I prayed hard enough, my prayers would come true. So I knew before camp that anything was possible, but in camp I realized that was not right....That sort of colored my life," she added.
Camp life
Once "everything sort of loosened up," life behind the barbed wire was safe & people began to take on roles to make do. "The Japanese-Americans started farming the land & they dug all the ditches to bring the water from the Colorado River to the camp," Chizuko said. "They did start farming outside the camp, where people would get passes to work the farm for produce for inside the camp."
Some were paid $12 a month, while other "inmates" made $19, she said, depending on their job. As a fireman, her brother made $16.
"We built a huge society within the camp," she said. "My dad was active....He thought we needed more vegetables & less canned things. Finally, after a year or two, they started sending sacks of rice in, instead of just flour."
Americans volunteered as doctors & teachers, & lived in white houses in the camp, versus the barracks Chizuko & her family called home. Aside from school, & her chores, like washing clothes, Chizuko found solace at the camp’s only library.
"I had a very confined, limited life. I would go to the library, which was half a barrack & about a mile away," she said. "I spent many, many hours in the library. I checked out the same books over & over. It just afforded me a place to go when I couldn’t find anybody."
When President Franklin D. Roosevelt died in 1945, Chizuko’s father gathered the family to mourn his life. She called it the second saddest event while in camp; the first was losing her Uncle Johnny to the war.
"My dad was raised in the Meiji era in Japan...And the attitude people learned was that no matter what your station in life, you do the very best you can & you never hurt anyone else & you never hurt yourself & you make your living honestly," she said. "And always respect your elders & the leaders. He knew that Roosevelt didn’t like [the] Japanese & was instrumental to sending us to the concentration camps, but no matter who your leader is, he’s doing the best he can."
Chizuko admired her father. He came to the United States in 1902. Although he came from a well-to-do family in Japan, he set out to find "his fortune" in San Francisco.
Along with other family members, he ran the Tamura Hotel, & helped Japanese immigrants find jobs & homes. It was very successful until the 1906 earthquake destroyed it. "His fortune just went up & down, up & down, up & down," she said. "And just when he was starting over again, after the depression, he started his nursery in about 1939-40, & it was doing fine, then the war broke out....He never did make it [back] to Japan."
Chizuko’s father became a United States citizen in 1952, when Asians could become naturalized citizens. "He really considered himself an American," she said.
From Arizona to California
Integrating back into life after the camp was difficult for Chizuko. To move out of the camp, the family had to have a sponsor & a place to live. Her oldest brother moved them to a hostel in Los Angeles, which she compared to living back in a barrack. But it was home, until her father was offered work tending the properties of a landowner, who also gave the family a chicken coop to live in.
Eventually her father owned a nursery once again, the family got back on its feet & Chizuko was able to go to college at Long Beach State University & Dominguez Hills University, where she earned both a BFA & an MFA, respectively.
Remembering her days in Poston was not a common topic of conversation as people who lived through it wanted to forget it. "It was a shameful thing, because we were made to feel like 2nd-class citizens or like we did something wrong. And we really didn’t do anything wrong," she said.
The first time she began to talk about camp freely followed a Poston camp reunion. Chizuko was talking to colleagues & couldn’t stop crying. "I think a lot of people have these feelings that they don’t know what to do with," she said. Chizuko chose to paint to get through her memories, although she admits it was painful to get them on canvas. "I just wanted [people] to know that everybody can become very resilient in bad times & not succumb to the things that are happening to them," Chizuko said.
Her daughter, Meigan Everts, who in high school first began to hear about her mother’s past, said the art has been cathartic. "She’s a very caring person, & she really feels a lot of things & this is a way for her to express some of those feelings. And I think it’s really neat that she’s been able to do that," Everts said. "It’s was not a great experience & it was a horrible thing that happened in the United States history, but it’s something that happened. You can’t change the past & you have to work through it."
Said Chizuko, "I started to change completely by saying, ‘I’m going to be a really great American & I’m leaving this junk behind me,’ & I was able to do that."
Chizuko Judy Sugita de Queiroz, a former Palos Verdes High School art teacher.
Artist shares camp memories in Japanese American Museum of SJ exhibit
November 25, 2010
By Erin Yasuda Soto
Artist Chizuko Judy Sugita de Queiroz was 9 years old when she and her family were uprooted from their home in Orange, California and incarcerated in a wartime concentration camp in Poston, Arizona for three years.
Sugita de Queiroz illustrates her childhood memories through watercolors in the traveling exhibit “Camp Days 1942-1945: Childhood Memories of Chizuko Judy Sugita de Queiroz,” which is currently on display at the Japanese American Museum of San Jose until April 30, 2010. The watercolors represent a portion of a collection of 61 paintings.
“My experience in camp was the worst and most unhappy time I’ve had in my entire life. I would not want anyone to experience my feelings of loneliness,” she said. She said that as the youngest of nine children in her family, she often felt left overshadowed by her older siblings.
“Most of the time, I was alone. My sisters and brothers were outgoing and made friends quickly. I was always treated as the baby of the family, so I never talked much. It was terribly hard on me. I had little social skills. So I spent my time in the library, checking out books and reading several a day,” she said.
Prior to becoming an artist, Sugita de Queiroz served as an art teacher. After retiring early from Palos Verdes High School in Southern California, she started painting full time and presenting exhibits. Sugita de Queiroz said that the “Camp Days” paintings arose from her desire to share her experiences with her family.
“I wanted to let my children and grandkids know about my life during that period of my childhood. So I painted from memory my camp days for my one-man show in Laguna Beach,” said Sugita de Queiroz, who resides in Irvine, California.
Sugita de Queiroz said that she felt a tremendous sense of loneliness growing up in camp, especially following the death of her mother. Her father was a bonsai artist who emigrated from Hiroshima, Japan.“My mother died shortly after I was born. I was sent to live with my aunt and uncle when my mother died, then my sister. I loved my father so much and waited for his visits and the time I could leave with him. He was always my inspiration in everything I did. I admired his hard work and his love of bonsai that he did all his life,” said Sugita de Queiroz.
She said that one of her artistic influences growing up was her older sister Lillian, an artist and painter. Sugita de Queiroz depicts Lillian painting a watercolor in the book “Camp Days 1942-1945.” Sugita de Queiroz said she would help to fetch watercolor supplies for Lillian whenever she chose to paint a sunset.
“I loved art and painting because of Lillian and, of course, my artistic father influenced me,” she said. In addition, Sugita de Queiroz said her camp teacher, Miss Perry, recognized her talent and asked her to create paintings for the teachers’ dining room in camp.
Sugita de Queiroz said the process of creating the “Camp Days” exhibit was cathartic for her. “It was very difficult. I was going to do 250 paintings, but by the end of the year I was spent and did not want to relive any more horrendous memories,” she said.
Sugita de Queiroz said her family did not discuss their camp experiences much after they left. “No one in my family talked about camp. And my dad always said, ‘Never dwell on the negative, the past can’t be changed. Concentrate on the now and the future.’ He had such wisdom. It was like the Japanese saying ‘Shikata ga nai’ — it can’t be helped.”
Sugita de Queiroz said that the process of planning her paintings involved drawing on her memories of camp. “I wrote down all my memories, about 250, and just started doing it. Some paintings were so difficult to paint, others easier,” she said.
Sugita de Queiroz said that although she has utilized many media, she especially enjoys painting watercolors. “As an art teacher, I have used all media, ranging from oils, acrylics, pastels, ink and clay. The best aspect of watercolor is its fluidity, immediate-ness, and directness — whether as an atmosphere you wish to convey or as an emotion. It’s a lot of work, but I feel a joy in painting,” she said.
Sugita de Queiroz said that she was strongly influenced as an artist by her friend Henry Fukuhara, a painter. “I have been a watercolor painter for the last 25 years because of my wonderful friend and guru, Henry, who passed away at 96 years old. He was blind for the last five years, but lucid and painting to the end. He was my biggest influence. He truly was the greatest watercolor painter. He was very innovative, distinct and free,” she said.
Sugita de Queiroz said she draws inspiration for her paintings from the world around her. “Everything inspires me: My love of family and nature, as well as what I see, feel, taste and experience. These past few weeks, I have been painting clouds, as it has been quite cloudy and rainy. Everything so lovely, dreary, mysterious, light and dark,” she said.
With a focus on nature, Sugita de Queiroz’s past shows include “Seasons right here” and “Global Warming.” She has also presented other shows focusing on landscapes, seascapes, cityscapes, tree portraits and flowers. Sugita de Queiroz said that she has also been inspired by her travels. “The paintings come out different when you see a new country — whether it’s tea plantations or Mt. Fuji in Japan — and not just photos of your trip. That makes all the difference,” she said.
Sugita de Queiroz said that in addition to her artistic work, she enjoys cooking, shopping, cleaning and taking care of her 11 grandchildren. “My life has been so wonderfully blessed so I am happy just being and living. And art is part of my life,” she said. Ultimately, Sugita de Queiroz said that she hopes that those who view her “Camp Days” art exhibit learn about a painful period in American history. “It is really a message of peace — no more wars, and liberty and justice for all,” she said.
