Held captive in their own country during World War II, Japanese Americans used nature to cope with their unjustified imprisonment

With a stroke of a presidential pen, the lives of Izumi Taniguchi, Minoru Tajii, Homei Iseyama and Peggy Yorita irreparably changed on Feb. 19, 1942. On that day, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued , which set in motion their wartime incarceration along with other people of Japanese ancestry who were forcibly removed from their homes in parts of California, Oregon, Washington and Arizona.

To cope with their fear, anger and loss in the turbulent times, they would have to dig deep into their emotional reservoirs of resolve and ingenuity.

Without bringing charges against them or providing any evidence of disloyalty, the U.S. government detained legal Japanese immigrants and their American-born descendants in desolate inland locations during and after World War II, simply because of their ethnicity. were incarcerated between 1942 and 1947, according to , director of , which is compiling a comprehensive list of those detained. My grandparents, parents and their families were among them.

As I describe in my book “,” they boarded livestock trucks and World War I-era trains guarded by armed U.S. soldiers for destinations that were not disclosed to them. They could only take what they could carry and what they had within themselves.

When the Japanese Americans arrived at temporary detention facilities, euphemistically called “,” hastily constructed on fairgrounds, racetracks and other government property, they were shocked to be body-searched, fingerprinted and interrogated. Thousands discovered their living quarters were animal pens or horse stalls. The ones considered lucky were assigned to poorly built barracks. The barracks had only cots, bare light bulbs hanging from the ceilings, and pot belly stoves in the corners; the interiors lacked any partitions.

Immediately they they found nearby to create privacy within the barracks units and to make furniture and other household furnishings. Displaced from their livelihoods, education and social structure, with nothing to do, they also quickly organized a wide range of activities, including of all kinds. Their resourcefulness born out of necessity converged with the Japanese aesthetic to as they sought to make their temporary quarters more livable.

When the prisoners were transferred to run by the later in 1942, they brought with them what Delphine Hirasuna, an author and descendant of people who had been incarcerated during the war, calls the “.” “Gaman” is a Japanese word meaning the dignity and grace to bear the seemingly unbearable. With this philosophy, they created .

Finding beauty in branches, rocks and shells

At the and located on tribal land in the Mojave Desert, incarcerees found that desert wood could be carved, filed and polished to make partitions, household objects and works of art.

Armed soldiers guarded the barbed-wire perimeters from lookout towers, but as the war wore on, the incarcerees were allowed to venture beyond the camp fences. Izumi Taniguchi, then 16 years old from Contra Costa County, California, recalled the Gila River camp boundaries to while away the time.

He remembered, that . Minoru Tajii, then 18 years old from El Centro, California, held at the Poston camp, described ironwood as “an oil-rich wood, so when you polish it up it comes out very nice, so .”

The Poston “sculptoring department” advertised in the camp newsletter “Poston Chronicle” on Jan. 20, 1943, that “ to learn how to make figures and notions may bring their materials to the department, 44-13-D, and work under the guidance of sculptoring teachers.”

Homei Iseyama, from Oakland, California, became known for the exquisite teapots, teacups, candy dishes and calligraphy inkwells he carved out of slate stones he found around the . Born in 1890, he attended Waseda University in Tokyo before immigrating to the United States in 1914 with dreams of attending art school.

At the , located on an ancient lake bed, the incarcerees discovered thick veins of shells that provided material for making art and jewelry. got very involved in making shell jewelry. As digging for shells became a popular and competitive pastime for the Tule Lake incarcerees, Yorita enlisted her two teenagers and friends to help dig waist-deep holes at sunrise and sift the sand with homemade wire sieves.

A 33-year-old single mother, Yorita sold her shell jewelry to make a little money. She also enjoyed the creative endeavor. She recalled: “.”

As the incarcerees were allowed to leave the camps, they were given $25 and a one-way bus or train ticket to wherever they were going to . Many took with them their handcrafted objects, reminders of how they overcame the physical and mental harshness of their detention years.

When my mother entrusted to me the fragile small tansu chest that her father made for her in camp out of crate wood, she told me that her father had felt sorry for her that she didn’t have anyplace to store her belongings. To improve the appearance of the wood, my grandfather placed a hotplate on the pieces to deepen the grain. My mother appreciated the care he took to carve traditional Japanese scenes onto the panels with a pen knife. She said the chest represented to her the depth of her father’s love.

Eight decades after Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, researchers are delving into the that the incarceration has had on the camp survivors and their descendants. Memorials such as seek to restore dignity to those who suffered unconstitutional injustices. On Feb. 19, known annually as the , Americans can honor them by appreciating their “art of gaman,” testaments to their resilient spirit as they found and created beauty in their wartime environments.