With so much anti-immigration language floating around these days,
not to mention words like "deportation" and "internment" being used by certain
heinous political figures, I thought it might be time to revisit this posting
about the Morikami Gardens and Wendy Maruyama's striking
"Tag Project" exhibited there last year.
I was recently drawn
to visit the elegant Morikami Museum and Gardens, in Delray, Florida, by a traveling design exhibition about the internment of 120,000 Japanese people
living in the US during World War II. Called Executive Order 9066, the
show is a powerful, wise and timely evocation of a disgraceful chapter in American history. I will describe it in greater detail below,
but first, some highlights from a brief but most enjoyable walk through 16 acres of Morikami's enchanting gardens ...
Karesansui ("dry landscape") Late Rock Garden
photo by Judy Polan
In this gardening style, rocks rather than plants
have primary focus, and are arranged in a
bed of raked gravel.
Morikami Falls January 2016
all photos by Michael Schonbach
unless otherwise noted
Hiraniwa Flat Garden
(17th - 18th C. Zen pebble garden)
Evolving from late rock gardens, flat gardens make more
liberal use of plantings, and often incorporate outside elements
through a design technique called "borrowed scenery" (shakkei).
Taken on the bridge to Yamato Island
The Morikami Gardens were a gift to Palm Beach County from 80-year-old Japanese immigrant George Sukeji Morikami. He donated his land
with the provision that it become a park preserving
the memory of the Yamato Colony in his home country,
and also with the hope of strengthening the bond between
American and Japanese culture.
° ° ° ° ° ° ° °
Time out to share a Bento Box at the museum's Cornell Café
A beautifully presented assortment of chicken teriyaki, salmon
teriyaki, dumplings, rice, Asian eggplant,
shrimp, golden tofu,
egg roll and sushi roll pieces... yum!
... then on to the Wendy Maruyama exhibition
Executive Order 9066
on view through Sunday, January 31, 2016
Above: Members of the Mochida family awaiting an evacuation bus
in Hayward, Calif. Mochida operated a nursery and five greenhouses
in Eden Township. He raised snapdragons and sweetpeas.
Photograph by Dorothea Lange
The artist
Professor Emeritus and Program Head of Furniture Design
Program at San Diego State College
photo courtesy of Morikami.org
Wendy Maruyama, a third-generation Japanese American, is a furniture maker,
artist and educator who has long been interested in issues of social justice.
Her multi-part exhibition Executive Order 9066 comemmorates
the 70th anniversary of the closing of the last detention camp
where, during World War II, approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans
were interned. There were 10 camps spread throughout California,
Colorado, Arizona, Utah and Wyoming.
Two-thirds of the evacuees were American citizens.
Their lives were shattered because they "looked like the enemy."
The Tag Project consists of tens of thousands of reproductions of the paper identification tags that internees were forced to wear when they were being relocated. Although the tags' purpose was benign -- to keep members of families and their belongings from being separated -- they caused humiliation and distress to the evacuees. The tags are grouped into ten tree-like bundles and suspended from the ceiling, each bundle representing one of the camps. The vast number of people displaced by FDR's executive order of 1942 is devastatingly represented here.
Maruyama obtained lists of evacuees from US government
databases, and -- with the help of hundreds of volunteers --
created exact replicas of the tags for each. The paper was dipped in
coffee to give it a brownish, weathered look.
 |
| The Aso Family -- grandfather Sakutaro, 70, Shigeo, 3, and his brother, Sadao Bill, 6 Photograph by Dorothea Lange 
Dressed in her best clothes, Mae Yanagi, 7, waits with her pregnant mother,
Kinuye Yanagi, right, to be bused to housing in the Tanforan, CA
Assembly Center by the War Relocation Authority.
Photograph by Dorothea Lange
|
Artifacts from detainees are poignantly displayed in the exhibition.
People were allowed to take with them only what they could carry by hand.
Below, lost suitcases and handmade bamboo
fishing poles (mounted on red wall).
Photo courtesy of Morikami.org
Life in the detention centers was grim and disorienting. One pursuit that the
detainees were allowed, once they had gained the trust of their guards,
was to create handcrafted decorative and functional objects.
Many prisoners, years later, attributed their woodworking, cooking,
metalcrafting and cooking with alleviating excruciating boredom and despair.
metalcrafting and cooking with alleviating excruciating boredom and despair.
Art objects made at the camps were known as "gaman",
a Zen term meaning "to persevere, to endure the seemingly
unbearable with patience and dignity."
Baby bird pins; metal, pigment and wood, 1946
Made in Poston, AZ by Yukie Goto, as a gift to fellow internee Yone Yushioka
Made in Poston, AZ by Yukie Goto, as a gift to fellow internee Yone Yushioka
Right: Copper sprinkler can
Made in Poston III camp
by Kasuke Hashiguchi
Below: Girl's Day (Hinamatsuri), wood and tar paper, Wendy Moruyama, 2011
This wall sculpture speaks eloquently of the detainee experience.
For more information about Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens and
nice post
ReplyDeleteThanks -- glad you enjoyed it!
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