On February 19, 1942, with the stroke of a pen, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. In a single act, the lives of more than a hundred thousand people of Japanese ancestry were upended. Among them were Izumi Taniguchi, Minoru Tajii, Homei Iseyama and Fusako “Peggy” Nishimura Yorita. They were teenagers, parents, workers and artists. Overnight, they became prisoners of their own government.
The order authorized the forced removal of Japanese immigrants and their American-born children from large swaths of the West Coast, including parts of California, Oregon, Washington and Arizona. Without charges, without trials and without evidence of wrongdoing, families were given days or even hours to dispose of businesses, farms and homes before being herded into what officials called “assembly centers.” In reality, they were detention camps hastily erected at racetracks, fairgrounds and other government properties.
Between 1942 and 1947, nearly 127,000 people of Japanese ancestry were incarcerated, according to Duncan Ryūken Williams, director of The Irei Project, which is compiling a comprehensive list of those detained. Two-thirds were American citizens. Entire communities vanished from coastal towns as armed soldiers supervised forced departures.
Families boarded buses and livestock trucks under military guard. Some were transported on aging World War I-era trains with windows shuttered. They were told little about their destinations. They could carry only what they could hold. What they left behind—homes, heirlooms, livelihoods—often never returned to them.
When Japanese Americans arrived at the temporary detention sites, many were stunned by what awaited them. At places like the Santa Anita racetrack in California and the Puyallup fairgrounds in Washington, families were assigned to horse stalls that still smelled of manure. Others were housed in hastily whitewashed animal pens.
Those assigned to newly built barracks fared little better. The structures were constructed of thin wood and tar paper, with gaps that let in dust, wind and heat. Inside were rows of army cots, a single dangling light bulb and a potbellied stove. There were no partitions for privacy.
Before they could even settle in, detainees were subjected to body searches, fingerprinting and interrogation. The indignity cut deeply. Many had lived in the United States for decades. Some had children serving in the U.S. military even as their families were incarcerated.
In the face of humiliation and uncertainty, they began to build.
Wood scavenged from vegetable crates and construction debris became makeshift walls and furniture. Scrap lumber turned into shelves, cabinets and tables. Curtains fashioned from flour sacks created a semblance of private space. What the government failed to provide, they made themselves.
The impulse to restore dignity extended beyond physical needs. With jobs gone and schools disrupted, detainees organized sports leagues, musical performances and art classes. Baseball diamonds emerged in dusty fields. Handcrafted toys appeared in children’s hands. Community newspapers circulated within camp perimeters.
Resourcefulness born of necessity merged with Japanese aesthetics to transform bleak surroundings into spaces of resilience.
Later in 1942, most detainees were transferred to ten long-term incarceration camps administered by the War Relocation Authority. These camps were located in remote inland regions—from the deserts of Arizona to the swamps of Arkansas and the high plains of Wyoming and Utah. Barbed wire encircled the compounds. Armed guards stood in watchtowers.
Yet even in these harsh landscapes, creativity flourished.
The spirit that animated it is often described by a single Japanese word: gaman. It signifies endurance, patience and the ability to bear the seemingly unbearable with dignity and grace. For many detainees, gaman was not passive acceptance but an active assertion of humanity.
At camps such as Gila River and Poston, located on tribal land in the Mojave Desert, prisoners found unexpected raw materials. Desert ironwood—dense, oil-rich and durable—could be carved and polished into lustrous objects. Slate stones became canvases for intricate engravings. Shells embedded in ancient lakebeds were fashioned into jewelry.
Izumi Taniguchi, a 16-year-old from Contra Costa County, California, was incarcerated at Gila River. As the war progressed, camp authorities permitted limited excursions beyond the fences. Taniguchi recalled walking into the desert to pass the time, gathering ironwood branches others had identified as ideal for sculpting.
Minoru Tajii, 18 and held at Poston, described ironwood as “an oil-rich wood, so when you polish it up it comes out very nice.” He and fellow detainees would scour the desert, haul the heavy pieces back to camp and begin the painstaking work of carving.
The Poston camp newsletter, the Poston Chronicle, advertised a “sculptoring department” where aspiring artists could learn under experienced carvers. “Anyone with ironwood wishing to learn how to make figures and notions may bring their materials,” a January 20, 1943 notice read, reflecting both ingenuity and communal spirit.
At the Topaz camp in Utah, artist Homei Iseyama became known for teapots, teacups, candy dishes and calligraphy inkwells carved from slate he collected nearby. Born in 1890, Iseyama had studied at Waseda University in Tokyo before emigrating to the United States in 1914 with dreams of attending art school. In Topaz’s dusty barracks, he found new purpose in shaping stone into delicate forms.
At Tule Lake, built atop an ancient dry lakebed straddling the California-Oregon border, detainees discovered thick veins of shells beneath the soil. What began as idle digging evolved into a competitive pastime. Fusako “Peggy” Nishimura Yorita, a 33-year-old single mother, became deeply involved in making shell jewelry.
Yorita enlisted her teenage children and friends to dig waist-deep holes at dawn, sifting sand through homemade wire sieves. The shells they unearthed were polished and transformed into necklaces, brooches and earrings. Yorita sold some pieces for modest income, supplementing meager camp wages.
“I was just making new things all the time,” she later recalled. “And to me, it was a wonderful outlet.”
In camps where temperatures soared above 110 degrees in summer and plunged below freezing in winter, art became both refuge and resistance.
The landscapes surrounding the camps were often stark and unforgiving. At Gila River and Poston, dust storms swept through barracks, coating bedding and food. At Topaz, winds howled across open plains. Tule Lake’s alkaline soil irritated lungs and eyes.
Yet detainees cultivated gardens in the desert, coaxing vegetables and flowers from hostile soil. Ponds, bridges and rock arrangements appeared, echoing traditional Japanese garden design. Even the smallest decorative objects—an inkwell carved from slate, a brooch shaped from shell—testified to a determination to create beauty where none seemed possible.
Artisans made geta sandals from scrap lumber. Children fashioned dolls from cloth remnants. Teachers improvised classroom materials. Some prisoners painted landscapes that captured both confinement and vast horizons.
These objects were more than crafts. They were anchors of identity.
For Issei—first-generation immigrants barred by law from becoming U.S. citizens—the incarceration was a bitter culmination of decades of discrimination. For Nisei—their American-born children—it was a shocking betrayal by their own government. Artistic expression allowed both generations to process grief and assert cultural continuity.
The aesthetic principles many carried with them—simplicity, respect for natural materials, attention to detail—merged with American influences and the stark realities of camp life. The result was a distinct body of work that scholars and descendants now recognize as a powerful visual archive of endurance.
While art provided solace, it did not erase hardship.
Detainees lost farms, fishing boats, grocery stores and professional practices. Many were forced to sell property at a fraction of its value. Upon release, few could return to their prewar lives.
Young men volunteered or were drafted into the U.S. military even as their families remained behind barbed wire. The 442nd Regimental Combat Team, composed largely of Japanese American soldiers, became one of the most decorated units in U.S. military history. Their service underscored the contradiction at the heart of the incarceration policy.
In 1944, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the exclusion orders in Korematsu v. United States, a decision widely condemned in later decades. Camps began closing in 1945 as the war ended, but some detainees remained until 1946 and 1947.
When released, each adult was given $25 and a one-way bus or train ticket. They were instructed to rebuild their lives wherever they chose—often in cities where they had no prior ties.
Many carried with them the handcrafted items they had created in confinement. These objects became tangible reminders of survival.
One former internee recalled carefully wrapping a small wooden chest his father had built from crate wood. Another saved carved figurines through multiple moves across states. Jewelry fashioned from desert shells adorned new beginnings.
The objects embodied more than memory. They carried stories of resilience.
Among the most poignant artifacts of camp life are items made by parents for their children.
One survivor remembered receiving a small tansu chest her father crafted from salvaged crate wood. Feeling sorry that his daughter had no proper place to store her belongings, he meticulously assembled the chest in the cramped barracks.
To enhance the grain of the rough wood, he heated a hotplate and pressed it against the panels, deepening their color. With a penknife, he carved traditional Japanese scenes into the surface. The chest, fragile yet enduring, represented paternal love expressed under confinement.
For descendants, such heirlooms are touchstones of both trauma and tenderness.
Eight decades after Executive Order 9066 was issued, researchers continue to explore the psychological and social impact of incarceration on survivors and their descendants. Studies suggest that trauma reverberated across generations, influencing identity, trust in government and community cohesion.
Many former internees were reluctant to speak about their experiences for decades. Silence, another form of gaman, shielded children from painful memories but also left gaps in family narratives.
In recent years, oral history projects and community archives have sought to preserve testimonies before they are lost. The Irei Project aims to compile the names of all who were incarcerated, restoring individual identities to what can otherwise seem like an abstract statistic.
Memorials now stand at former camp sites. Pilgrimages draw survivors and younger generations to places once defined by barbed wire. Educational programs incorporate camp histories into curricula, emphasizing civil liberties and constitutional rights.
February 19 is observed annually as the Day of Remembrance, marking the signing of Executive Order 9066. Across the United States, ceremonies, exhibitions and lectures honor those who endured incarceration.
The date serves as a reminder of how fear and prejudice can erode democratic principles. It also highlights the resilience displayed by those who refused to let confinement define their humanity.
At commemorations, descendants often display camp-made objects: carved wooden bowls, shell necklaces, ink drawings and furniture fashioned from scrap. Each piece carries layered meaning—evidence of injustice and of creativity.
The “art of gaman” is not merely historical. It resonates in contemporary conversations about civil rights, immigration and national security. The story of Japanese American incarceration warns against policies driven by racial profiling and wartime hysteria.
The incarceration of Japanese Americans remains one of the most sweeping violations of civil liberties in U.S. history. In 1988, the Civil Liberties Act formally apologized and provided symbolic reparations to surviving internees, acknowledging that the actions were based on “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.”
Yet acknowledgment does not erase the past.
For families whose grandparents boarded guarded trains without knowing their destination, the legacy endures in stories told at dinner tables and in cherished artifacts kept in drawers and display cases.
The carved ironwood figures from Poston, the slate teapots from Topaz, the shell jewelry from Tule Lake—all testify to an enduring truth: even in confinement, creativity can assert freedom of spirit.
As scholars delve deeper into the intergenerational impacts, they underscore that remembrance is not only about honoring suffering but also about recognizing resilience.
On this Day of Remembrance, Americans are invited to reflect on the fragility of rights and the strength found in community. The art produced in camps was born of deprivation, yet it radiated beauty. It transformed desert branches, rocks and shells into symbols of perseverance.
The lives of Izumi Taniguchi, Minoru Tajii, Homei Iseyama and Peggy Yorita were irrevocably altered on February 19, 1942. But through gaman, they and thousands like them carved dignity from desolation.
Their creations endure as quiet yet powerful rebukes to injustice—and as reminders that even behind barbed wire, the human spirit seeks, and often finds, light.c
