Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, many people of Japanese descent living in America were sent to internment camps. Artist Henry Sugimoto and his family were interned in Arkansas. But at first they were placed in a holding facility in their home state of California, and Madeleine, Sugimoto’s young daughter, asked when they could go back home. In the painting Madeleine points towards the Golden Gate Bridge and the Los Angeles courthouse as she reaches for her mother.

Two transparent light beams emanate at an acute angle from the right vertical border of the painting. The angled beams and the angled overlapping buildings simultaneously break up the picture and unite its various elements. Features of the Arkansas camp are: a coiled rattlesnake stretching its head toward the child, a squirrel sitting on a log, an ax resting propped up against the log, a large sunflower, and the ubiquitous watchtower of Sugimoto’s camp paintings. In the upper right hand corner a lightning bolt tears vertically through the dark blue-black sky, reminiscent of the calamity that struck the Sugimoto family. The painting highlights the human consequences of political decisions

Jerome Camp, Block 2

Japanese American artist Henry Sugimoto (1900-1990) depicted life in the Arkansas internment camps into which he and his entire family (including wife and child) and many others of Japanese descent were forced, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Sugimoto’s life and painting were profoundly influenced by his incarceration. His subjects changed from landscapes to scenes of camp life and the Japanese emigration/immigration experience; these works often had social and political purpose. This scene is bleak, almost colorless; the sky is cloudy. Barracks stretch on either side of a narrow road in repetitive monotony. Too lone figures are the only people in sight and the only vegetation detectable, besides marsh grass, is the sketchy outline of treetops in the distance. Sugimoto told an interviewer that he used to go to the edge of the camp and try to imagine the Arkansas landscape beyond. 

Nisei Babies in Concentration Camp

Children were born during the 1940s internment of Japanese Americans – life went on. Second generation Japanese (Nisei) who were U.S. citizens by law were incarcerated along with their parents. Perhaps the children in this picture are faceless because Americans were treating people of Japanese descent as one deindividualized and dehumanized entity, to be viewed with suspicion and distrust. This painting juxtaposes helpless infants with military might and barbed wire. Sugimoto uses the term, “concentration camp” in labeling the scene, while the U.S. government called them “relocation camps” (people were relocated from the West Coast to the U.S. interior).

Harsh Canvas: Henry Sugimoto

An earlier version of this review was published in the NYU Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database (Litmed).
Henry Sugimoto’s Self Portrait from Wiki Commons