The Role of Art Education in the Japanese American Concentration Camps

Abstract

During World War II, from 1942 until around 1945, persons of Japanese ancestry living in America’s West Coast region were evacuated to concentration camps located in remote, isolated interior regions of the country. Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans, young and old, were forced to live under unfamiliar and harsh conditions. The internees sought to mitigate the trauma of incarceration with a variety of activities, one of which was art. In this historical investigation, the researcher examined the role of art education in the Japanese American Concentration Camps. The investigator sought to explore the methods and motivations of art instructors, some of whom were internees themselves, in a variety of pedagogical settings. The researcher examined and analyzed a variety of camp documents to discover what kinds of potential outcomes or expectations art educators intended for their students and whether their goals were technical, therapeutic documentary or some combination of these. The researcher believes that the study has led to a more complete understanding of how art instruction may have influenced art created in the Japanese Concentration Camps.