This is a really interesting NPR story on The Art of Gaman, a showcase of arts and crafts made by Japanese Americans in U.S. internment camps during World War II, now on display at Smithsonian's Renwick Gallery in Washington D.C.: The Creative Art Of Coping In Japanese Internment.
The exhibit is curated by Delphine Hirasuna, a third-generation Japanese American who was inspired when she stumbled upon her family's old internment-era camp-made trinkets:
Delphine Hirasuna, a third-generation Japanese-American, was organizing family belongings after her mother's death and found a bird pin that belonged to her mother, stashed away in an old wooden box in the garage. Lacquered, with shades of brown and yellow - it was this pin that inspired the exhibit at the Renwick.The exhibit ranges from paintings, to photographs, to carvings and furntiure -- all items fashioned behind barb wire, during one of America's darkest moments. For more information about the exhibit, which runs through January 30, visit the Smithsonian Art Museum website here.
Hirasuna found many other trinkets from her family's time in internment, and began asking around for other camp-made objects. She began going house to house in California farm country.
"When I asked them if they had anything, they would go into their sheds ... and they would haul out this dusty box," Hirasuna says. "And the items in the box would still be wrapped in newspaper from 1945. So it was pretty obvious to me that they never looked at it when they brought it back from camp."