By Suzi Parker
LITTLE ROCK, Ark | Sat Sep 10, 2011 3:52pm EDT
LITTLE ROCK, Ark (Reuters) - For decades, Mable Rose Jamison Vogel hauled trunks of art and documents -- bits and pieces of a remarkable chapter in American history -- around the country whenever she moved.
Created by Japanese Americans while they were held captive in Arkansas camps during World War II, the paintings, sculptures, carved wooden bird pins and even a belt made from an orange electrical cord told stories of daily life in a dark era in American history.
Vogel was one of their art teachers, encouraging them to decorate their dire surroundings. Her efforts helped preserve the tales of tens of thousands of Americans who were forced into camps by the U.S. government after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor.
This weekend, "The Art of Living" exhibit opens at the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies in Little Rock. with more than 100 artifacts from Vogel's collection and additional pieces by twin sisters Kazuko Tanaka and Yetsuko Saguchi, who were interned at Rohwer.
"There has been a groundswell of interest in this history," said Nathania Sawyer, the exhibit's producer. "This collection gives a very deep picture of how these people were using art in their everyday life."
The government operated 10 camps during World War II in Arkansas, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, California and Idaho. Several other states had temporary camps.
After the Pearl Harbor bombing in 1941, military leaders feared that Japanese Americans on the West Coast posed a national threat. The government forced 110,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans living along the Pacific Coast into what President Franklin D. Roosevelt called "concentration camps" in sparse areas. More than half of them were American citizens.
They were allowed little time to settle business affairs or sell or store their belongings. They were instructed to bring only what they could carry, including bedding and dishes. Once at camp, families lived in cramped single-room quarters until the end of the war. They worked the land, and children attended school. Each camp had its own mayor and police department.
Art was both a popular pastime and an escape from life in dire conditions. At some camps, jazz bands became popular.
The Japanese Americans in Arkansas collected and made materials for their art. One landscape in the collection was painted on discarded denim. Cardboard and box tops were used as canvases. Discarded wood and wire were transformed into sculptures. Burlap became woven rugs.
"Jamie Vogel was so diligent in preserving this story," Sawyer said. "She was very interested in these students and the people who were doing art in the camps. Over the years, she loaned it out, put on exhibitions all over the country and kept the story alive. It offers a very deep picture and how these people were using art in their everyday life."
Jennifer Carmen, a fine and decorative art appraiser in Little Rock, calls the Vogel collection "unique among internment collections" in its vast scope of documenting day-to-day life in the camp.
In June, the National Park Service awarded 24 grants totaling $2.9 million to preserve these sites and interpret Japanese American life during this era.
In 2006, Congress established the grants program to give up to $38 million after President Clinton, in 2000, recommended that the Department of Interior preserve this part of history.
The first grants were awarded in 2009.
Arkansas, which received three grants this year, was the only Southern state to have camps. For the last 10 years, Arkansas has hosted various educational events about the two camps.
In 2004, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock created a series of events called "Life Interrupted," which included a reunion of 1,300 people who had lived in the camps.
Star Trek star George Takei, whose family was sent to Rohwer, attended the event.
The art ended up at the Butler Center after decades of efforts by Vogel and her friend, Rosalie Santine Gould, a former mayor of Gould, Ark.
When she died in 1994, she left a substantial part of the collection to Santine Gould, who has spent her life preserving the story of the two camps at Jerome and Rohwer, Ark., about 100 miles south of Little Rock.
Last year, Gould gave the collection, which was sought by many major art museums, to the Butler Center.
(Edited by Karen Brooks and Greg McCune)
