Gaman

Forgotten, unlamented, lost in the dusty corners of time,

An extraordinary story, shameful and long ignored,

A blot on our nation's soul,

Laden with latent racism

Sanctioned by our government,

Finally emerges in the form of exquisite art,

Giving voice to the gaman from which it came.

During a world war Americans born in Japan were interned,

An egregious euphemism for imprisoned,

As their neighbors watched and applauded

Their government betray its' essential core,

While the internees responded with gaman.

Stripped of their cherished possessions,

Forcibly removed to hastily built desert camps,

Their living quarters little better than stables,

They bore an undeserved and cruel fate

With gaman.

The cauldron of psychic and physical pain,

An alchemy of loneliness, despair, and boredom,

Transformed the detritus of quotidian life

Into the extraordinary art of gaman.

Delicately fashioned bird pins, furniture from scrap lumber,

Intricately woven baskets of twine, musical instruments,

Toys, teapots, a Noguchi sculpture, and poignantly evocative paintings,

Created from the ephemera of exile

With gaman, enduring the unendurable with patience and grace.

Endnote: Written after viewing "The Art of Gaman" at the Renwick Museum, Washington D.C. in April 2010. The exhibit features more than 120 objects, most of which are on loan from former internees and their families. These were produced between 1942-1946 when 120,000 Japanese Americans in California were forcibly relocated to internment camps for the duration of WW II.