My artifact is the painting, “Painting of men observing cloud formations,” by Kango Takamura. Takamura was an artist who, like many other Japanese Americans, was incarcerated during World War II. Takamura’s painting is an example of the art that many incarcerated Japanese Americans produced to document their experiences. Paintings and other works of art were significant for incarcerated Japanese Americans because they were a means to share their perspective. Since the government not only confiscated cameras and other tools for internees to document their own perspectives, but also released propagandistic photos of the incarceration camps, incarcerated Japanese Americans relied on artists and writers to record their experiences.

Paintings, like my artifact, were a medium to express the struggle of the identity crisis faced by Japanese Americans. In the face of incarceration, Japanese Americans had to reconcile their identity as American citizens with the blatant violation of their citizenship that was incarceration. The responses to this violation were myriad; for some it was enough to find solace in the beauty of the landscape, while for others, nothing short of renouncing their Japanese heritage would validate their Americanness. Takamura, a Japanese immigrant or Issei, painted beautiful images of camp. Even so, these portraits could be ironic portrayals of a deep pain: the loss of patriarchal authority while incarcerated. First-generation Japanese American, Nisei, artists, in contrast would blatantly paint painful portraits of their citizenship denied. In the contrast between the art of younger and older generations, we see a reflection of intergenerational trauma that starts with the undermining of authority in the first generation which is worsened by the denial of identity in the second generation. We see this intergenerational trauma in Japanese Americans living through incarceration as well as Asian Americans largely throughout history.

A common misconception of Asian American history is that peoples’ experiences are homogeneous. By viewing Japanese American artists during World War II as a community which acted to represent the voices of their incarcerated contemporaries, we come to better understand the distinct roles taken on by specific Asian American individuals and communities. These Asian American artists, like Takamura, used their paintings to convey overarching themes about the Asian American experience. In Takamura’s optimistic paintings, we see his individual perspective while still coming to understand how diverse individual perspectives reinforce these overarching themes about citizenship and intergenerational relationships that are universal in Asian American history.

Key Words: Art, Citizenship, Identity, Intergenerational Relations, Japanese American