Life in the Incarceration Camps

To house 125,000 people of Japanese descent – more than 2,300 busloads of people – the WRA constructed 10 permanent incarceration camps. For every 200-300 people, there was usually one mess hall and one primitive bath, toilet, and laundry facility. Aiming to create the illusion of self-sufficient “towns,” the WRA also added co-op stores, canteens, churches, movie theaters, beauty parlors, and barbershops.

Poorly constructed barracks were usually divided into four to six small rooms. Each room contained military cots, a coal-fired air cooler, and one light bulb. Gaps between the barrack walls and floorboards let in dust, sand, and critters. Inmates fashioned curtains, pieced together furniture from scrap lumber, and added wallboards to make their quarters more livable.

Denied their rights and forced to survive in harsh conditions, many engaged in artistic activity to relieve boredom and to improve their surroundings. The inventive objects that resulted fit the Japanese term of gaman: “enduring the seemingly unbearable with patience and dignity.”

As Delphine Hirasuna, author of the Art of Gaman, writes, “In the camps, virtually nothing was thrown away without first examining it for its craft-making possibilities. Packing crates and cardboard boxes were dismantled and turned into backing for artwork…Gunnysacks and burlap were unraveled and rewoven into rugs…Toothbrush handles were scraped down and shaped into tiny pendants and trinkets.”