Tessaku: Art of Resilience

 By Diana Emiko Tsuchida, designed by Stefanie Yniguez.

Tessaku 鉄柵 (iron fence) was the name of a journal of Japanese fiction, poetry and essays published from March 1944 to July 1945 in the Tule lake Segregation Center during World War II. This journal series and oral history project is inspired by the spirit of the original Tessaku, and showcases stories from families who experienced the incarceration, as told by the survivors themselves or their descendants. The Tessaku oral history project began as a personal family history exploration in 2015. 

Across all of the ten concentration camps, Japanese Americans maintained hope and optimism through creative expressions that spanned all genres and practices. From painting to wood carving, music to poetry, Issei and Nisei continued to preserve their artistic practices despite the conditions and limited resources of the camps. The Art of Resilience highlights just a few of those people who carried on with their art, despite their incarceration. This issue includes interviews and the reprinting of artwork by Military Intelligence Service veteran Masao (Tom) Inada, who was hired by an animation studio in New York during the war but was then drafted for service in Japan; Nisei watercolorist Harry Yoshizumi, who painted extensively in Poston; the "Songbird of Manzanar" Mary Nomura, who sang in what is the only known recording made in any of the camps; the powerful poetry of Issei Akira Togawa, and an interview with Yonsei Sam Hamashima, who interprets his own family's incarceration trauma through stage performance today. 

Paper: 62 pp. 

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