Activists prevent artifact sale

This week, a grass-roots movement led by Japanese American organizations and social activists prevented the auction of 450 artifacts from the internment camps that housed approximately 110,000 Japanese and Japanese-Americans during WWII. The auction was to take place on April 17 through New Jersey-based Rago Arts and Auction House.

The original owner of the collection, Allen H. Eaton, was given most of the artifacts as he worked on his book, Beauty Behind Barbed Wire: The Arts of the Japanese In Our War Relocation Camps. “They offered to give me things to the point of embarrassment, but not to sell them,” Eaton wrote in the book, published in 1952 with a foreword by Eleanor Roosevelt. Eaton adamantly opposed the forced incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII.

The items include paintings, jewelry, flower pots, furniture, carved wood panels and even name plates from the internment camps, with listed prices ranging from $400 to $1,800.

“At first, the vast majority of people interned didn’t want to remember it, let alone talk about it … The people who gave the work to Eaton wanted to preserve this history and pass it down,” said Bruce Embry, Co-Chair of the Manzanar Committee in Los Angeles. The Committee hosts the annual pilgrimage to the Manzanar War Relocation Camp in the Owens Valley.

“People gave it to Eaton with the intent to tell the story,” Embry continued. “On some abstract level, the wooden carvings, paintings, and tools are central to bringing to life the hardships they endured and their resistance to the injustice they faced.”

The seller, who remains anonymous, inherited the collection from Eaton’s daughter. A statement from the auction house said that the seller is not in a financial position to donate the items and did not feel qualified to decide which institution should receive them. “He felt that selling at auction was the best way to expose the property publicity to all,” the statement read. “It has been our hope from the start that all these pieces would find their way back either to families or to museums for display, research and education.”

“If Eaton’s decedents don’t feel qualified to make the decisions then turn it over to a larger stakeholder group who can help,” Embry responded. “This material should be examined and not rushed into the market to make a quick buck. These are historical artifacts that tell stories. We’re not saying not to donate or sell [the artifacts]. We’re just saying take inventory, take stock of it.”

Although none of the items in the collection are directly from Manzanar to Embry’s knowledge, artwork is a large part of Manzanar’s history— the most notable artwork being Toyo Miyatake’s photographs and Henry Fukuhara’s watercolors. Art, including fashioning tools and furniture, was a way to “humanize this inhumane place,” Embry said.

The Manzanar Committee joined many others in opposition to the auction.

Yoshinori “Toso” Himel and his wife Barbara Takei, after recognizing a photograph of his mother on the auction page, started the “Japanese American History Not For Sale” Facebook page, which accumulated almost 6,000 likes since April 8. “Someone was seeking to make a profit off my mom’s suffering. The war destroyed her family,” Himel told the Sacramento Bee on Monday.

Since the items were posted on the auction page on April 1, many other Japanese Americans have discovered direct connections to some of the items.

Doctor Satsuki Ina, who was born in the Tule Lake Camp in 1944, created a change.org petition in an attempt to stop the auction. The petition, which has received over 6,000 signatures, states, “It is a betrayal of those imprisoned people who thought their gifts would be used to educate, not be sold to the highest bidder in a national auction, pitting families against museums against private collectors … These items were not meant to be viewed in the privacy of a collector’s home and … a price tag should not be put on our cultural property.”

The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation (HMWF), with a mission to preserve the Heart Mountain Relocation Center, offered to pay the sellers more than the estimated auction value for the collection with the intent to work with several Japanese American institutions and organizations to preserve and exhibit the items. The offer was rejected April 13.

“Over the last several days, we have worked in good faith with the consignor through Rago to find a positive resolution that would end the auction,” said HMWF Executive Director Brian Liesinger in a press release. “The fact that we were met with rejection on all of our appeals—and the Japanese American community’s appeals—is baffling.”

On April 15, HMWF told the Auction House they intended to file lawsuit in an effort to preserve the artifacts. Hours later, the auction items were removed.

“We are more than pleased that Rago Arts and Auction has decided to withdraw the artifacts from Friday’s auction, and has responded to the outcry from many, especially those who were unjustly incarcerated during World War II,” Embry said in a press release Thursday morning. But “While we salute Rago Arts and Auction for withdrawing the items from auction, we note that the artifacts are not yet in our community’s possession.”

For now, the items have been removed from the auction block and packed away, according to Rago. Star Trek actor George Takei will act as mediator between the auction house and Japanese-American institutions to find a suitable home for the artifacts, according to reports on the Facebook page.

“Whether it be Native American artifacts, or items from the Holocaust or slavery, it is simply not acceptable for anyone to profit from the personal treasures or possessions of an oppressed people,” Embry said. “The artifacts and possessions must be used to educate broader society about the true nature of America’s concentration camps. This was, in fact, the very reason Allen H. Eaton sought, and was given, these items.”