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Sunset, Water Tower, Topaz" (watercolor, 1943)

"Dust Storm, Topaz" (watercolor, 1943)

Topaz Moon: Chiura Obata's Art of the Internment

Kimi Kodani Hill, Introduction by Timothy Anglin Burgard
Foreword by Ruth Asawa

168 pages, (8 x 8), with 93 b&w illustrations, 24 color plates
Trade paper, ISBN: 1-890771-26-0, $22.50

Chiura Obata was one of more than 100,000 Japanese Americans forcefully relocated from their homes, work, and communities to the stark barracks of desert internment camps during World War II. As an artist faithfully recording the world around him, Obata's work from this period gives us a view into the camps that is at once honest in the details of austerity and hardship, and strikingly lyrical in its portrayal of hope and beauty even in incarceration.

Topaz Moon brings together more than 100 paintings and sketches from Obata's internment period, from the stables at Tanforan, California, to the barracks in Topaz, Utah. Edited by his granddaughter Kimi Kodani Hill, these images are accompanied by a text that draws heavily upon the letters of Obata and his wife, Haruko, family documents, and interviews with family and friends.

This book is a testament to Obata's artistic genius and undefeatable spirit. In this master's hand, we see a record of the internment that both acknowledges and transcends the sorrows and humiliation of the time.

Reviews:

"In 1942 much was summarily taken from Japanese Americans: their liberty, their property, their right to equal protection under the law. No one, however, could take from them their integrity, their family unity, their capacity to prevail, or, as this book shows, their ability to bear witness through the prisms of memory and art to what was being done to them. Here now, from one master artist, are the on-the-scene images of isolation and loneliness—and the special transcendence that comes when beauty points to a larger hope."—Dr. Kevin Starr, State Librarian of California

"Topaz Moon reveals the depth of Chiura ObataÕs artistic achievement. His words and art capture the tumultuous period of the Japanese American incarceration."—Karin Higa, Senior Curator of Art, Japanese American National Museum

"Obata's images—lyrical, harsh, haunting, evocative—give us the stories words can't tell."—Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, author, Farewell to Manzanar

Author Biography:

Chiura Obata (1885-1975) was born in Japan and came to California in 1903. A master in the traditional Japanese sumi ink and brush technique, he also excelled in art education and taught at the University of California, Berkeley from 1932 until 1954, except for his years of internment. Other works were previously published in the book ObataÕs Yosemite (Yosemite Association, 1993).

Kimi Kodani Hill is the granddaughter of Chiura Obata, and the Obata family historian. A graduate of the University of California, Berkeley and the California College of Arts and Crafts, she has served as the consultant for numerous Obata projects and exhibits. She lives in Berkeley, California.