Topaz Moon: Chiura Obata's Art of the Internment

About this book

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 Obatas work from this period gives us a view into the camps that is at once honest and strikingly lyrical. Topaz Moon brings together more than 100 paintings and sketches from Obatas 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.