Topaz Moon: Chiura Obata's Art of the Internment

Chiura Obata, Professor of Art at the University of California, Berkeley, was one of more than 100,000 Japanese Americans forcefully located in 1942 from their homes and communities to the stark barracks of internment camps. As an artist faithfully recording the world around him, Obata gave us a view into the camps that was 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 presents more than 100 of Obata's sketches, sumi paintings, and watercolors from the internment period. Lovingly collected and edited by his granddaughter, Kimi Kodani Hill, and movingly augmented by letters and interviews, Obata's work gives testament to his artistic genius and a spirit undefeated by adversity. - from the book jacket

Published by Heyday Book
ISBN 1-890771-26-0 (paperback)
$19.95 paperback

Black and white photos; 147 pages