Local colleges to participate in Gaman project
CONWAY — The University of Central Arkansas and Hendrix College will be in the spotlight in the coming days.
The two college campuses, along with other venues in Conway and throughout the state, will host several events to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the closing of the Japanese-American internment camps.
One might ask, what internment camps? One might further ask, where were these camps?
The facts are that on Dec. 7, 1941, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, which ushered the United States into World War II. On Feb. 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which called for the incarceration of more than 120,000 Japanese-Americans in camps throughout the United States for the duration of the war. Of the 10 camps operated by the War Relocation Authority in the western United States, two camps were in rural southeast Arkansas — one in Jerome and the other in Rohwer. The camps were closed by the end of 1945.
Gayle Seymour, professor of art history and associate dean of the UCA Department of Fine Arts and Communication, said her department received a “major” grant from the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Japanese-American Confinement Sites Grant Program, to host an expansive, multicity art and history initiative to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the closing of the camps.
The title of this project is Gaman, which is also the title of the featured dance/theater work that will be presented by the CORE Performance Co. of Houston, Texas.
Seymour said she has worked with CORE before and knew of its commitment to use dance as “a tool for social change.”
Sue Schroeder, artistic director of CORE, said that when she was contacted by Seymour about the project, she “was moved by the plight of these innocent Americans. … As we learned more about these citizens’ experiences in the camps, I felt I needed to share this story,” she said.
Schroeder said Gaman explores how challenges can be overcome by courage and expresses the conflicting emotions of sorrow and joy, as well as confinement and liberation, experienced by the interned Japanese-American citizens.
Seymour said the word, “gaman” is a Japanese word of Zen Buddhist origin that means “enduring the seemingly unbearable with patience and dignity.”
Michael Sprunger, assistant professor of history and chairman of the Asian Studies Program at Hendrix College, assisted Seymour with planning the events.
Hendrix has a special connection with the Jerome War Relocation Center. The college owns a painting by Henry Sugimoto titled Arrival at Camp
Jerome. Sugimoto taught art at the camp’s high school.
Sprunger said the painting was “discovered” by two Hendrix professors, Louis Freund and Paul Faris, who visited the Jerome camp in 1943. They asked Sugimoto to display his work at Hendrix, and a oneman show was held on campus during February 1944. Following the exhibit, Hendrix purchased Sugimoto’s portrait of his family arriving at Camp Jerome.
The painting was commemorated in April of this year when Bill Tsutsui, a Japanese-American, was inaugurated as the 11th president of Hendrix College.
Following is a schedule of Gaman activities in Conway:
• Thursday: Lecture/demonstration of Gaman with seventh-grade Conway School District students, presented by the CORE Performance Co., 1-2 p.m., Ida Waldran Auditorium, UCA; free and open to the public.
• Thursday: Dance workshop with Hendrix College Dance Ensemble, presented by CORE, 4:30-6 p.m., Mills Center, Hendrix College; free and open to the public.
• Friday: Lecture/demo with UCA nutrition students, presented by CORE, 10-11 a.m., Mirror Room, McAlister Hall, UCA; free and open to the public.
• Friday: Lecture/demo with UCA psychology students, presented by CORE, 1-2 p.m., Mashburn Hall, UCA; free and open to the public.
• Friday: Dance/art/conversation with CORE, 4:10-5:30 p.m., Mills Center, Hendrix College. Hendrix President Bill Tsutsui will give introductory remarks. The event is free, and no tickets are required.
• Friday: Film screening, Because I Was a Painter (parce
que j’etais peintre), 104 minutes, directed by Christophe Cognet, 6-9 p.m., Brewer-Hegeman Conference Center, UCA. The event is free, and no tickets are required. The movie will be
followed by audience discussion with UCA professors and Sue Schroeder, CORE artistic director.
• Nov. 8: Public reading and book signing, A Captive Audience: Voices of Japanese-American Youth in World War II Arkansas, edited by Ali Welky of Conway, who is the assistant editor of the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture, 2 p.m., Faulkner County Library. Books will be available for purchase. The event is free and open to the public.
• Nov. 9: Feature presentation, Gaman, presented by the CORE Performance Co., 7:30 p.m., Donald W. Reynolds Performance Hall, UCA. Free tickets can be reserved by calling the Reynolds Box Office, (501) 4503265, during business houses, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday, or online at uca.edu/
Reynolds.
• Nov. 9: Exhibit of artwork by Nancy Chikaraishi, daughter of Arkansas internees, 6:30-10 p.m., Reynolds Performance Hall Lobby, UCA; free and open to the public.
• Nov. 12: Public reading and book signing, A Captive Audience: Voices of Japanese-American Youth in World War II
Arkansas, edited by Ali Welky of Conway, 11 a.m. to noon, Mirror Room, McAlister Hall, UCA. Books will be available for purchase. Sponsored by the UCA Archives; free and open to the public.
Additional CORE performances will be presented Nov. 11 at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville; Nov. 12 at the Hillary Rodham Clinton Children’s Library and Learning Center in Little Rock; and Nov. 13 at the McGehee High School Auditorium. McGehee is the site of the World War II Japanese-American Internment Museum. All of these performances are free and open to the public.
“The Reynolds performance, however, will be the only one with sets, lighting and projections,” Seymour said. “All others will be low-tech.”
Seymour said she has been “happy to collaborate with our friends at Hendrix” on the Gaman project.
“It’s been exciting to work with Gayle,” Sprunger said. “In fact, we’re already talking about future plans.”
Seymour said the National Park Service is planning to observe, in 2017, the 75th commemoration of the opening of the war relocation camps.
“I’d be happy to get involved with that,” she said. “A lot of the internees are getting to that age. It’s just like with the Holocaust and the World War II survivors. There are fewer and fewer of them who can give eyewitness accounts of what happened. That’s why we need to honor them now.”
The complete schedule for the Gaman project can be found at www.uca/edu; click on one of the performance dates.
For more information, contact Gayle Seymour at (501) 450-3295 or gayles@uca.edu.