Sutra and Bible

About

From the confines of concentration camps and locales under martial law to the battlegrounds of Europe, Japanese Americans drew on their faith to survive forced removal, indefinite incarceration, unjust deportation, family separation, and war combat at a time when their race and religion were seen as threats to national security. Sutra and Bible explores the role that religion played in saving the exiled Japanese American community from despair.

Sutra and Bible tells the stories of those faced with sudden, heartbreaking exile through an array of astonishing artifacts: from the prayer books and religious scrolls they carried into camp, to the Buddha statues, crosses, and altars they handcrafted to keep their spirits alive. At the heart of the exhibition are sacred scriptures created in camp: ink-inscribed stones that were unearthed from the Heart Mountain concentration camp’s cemetery that make up a section of the Lotus Sutra, and heavily annotated bilingual Bibles, handwritten by the Salvation Army’s Captain Masuo Kitaji during his incarceration in the Poston concentration camp.

This exhibition, co-curated by Duncan Ryuken Williams and Emily Anderson, shares the many ways that the Buddhist and Christian communities provided refuge, instilled hope, and taught compassion as Japanese Americans survived behind barbed wire, under martial law, and on the battlefield.