Topaz Moon: Chiura Obata's Art of the Internment

"Topaz Moon" is a slim little book that is filled with a selection of the interment imagery of Chiura Obata. The imagery is both in his writings and in his art. And both make lasting impressions. The images range from simple line drawing to watercolors executed while a victim of Executive Order 9066 in which all West Coast Japanese Americans were rounded up and placed in interment camps. It is amazing what he was able to... Read Full Review

This is a wonderful book. I bought it for the artwork which is fresh, inventive, and very skillful but the social history is equally engrossing. The text is clearly written and generous with quotes.At 8.25" square it's smaller than your average coffee table book, but the pages are rich with intelligence, beauty and invention.

Most of the artwork are done in black ink on white paper. It makes for a stark and bleak testament to the difficulties faced and endured by the internees. The book is a great teaching tool for children and adults, not only to learn about the internment, but to study the artwork.

Topaz Moon is a testament to the power of art, not simply as a mechanism for creating beauty, but also as a method of documenting history. Faced with the social disruption and indignity of relocation and internment in WWII, Professor Chiura Obata of the University of California at Berkeley chose to use his considerable artistic gifts to create what amounts to a visual diary of his internment experience. Seemingly hundreds... Read Full Review