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Signed Remembrance Handkerchief

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@ National Museum of American History

Description

This is a handkerchief belonging to Shinsuke Sugimoto from the Santa Fe, New Mexico prison camp. It is signed by the fellow prisoners (in Japanese) of the camp, which was a parting gesture when someone (or many) left the prison camp.The signatures are done in Japanese, although a couple are in English, and they are centered around an Iris flower painted in the middle. There is an embroidered "S" on it for Shinsuke Sugimoto.Shinsuke was imprisoned in the Santa Fe, New Mexico Alien Detention camp after being transferred from the Tuna Detention Facility. The Santa Fe prison camp was surrounded by twelve-foot-high barbed-wire fences and eleven guard towers equipped with searchlights. The guards were armed with rifles, side-arms, and tear gas.There two phases of the Santa Fe detention facility; the first phase was a temporary detention facility that held 826 Japanese immigrants from California who were sent to WRA camps by September of 1942. The second phase began in Feburary in 1943 and included prisoners transferred from U.S. Army camps as well as issei, nissei, and kibei "troublemakers" from the Tule Lake segregation center.Shinsuke Sugimoto was an Issei and was born in Kyoto, Japan on September 10, 1884. Shinsuke lived in Japan for 20 years before immigrating to the United States in 1906 when he was 22. He was primarily an insurance salesman and lived in Los Angeles, California before being forcibly relocated to Tuna Canyon Detention Station in Tujunga, California, then to the Santa Fe prison camp in New...
Format:
Paint (Overall Material)Ink (Overall Material)Cotton (Overall Material)
Rights:
gift of Donna Sugimoto
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Record Contributed By

National Museum of American History

Record Harvested From

Smithsonian Institution