Exhibits

World War Bonsai, Remembrance & resilience

World War Bonsai: Remembrance & Resilience

Pacific Bonsai Museum’s special exhibition for 2020 and 2021, World War Bonsai: Remembrance & Resilience, traced the cultural practice of bonsai in location and time—in Japan and in the United States, from the pre-war WWII period, through wartime, amid incarceration, and at peace. With bonsai, artifacts, documents, and photographs, the exhibition shared the little-known stories of the people who ingeniously and courageously cared for bonsai, shared their art, and spurred a flourishing, global practice despite overwhelming hardships.

Watch

Video Introduction

Watch a short video introducing the exhibition with Curator’s voiceover.

Film by Bonsai Mirai

Watch a short film featuring Curator Aarin Packard and featured exhibit artist, Erin Shigaki.

Video Documentation

If you can’t make it into the Museum, Momiji-en En Bonsai & Garden has kindly documented the whole exhibition for you. Watch on YouTube.

Photos from the Exhibition

Bristlecone Pine

Alcove depicting the scene when 120,000 Japanese Americans were forced to board trains and travel to live in barbed-wire detention camps displayed with a Bristlecone Pine (Pinus aristata) bonsai originally created by Kelly Hiromo Nishitani.

“…A dead tree may be as arresting, as filled with personality in death, as it is in life” -Edwin Way Teale

A dead Eastern White Cedar (Thuja occidentalis) bonsai opens the exhibition as a memorial to the millions of lives lost during World War II.

Furuzawa Pine

The Japanese Black Pine bonsai grown from seed by Japanese American Juzaburo Furuzawa while he was incarcerated in a barbed-wire detention camp during World War II.