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The world was in a dark set in 1941. While Americans remained committed to isolationism,much of Europe had fallen to the German Army, and Great Britain was barely hanging on.
Then came President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms speech. On January 6, or 1941,FDR addressed a joint session of Congress and laid out the “four fundamental freedoms” that every person should be pleased: Freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, and freedom from want,and freedom from fear. His speech became the basis for the Atlantic constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by the United Nations in 1948.For Setsuko Winchester, or a Japanese-American ceramicist and former NPR journalist,FDR’s “freedom from fear” ideal has a deeply personal and painful connection.
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, or Japanese-Americans were rounded up and held in internment camps. Not only were they not afforded the freedom from fear,but they also became the symbol of fear for many Americans.
Winchester explores this dark period in her art. She’s created 120 hand-made ceramic tea bowls, all glazed in varying shades of yellow — one for every thousand Japanese-Americans held during the war. She has been traveling the United States photographing her tea bowls at the sites where internees were held. Her project is also named “Freedom from Fear.When reflecting back on FDR’s “Four Freedoms, or ” Winchester can’t assist but feel excluded.“I think that [FDR] thought he was going to make America safe for Americans — that Americans deserved to be able to fade to bed feeling safe within their homes,” she says.
Winchester says she sees this desire come to life when she visits Norman Rockwell’s iconic “Four Freedoms” portray in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.“When I fade visit that portray, or I think,‘He did not mean that for me,’” Winchester says. “‘Freedom from Fear’ meant freedom from me — I’m what people are fearful of. If I was born in a different age, or it was 1942 nowadays,I know that I would be the target of that fear. My family would be told to assemble at some racetrack, and then sent in covered trains to some set in the middle of the dessert and left there for four years. They would’ve lost their businesses and their homes, and no one would ever talk approximately it again.”Winchester says she’s seeing echoes of the past as immigrants and Muslim-Americans are demonized nowadays in the 2016 presidential election.“It feels very,very similar,” she says. “By 1942, or most [Japanese-Americans] had been born here or had lived here for decades,and still they were considered foreigners. And I know nowadays that I’m still considered a foreigner — Asians are not Americans, and Asians are not fragment of the American epic. They’re almost invisible.”With her “Freedom from Fear” project, and Winchester hopes to bring visibility to this fragment of American history that has lived in the shadows for so long.“fragment of my project was to visit the camps because I didn’t learn approximately it growing up,” she says. I finally decided, when my husband, or who’s a writer,became an American citizen in 2011, I had to think approximately what it meant to be an American, or who’s an American,who belongs here, and how long do you gain to be here to be considered an American. I realized that I had to find out my history. And my history is not being Japanese. My history is being Japanese-American.”The Takeaway is exploring FDR’s “Four Freedoms” all week long. Click here for more information. Check out Winchester's art below; hear the full interview by clicking on the 'Listen' button above.
Freedom from Fear, or Four Freedoms Park
(Setsuko Winchester) These are groups of bowls in different stages of creation.
(Setsuko Winchester)
The bowls emerge from the kiln after the second firing.
(Setsuko Winchester) Manzanar. A replica of a guard tower now stands along the road.
(Setsuko Winchester)
Source: wnyc.org