January 24 - Happy Birthday, Ruth Asawa

Posted on January 24, 2021

Key Points

I love getting special postage stamps from the U.S. Post Office. I sit at home, browse all the commemorative stamps online, place my order, and a few days later I have gorgeous stamps instead of ho-hum “Forever” flags!

The only problem is, once in a while the gorgeous postage stamps are a little too gorgeous! I almost don’t want to use them!

The last time this happened to me, it was my Ruth Asawa stamps. I LOVED how intriguing and elegant these stamps looked on my envelopes – but I kinda sorta hated to send them out the door!!

So…what better solution than to celebrate Asawa’s life and work right here?

Ruth Asawa was born on this date in 1926 in a town near me in Southern California.

Asawa’s heritage is Japanese – and her family was treated terribly during World War II! Her father was arrested and sent to an internment camp in New Mexico, and for half a year the family had no idea where he was or if he was even alive. Once they learned he was alive and well, they still were not able to see him for six years! Asawa’s sister was in Japan when the war broke out – and she had to stay there until the war was over! And Ruth Asawa herself – along with her mom, and five other siblings – were kept at a Southern California “assembly center” for about a year, until an internment camp was built in Arkansas.

It is ironic that Asawa’s family was treated as if they were possible enemies – unAmerican – because a few years before the war, Asawa had won an art contest for her artwork on the theme “What makes someone an American?”

After graduating from the internment camp high school, Asawa went to college in order to become an art teacher. But she wasn’t able to get a position as a practice teacher and was therefore not allowed to complete her degree, AND she wasn’t allowed to return to California (because she was ethnically Japanese), AND she was told that working at a public school might be uncomfortable or even dangerous for a Japanese-American person.

So Asawa ended up focusing on her art, and she entered an art program at another college. There she began experimenting with wire, a commonplace material. She tried a lot of different techniques – and she even went to a village in Mexico where villagers made wired baskets.