Hundreds of artifacts from Japanese-Americans held in internment camps during World War II were withdrawn from auction Wednesday night.
More than 6,700 people, including the actor George Takei, had signed a change.org petition to postpone or call off the sale at Rago auction house in Lambertville, N.J. Internees had given much of the material to the historian Allen H. Eaton, who wrote about the pieces in his 1952 book, “Beauty Behind Barbed Wire: The Arts of the Japanese in Our War Relocation Camps.” Protest groups led by the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation, based at the site of an internment camp, had filed legal proceedings to stop the sale, saying that Mr. Eaton had received the gifts “for the purposes of educating the public about the Japanese American experience during World War II.”
Toshi Abe, a board member of the Japanese American Citizens League, attended an event at the Rago offices last night, where the cancellation was announced. “There was a moment of silence and then everyone started applauding happily,” he wrote in an email. The auction had been scheduled for Friday.
Among the 450 artifacts from Japanese-Americans during World War II who were living at internment camps there were plaques with family names made to hang outside barracks homes. Personal photographs of family members were some of the most contested items in the sale.
A spokeswoman for Rago wrote in an email that the controversy surrounding the auction will foster “an essential discussion to be had about the sale of historical items that are a legacy of man’s inhumanity to man.”
She added in a follow-up email, “There are no plans for the collection now other than the one there has always been: to see this property go where it will do the most good for history. We will be involved in this going forward.”