The Bill Barrette Collection of Sugamo Prison Exhibition Research Material was created from the "Sugamo Project" to collect drawings and momentos made by inmates and given to the American GI guards. These drawings depicted daily life at the prison and interactions among the Japanese and Americans. Barrette, an artist from New York and younger cousin of one of the former Sugamo guard, worked with Midori Sato and Toyota Naurmi to collect these delicate pencil drawings military veterans in the US, and from the artists Tokio Tobita and Fumio Fujiki in Japan. These drawings and research formed the basis of the exhibition, “Encounters: Sugamo Prison 1945-52; The American Occupation of Japan and Memories of the Asia Pacific War," and scholarly symposium in April 2023.
This collection consists of Bill Barrette's research files used to create the exhibit and symposium. There are notes, correspondence, exhibit labels, research materials of the history of Sugamo Prison and the Allied occupation of Japan after World War II, that were created in the planning of the exhibitions and workshops. Since many of the objects were on loan from U.S. Veterans, photocopies of letters, photographs, and other materials makeup the bulk of the collection. Also included are transcripts and notes Barrette made of conversations with Tobita, Fujiki, and former guards, prison administration files, trial transscripts, photocopies of the Sugamo Shinbun newspaper. The notes of Sugamo Project collaborator, Midori Sato, consisting of notes and translations from the original Japanese to English of the poetry by former prisoners.
Barrette, Bill