A collection of handmade artifacts from camps, including Heart Mountain, where Japanese-Americans were detained during World World II, was pulled from the auction block April 17 after the Heart Mountain, Wyoming Foundation threatened to take legal action.

The foundation had a moral obligation to stop the auction of 450 items from the Allen H. Eaton collection, now owned by Thomas Ryan, because it would open old, but deep, wounds of Japanese-Americans who were incarcerated during World War II, said Brian Liesinger, Foundation executive director.

In late March, the foundation initially asked for the donation of the artifacts. Then it requested the private sale of the items to appropriate nonprofit organizations, and finally, for a postponement of the auction, to no avail. So the foundation and its supporters raised money to purchase the art, Liesinger said.

Rago Arts and Auction Center valued the artifacts at around $27,600. The foundation offered Rago $50,000, but the consignor wasn’t interested. “We were absolutely flabbergasted that this generous offer was rejected,” Liesinger said.

“The consignor (Ryan) declined, maintaining that they did not feel qualified to determine where the collection would be most appropriately held and that a public auction, in his view, was a more appropriate course of action,” Liesinger said.

But Liesinger said the foundation made its offer with a pledge: If it acquired the collection, the foundation would bring a consortium of Japanese-American-related organizations together “to determine the appropriate, careful treatment and disbursement of the collection.”

Threatening a lawsuit was a last resort, said Shirley Ann Higuchi, chairwoman of the Heart Mountain, Wyoming Foundation.

Liesinger said the foundation’s legal team contacted Rago through the Arts and Auction Center, Lambertville, N.J., to notify the center of an order to show cause.

“Rago then withdrew the pieces,” Liesinger said. “With the items no longer at threat of going to auction, there was no action to file the injunction against.”  

Ryan pledged to work with Rago to create a purchase proposal. Liesinger said he hopes Ryan will keep the best interests of the collection in mind, along with due respect for the artists who created the artifacts and the people formerly incarcerated in the camps.  

Eaton accumulated the collection around the end of World War II from Japanese-American confinement camps with the help of incarcerates. In 1952, he published the book, “Beauty Behind Barbed Wire,” which featured many of the items planned for the public auction. The items had been passed down to Eaton’s heirs and then to Ryan, a family friend, who decided to sell them, according to a April 15 foundation news release. 

Higuchi said she is not sure what the future holds for the art, but she wants Japanese-Americans to have the option to decide the artifacts’ home.

“The issue is still in play, but the Heart Mountain, Wyoming Foundation is hoping and praying for the best,” she said.

News of an art auction spawned memories of Sam Mihara’s trying childhood more than 70 years ago.

The collection contains photographs, artifacts crafted from scrap, paintings and drawings, including a drawing of Heart Mountain by Estelle Ishigo, a white woman who married Japanese-American Arthur Ishigo.

Non-Japanese spouses were not forced to enter the camps when their Japanese husbands or wives were rounded up. But Estelle opted to go to Heart Mountain with her husband, Arthur, said Sam Mihara, 82, of Huntington Beach, Calif. 

Arthur, or Art, was a coal tender in the boiler room at the camp. Estelle’s job was to sketch and paint camp scenes, Mihara said.

Mihara was 9 years old when he arrived with his parents at Heart Mountain in 1942 from San Francisco. Ishigo’s barrack was near Mihara’s. “She was a very talented artist,” Mihara said. “It’s a reminder of the conditions that placed us in the camp and the conditions in the camp themselves.”

One haunting sketch in Ishigo’s book, “Lone Heart Mountain,” illustrates a blizzard in 1942.

Mihara recalls the day vividly. It was 28 degrees below zero, and the internees were not issued adequate clothing for Wyoming’s cold climate, he said.

It was not a happy ending for the Ishigos when the war ended.

Art died of cancer in 1957. In 1984, a friend found Estelle living in poverty. Both her legs had been amputated due to gangrene, according to a display at Heart Mountain.

Estelle died in 1990. “Estelle’s ashes are scattered on Heart Mountain by her request,” said Brian Liesinger, executive director of the Heart Mountain, Wyoming Foundation.

“So some of the scenes are painful reminders of that time,” Mihara said. “The other reaction is that I think these works should be publicly displayed, regardless of the pain, and not be hidden like it was since it was collected. The lessons learned should be passed on to future generations with the bottom line message that the mass imprisonment without justice should never happen again to anyone.”

Mihara gives lectures describing his time at Heart Mountain.