INTERNMENT ART

I was proud to see the picture that my father, Henry Sugimoto, painted 50 years ago, during World War II when our family was relocated to an internment camp near Little Rock, Ark. (“Interned,” by Wakako Yamauchi, Nov. 8). My father always wanted his paintings to be available to the American public, and they now are part of the collection of the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles.

However, the title of the painting you identified as “When Can We Go Home?” is actually “Longing.” My father had an opportunity to go beyond the barbed wire one day when one of the camp administrators took him to meet Pulitzer prize-winning Arkansas poet John Gould Fletcher. Upon seeing this particular painting, Fletcher was moved to write a poem that he called “Longing”--thus the painting’s title.

MADELEINE S. SUGIMOTO

New York City