STITCHING LIVES TOGETHER.

Byline: Jim Feehan The Register-Guard

The mere sight of a quilt commemorating Japanese-American internment camps was a bit much for Leona Kudelmyer on Saturday.

The 87-year-old Eugene woman was brought to tears as she recalled the day her Japanese-American neighbors in Torrance, Calif., were rounded up and shipped off to distant internment camps.

"I had to watch these people give up their belongings. We knew them all, and they were American citizens. ... I suffered the whole time they were gone," she said.

Two months after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt issued an executive order calling for 120,000 Japanese-Americans living on the West Coast to be moved to relocation camps, often in desolate areas of California, Idaho, Utah and Wyoming.

The quilt that brought the flood of emotion from Kudelmyer was commissioned six years ago by Bess Kawachi Chin, a San Francisco Bay area quilt instructor and an internment camp survivor. Assembled by 25 internment camp survivors, the quilt has 12 panels depicting life at the internment camp at Heart Mountain, Wyo. One panel has an armed guard in a sentry tower, while another depicts two internees looking beyond a barbed wire fence. Other panels included a kimono, and a family gathered around a wood stove in one of the camps.

The quilt, which has toured the United States, made its first appearance in Oregon on Saturday at the 29th annual Unbroken Thread Quilt Show, sponsored by Pioneer Quilters and the Lane County Historical Museum. The exhibit runs through April 24 at the museum.

In all, 143 quilts were draped over the museum's permanent display of 19th-century stagecoaches and horse-drawn carriages.

Chin, now 82, was attending San Jose State University when her family was ordered to report to an assembly center in Pomona, Calif., in what is now the parking lot of the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds.

The outer edge of the quilt is blue to depict the Pacific Ocean, Chin said. Surrounding the 12 panels are touches of beige representing how dusty the camps were, and gray to commemorate the continuing struggle for civil liberties in America.

"We're still looking out for people's civil liberties," Chin said, referring to detainees at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

In 1942, Chin and eight other family members were lodged in a tiny cabin at the internment camp, she said.

"The camp was in Wyoming, and we knew nothing about snow," Chin said. They braved blizzards from the high plains of Wyoming.

The quilt also helped many Japanese-Americans remember their history through quilting, she said.

Kenge Kobayashi, 78, of Eugene, was a teenager in California's Imperial Valley 60 years ago when his family was sent to the Tule Lake internment camp near the Oregon-California border. Kobayashi felt a great sense of embarrassment over the relocation.

"We felt at fault that we looked Japanese," he said.

QUILT SHOW

The 29th annual Unbroken Thread Quilt Show continues its nine-day run through April 24.

Where: Lane County Historical Museum, 740 W. 13th Ave.

When: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; noon to 4 p.m. Sundays. The museum is closed on Mondays.

Cost: $4; $10 for a week's pass.

Information: 682-4242.

CAPTION(S):

Surrounded by dozens of quilts, guest of honor Bess Kawachi Chin (left) talks with Louise Smith of the Pioneer Quilters club as she works on a piece with fellow members during the 29th annual Unbroken Thread Quilt Show at the Lane County Historical Museum. A piece of the quilt brought by Bess Kawachi Chin shows a guard at a WWII camp for Japanese-Americans. Q u i l t e r s Chris Pietsch / The Register-Guard Catherine Heising and this is light text and this is more light text Catherine Heising and her daughter, 9-year-old Elsa Heising, talk to Bess Kawachi Chin about her quilt. Chris Pietsch / The Register-Guard