by Mayumi Tsutakawa

Bonsai. Many of us know broadly what it is (small, highly cultivated trees), but few of us recognize the depth of history or patient care required to create these living art works.

The exhibition at Pacific Bonsai Museum (PBM) in Federal Way, “World War Bonsai: Remembrance and Resilience,” offers perspectives and history — and perhaps hope — in our difficult time of both introspection and public cries against racism — and while we also shelter ourselves from a pandemic.

Katherine Wimble Fox, staff of Pacific Bonsai Museum, explains, “The exhibition focuses on 32 bonsai, the work of America’s first bonsai masters, who, sadly, experienced tremendous personal suffering, the loss of livelihoods, and cherished trees, when they were forced into World War II incarceration simply because they looked like the enemy.” Art works by Erin Shigaki illustrate these stories.