Japanese Wood Carvers - Loveday Lives

Many of the Japanese internees performed hard labour on wood-cutting camps, but some also devoted their leisure and their creative abilities to working with wood. The first three of these images were taken during visits to Loveday by the delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross, while the last was a valued gift by an internee to a guard.

Japanese internees with wood carvings at Loveday, September 1943. ICRC Audiovisual Archive V-P-HIST-01878-13.

Japanese internees with wood carvings at Loveday, September 1943. ICRC Audiovisual Archive V-P-HIST-01878-29

Loveday civil internment camp, camp 14B. Japanese wood-carver. July 1944. ICRC Audiovisual Archive V-P-HIST-01878-30A.

This wood carving by an unknown Japanese internee was presented as a gift to Leonard George Battams, a guard at Loveday. The tongue is the handle of a shoe or clothes brush inside the wooden casing. Courtesy Samantha Battams.