Finding Solace in the Soil

“Finding Solace in the Soil breaks new ground in its informed discussion of camp gardens and equally of the process of archeological reconstruction—a means still uncommon for exploring the recent past. Bonnie Clark’s novel methodology and collection of data leads to persuasive findings.”
—Greg Robinson, Université du Québec à Montréal

"Bonnie J. Clark has done an amazing job of transforming artifacts from the past into real life points of discussion for the present. . . . a fascinating and complex examination."
—International Examiner

 “Clark takes us on a journey that includes detailed reporting of the archaeological findings deftly intertwined with historical record and personal reportage. . . Amache's gardens provided incarcerees with many of the basic needs that all humans crave but which were severely lacking at the high desert Amache site: activity and comfort.”
—Journal of the North American Japanese Garden Association

“Although research on incarceration camp gardens is not new territory, Finding Solace in the Soil adds new data and new insights to the topic. . . Clark aptly demonstrates the ‘productive synergy of archaeological research done in collaboration with a community of living memory’ (111) and does so in a way that will appeal to a broad audience, including readers interested in archaeological methods, landscapes and gardens, or Japanese American incarceration.”
—Asian American Comparative Collection

Finding Solace in the Soil tells the largely unknown story of the gardens of Amache, the War Relocation Authority incarceration camp in Colorado. Combining physical evidence with oral histories and archival data and enriched by the personal photographs and memories of former Amache incarcerees, the book describes how gardeners cultivated community in confinement.

Before incarceration, many at Amache had been farmers, gardeners, or nursery workers. Between 1942 and 1945, they applied their horticultural expertise to the difficult high plains landscape of southeastern Colorado. At Amache they worked to form microclimates, reduce blowing sand, grow better food, and achieve stability and preserve community at a time of dehumanizing dispossession. In this book archaeologist Bonnie J. Clark examines botanical data like seeds, garden-related artifacts, and other material evidence found at Amache, as well as oral histories from survivors and archival data including personal letters and government records, to recount how the prisoners of Amache transformed the harsh military setting of the camp into something resembling a town. She discusses the varieties of gardens found at the site, their place within Japanese and Japanese American horticultural traditions, and innovations brought about by the creative use of limited camp resources.
 
The gardens were regarded by the incarcerees as a gift to themselves and to each other. And they were also, it turns out, a gift to the future as repositories of generational knowledge where a philosophical stance toward nature was made manifest through innovation and horticultural skill. Framing the gardens and gardeners of Amache within the larger context of the incarceration of Japanese Americans and of recent scholarship on displacement and confinement, Finding Solace in the Soil will be of interest to gardeners, historical archaeologists, landscape archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, and scholars of Japanese American history and horticultural history.

Media
NPS Preservation Technology Pocast
Cultivating Place podcast
Southern Utah University A.P.E.X. lecture
The A.P.E.X. Hour Podcast
University of Denver Colloquium with Bonnie Clark
University of Denver Magazine, Review
University of Denver, Interview
TEDxMileHigh