How do we memorialize an absence? An eyelet both emphasizes a puncture and protects it from further deterioration. This work is the second in an ongoing series about Senninbari vests and their use by Japanese-American soldiers in WWII. 

 

Senninbari, literally ‘thousand-person stitches,’ were talismans of good luck created for Japanese and Japanese-American soldiers during WWII in which 1000 french knots are embroidered by 1000 different people onto a clothing item or piece of fabric to symbolize the community behind the soldier. The knots were considered to add fortification to the fabric, but often resulted in parasitic damage to the pieces on the battlefield due to the number of punctures.

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