The Peggy Project- To Japan and Back

The Peggy Project is an exhibition that tells the story of Peggy Adams of White River Junction in the context of post-World War II Japan.

The exhibit begins with an authentic doll* of a Samurai warrior, representing an accoutrement of a Japanese household in Yokohama in August 1945—the year following Peggy’s birth in 1944.

By 1985, Peggy had returned from her “back-to-the-land” days in western Vermont to enroll in a master’s degree program at the School for International Training in Putney, Vermont, in order to become a teacher of English as a Second Language. Hired by the Sumitomo Steel Company, Peggy moved to Osaka, Japan, and established her own home.

After eight years in Japan, far from the U.S. and Vermont, she resigned and returned home. The company packed her belongings—essentially the items she had used or acquired—and shipped them back to America. Peggy directed that they be stored in a small barn on her property outside Brandon, Vermont. The 25 boxes remained unopened for some 31 years. This past year, the boxes were finally opened, and the exhibition is made up of those personal effects and collections.

The exhibit includes:

• Pieces of art

• An impressive Japanese wedding kimono

• Household goods representative of Japan in the 1980s

• Assorted ephemera

• Elegant Japanese fans

It reveals aspects of Japanese culture, art, and daily life some 40 years after World War II. Now, 80 years past the war, this exhibition of items—wonderfully preserved over four decades—offers a brief retrospective before the collection is dispersed.

*The doll was taken by a U.S. Marine in his role with the earliest occupation troops just days after the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.