The Day Joyce Sheet is one of the most remarkable artefacts to have emerged from the prison camps of the Second World War. Created secretly in Stanley Internment Camp, Hong Kong, the double bed sheet was embroidered and appliquéd with 1100 names, signs and figures and includes two years of camp diaries in code. It was successfully hidden during numerous searches of the camp and brought back to England at the end of the war. The needle Mrs. Joyce was using is still lodged in the sheet at the place where she broke off when the camp was liberated in 1945. In 1975 it was donated to the Imperial War Museum, London. In May 2009 the Sheet was placed on public display for the first time, as part of a temporary exhibition at Imperial War Museum North entitled Captured: The Extraordinary Life of Prisoners of War. While the Sheet's size and fragility prevent it from being put on permanent display, it can be seen in the Exhibits and Firearms Department by prior appointment.
The following information is taken from the Guide to the Sheet written by Dr Bernice Archer, and is used by permission. All the quotations are from the Memoir written by Mrs. Joyce.
Read more about Day Joyce Sheet: Biography, Background To The Sheet, Sources, Dr. Bernice Archer
Famous quotes containing the words day, joyce and/or sheet:
“If you don’t appear
at all one day they think you’re lazy
or dead.”
—Frank O’Hara (1926–1966)
“Exile as a mode of genius no longer exists; in place of Joyce we have the fragments of work appearing in Index on Censorship.”
—Nadine Gordimer (b. 1923)
“After the planet becomes theirs, many millions of years will have to pass before a beetle particularly loved by God, at the end of its calculations will find written on a sheet of paper in letters of fire that energy is equal to the mass multiplied by the square of the velocity of light. The new kings of the world will live tranquilly for a long time, confining themselves to devouring each other and being parasites among each other on a cottage industry scale.”
—Primo Levi (1919–1987)