Sunday, April 21, 2013

America In WWII 02/2013

You may have heard that a picture is worth a thousand words. I thought about that old bromide as I flipped through Colors of Confinement: Rare Kodachrome Photographs of Japanese American Incarceration in World War II and glimpsed a blur of what turned out to be page 65. I flipped back to take a closer look. The photo filling the page is mostly empty, with a squat sprawl of buildings plunked down in the middle of barren ground with snow-frosted mountains stretched across the horizon beyond. Someone obviously didn't want the people here to have contact with the outside world. Many of the other photos have the same empty feel, even the close-ups of the internees mugging for the camera. The background behind their faces is distant. We glimpse beautiful country in the distance, but beautiful in a melancholy way. In fact, melancholy permeates these images. There's little obvious squalor in the camp. The internees wear decent to fine clothing. They look well fed. But even when they're smiling or celebrating— like dancing in kimonos on a traditional Japanese holiday or watching a couple of fellow internees sumo wrestle—something is missing.

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