Photo Essay By Kai Baldwin
Photographs, Susan Sontag famously wrote, anesthetize. But there is nothing anesthetic about the photographs in the exhibition titled, And Then They Came for Me, about the incarceration of Japanese-Americans during World War II. Given the somber topic, one would expect to be confronted by dark and gloomy images, but what struck me was their luminosity: the brightness in the faces of children, of ordinary men and women marked by history to be victimized for the sins of others. A group celebrates the birth of a baby, a row of children pledges allegiance to the American flag, a young couple is married — familiar events except that all the faces are Japanese, and in a multi-ethnic society, such assembly is always noteworthy. Normally, it evokes interest or idle curiosity.
But forced assembly is a different thing altogether! Many of the images are chilling because we have come to recognize them from sheer repetition across space and time: different faces but similar tactics of oppression. They are photos of people with tags hanging from their jackets, of a crowded jumble of humans and belongings on railway platforms and carriages, of boarded-up trucks with the eyes of the prisoners inside peering out from the slats. It is this mixture of the mundane and the bizarre that is so unsettling, and so eerily a part of the photography of migration.
The exhibition, currently being held at the International Center of Photography in New York City, presents the history of Japanese immigration to the United States through the lens of popular reception marked by racial bigotry and exclusionary tactics. Organized chronologically and illustrated through newspaper clippings, property notices, street signage, and other memorabilia from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, these provide a context for the events leading up to the incarceration of 1942-1946. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii by Japan on Dec 7, 1941, Japanese-American families living on the west coast of the United States were considered a security threat and transported to relocation centers for the duration of the war. Camps were located in desert and swamp areas in Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Utah and Wyoming. In addition to text and images, video loops play interviews with surviving members of the camps who describe their memories of the experience.
The photographs show various stages of the move and the many harsh years of incarceration endured by 120,000 people of Japanese descent who were citizens or permanent residents. Taken by such famous American photographers as Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams, these black-and-white images both freeze and unfreeze time. They are a record of a specific moment in American national history, but they are also an invitation to understand and reflect in the present. A lesser-known figure crucial to this photographic enterprise was Toyo Miyatake, an inmate of the camp who defied the camp prohibition on taking pictures, using his camera by clandestine means to record images of barbed wire, armed guards, and watchtowers.
Almost as revealing, however, are scenes of domestic interiors. A striking photograph is that of a man, woman and child looking intently at the camera, their backdrop showing the clutter of daily living in such spartan surroundings. They are identified by name, as are many others in several of the pictures, removing the indignity of anonymity usually imposed in such instances. We are, of course, unable to judge from their look the internal turmoil they may have been experiencing. It is noted that Ansel Adams was faulted for not capturing the pain of the incarcerated, a charge he rejected. Dorothea Lange made some of her own images symbolize dejection and hopelessness, as in a photograph of a man sitting alone with his head in his hands.
Still, the question remains as to the purpose of taking these photographs and the power relations implicit in the scenes depicted. Especially since the captive population was forbidden to record life in the camps. Much of the focus is on routine activities of work or play, as though nothing much has changed. Perhaps the idea was to convey hope in the midst of desolation. That’s why so many of the images are of families or of children.
In her book, Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag takes us on a haunting journey through photographic work of those who have sought to capture some of humanity’s most scarring moments, inflicted by war, genocide, natural afflictions and disasters. While there are no images of such horror in this collection, the effect can nevertheless be chilling. Being herded and ostracized can create deep-seated feelings of trauma and dislocation. As Japanese-Americans have faded from the public imagination, one is left wondering about the fate of all immigrants worldwide, and the ambiguous honor of being rescued from history’s dustheap.