Category Archives: Asian-American Art

Representations and Experiences of Japanese American Internment

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Howard argues that interment camp living arrangements reshaped gendered labor divisions and provided women with greater non-domestic employment opportunities as well as provided a space for more interactions among queer internees.

Kozol examines how the gaze of the US Government in WRA photos of internment obstructs the viewer’s access to “real” experiences of internment and erases the discrimination, hard conditions, and true realities of the camps.
Creef’s chapter explores how the Japanese American body was Orientalized and feared and how photographers Lang, Adams, and Miyatake all attempted to represent the double identities and alienation of the prisoners.

Photography of Japanese American internment in the 1940’s was mostly state-sponsored as prisoners were not allowed to bring their own cameras into the camps. With this in mind, it should not be a surprise that most of the photographs of camp life were meant for the white American or governmental gaze and thus struggle in representing the dual identities and alienation of the Japanese American internees.  Most of the photos, whether state-sponsored (Lang) or not (Adams) follow conventions of 1930’s FSA photographs and provide little context for their subjects. The decontextualized images erase the injustices of internment and present their subjects as loyal citizens following the social guidelines of white America. The photographs, which often present domestic scenes of nuclear families, also actively erase the restructuring of gender roles taking place in the camps.

 

In response to:

Elena Tajima Creef. “The Representation of the Japanese American Body in the Photographs of Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, and Toyo Miyatake.”
Wendy Kozol.”Relocating Citizenship in Photographs of Japanese Americans in World War II”
John Howard. “Camp Life” in “Concentration Camps on the Home Front”

 

“Model Minorities” and the Construction of Color-Blindness

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Elena Creef analyzes the wartime photography of Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange and Toyo Miyatake to explore the discourses surrounding representations of Japanese Americans.  Both Creef and Wendy Kozol delve into the strategies by which images of the “model minority” were fashioned that stripped subjects of their specificity in an attempt to construct a sense of sameness and familiarity between “real” Americans and these racially suspect subjects.  This strategy coincided with the decline of scientific racism and the rise of “color-blindness,” forging an illusion of sameness across a multiplicity of racialized bodies under the notion that nation trumps ethnicity.  Thus the contradictory aims of Order 9066 to both alienate and assimilate Japanese-Americans was reconciled by photographic projects that momentarily separated out for scrutiny these subjects, only to reincorporate them and hide the evidence later.

 

“Camp Life”: Japanese American Internment & Gender Roles

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“Camp Life” highlights the effect that the Japanese American Internment had on gender roles within the Japanese American community.  Ironically, imprisonment and the implementation of gendered spaces served as the primary factors behind the empowerment of Japanese American women at that time.  For example, something as simple as gendered dining facilities had major repercussions in the lives of Japanese American women – in this case, it eliminated the patriarchal “head of household” which in turn decreased the amount of control that men had over their wives and daughters.  The amount of domestic work that women were responsible for completing not only decreased, but also became a source of income for them as women were paid WRA wages.  Collaborative work also became a part of everyday life which allowed for women to meet new people and form friendships outside of the home – a luxury that wasn’t afforded to them pre-imprisonment.  More importantly, the economic independence that Japanese Americans experienced as a result of incarceration served as a way for non conformists like homosexual, bisexual, and queer individuals to explore their sexuality.

The Internment of Japanese Prisoners

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Howard: Through the imprisonment of West Coast Japanese immigrants, the government challenged traditional gender roles & patriarchy. There was an increase in the economic & social independence of women; however politically they remained limited. Some of the issues in this era derive from the question of identity in American culture. The difficulties with race, nationality, and gender provided a combative path for the Japanese American prisoners. Are the women in these camps defined more by their race or gender? By proving their American identities, conformity called for the embrace of white heterosexual culture. However, these camps promoted independence among women and families. Promoting conformity and independence created two opposing sides that established an unique dynamic within the internment camps.

Kozol: The photography of the era exposed the citizenship, humanity, and conformity of Japanese immigrants, which eased racist fears.

Howard: Although the internment of Japanese prisoners was a problematic, racist policy, it prompted a challenge to patriarchy.

Creef:  Orientalism shaped the perception of Japanese Americans during internment years, the photography displays the double identities these prisoners carry.