Kozol, Howard, and Creef each explore the trope of relocation in relation to citizenship, identity, and the body through the photographic representation of Japanese-Americans during and after World War II. Kozol describes the relocation of citizenship and identity through the War Relocation Authority’s (WRA) photos, which represent Japanese-American’s “Americanness” through family portraits, domestic arrangements, sports, and commercial objects. This relocation of American identity onto the bodies of the internees, or “enemy aliens,” portrays loyalty to the white Western audience while robbing the internees of their bicultural identity, thus constructing the ideology of colorblindness. These images also fail to capture the suffering and trauma that resulted from physical and identity displacement, rendering the internees’ hardships as invisible. Howard argues that incarceration enabled the relocation of identity in terms of sexuality and gender norms in internment camps by providing flat salaries to both women and men, decreasing domestic roles, and permitting sexual freedom. Creef expounds upon the relocation of the physical body to the internment camps and the Western, “non-other” identity of the internees that is portrayed in the photos of Adam, Lange, and Miyatake. She also argues that self negation and alienation of the Nisei (second generation) enables internal struggles of identity and makes their American identity visible through “signs of American citizenship, loyalty, and heroism” (Creef 18). Furthermore, the phenotypic characteristics of Japanese-Americans places them at odds with their American identity. Overall, the images discussed in the readings present contradictory and competing notions of identity by forcing American characteristics onto the bodies of the Japanese internees, while robbing them of their Japanese realities. The Japanese-Americans presented in the photos appear visible as subjects, but their identity as both Japanese and American is invisible to the audience.
Relocation of Citizenship, Identity, and the Body
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