Clem Albers, “San Pedro, California, April 5, 1942” (courtesy National Archives and Records Administration).
Edmund Clark, “Camp 1, isolation unit” from the series Guantanamo: If the Light Goes Out (2009) (© Edmund Clark).
Edmund Clark, “Camp 6, Immediate Response Force equipment,” from the series Guantanamo: If the Light Goes Out (2009) (© Edmund Clark).
The exhibition Then They Came for Me: Incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II is what brought me to the International Center of Photography. After all, the wartime photos of Dorothea Lange, Ansel Adams, and Toyo Miyatake are much celebrated today, historical artifacts in themselves. But I felt compelled to stay for The Day the Music Died, British photographer Edmund Clark’s eight video, music, and photography installations on the post-9/11“War on Terror” around the globe.
The pairing of the two exhibitions invites viewers to search for parallels between US national security efforts more than 70 years ago and today: How does the forced relocation of virtually all ethnic Japanese people residing in the US during World War II resemble the dragnet of the current anti-terrorism apparatus around the globe? Both shows shed light on people, more that half a century apart, swept into detention by the US government without due process, in the name of national security. And the juxtaposition has become all the more timely since President Trump’s late January signing of an executive order to keep Guantánamo Bay’s prison open.
[…]
The exhibitions Then They Came for Me: Incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II and Edmund Clark: The Day the Music Died continue at the International Center of Photography (250 Bowery, Lower East Side, Manhattan) through May 6.
You can read and see much more about these terribly poignant photographs and their history at Hyperallergic.
Oddly, the second amendment nuts did not use their arms to stop the government from oppressing the people.
I’m pretty sure, to said nuts, there’s no oppression unless the people are white.
I just recently read an article about how the internment of Japanese origin Americans was in large parts driven by white farmers, because the Japanese origin farmers were simply excellent and had some of the best land in California. A land grab, plain and simple.
Giliell:
Oh yes, that was a huge part of it.
One of my college professors was imprisoned as a child. The way he told it his family didn’t lose their home or business because the neighbors who said they’d take care of the store and return it actually did so, but tens of thousands of other Japanese Americans, including many members of his family, had much less scrupulous neighbors. Some simply claimed the “abandoned” property for their own, moving in as if it was theirs and always had been, much of it was sold at auctions or in pre-internment panic sales.
Total losses estimated to be between $149 million and $370 million in 1945 dollars. (article from 1983)
Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk-:
the Japanese origin farmers were simply excellent and had some of the best land in California
As I understand it, it was that the Japanese cultivating methods were far superior; they are used to getting more out of smaller land and are careful not to destroy their topsoil. So American farmers were looking at Japanese bringing in twice their crops from the same sized plots, and they wanted the land -- not realizing that the land was the same and what was special was the Japanese.