American Citizens: Racism, Discrimination, and Identity The creation of history is an ongoing process we all participate in. According to Kristine Kuramitsu, Internment and Identity in Japanese American Art, “an ethnic community is never a monolithic entity but a group that is, by definition, connected by some set of memories and experiences.” Collective memories have shaped our identity; some people protest others choose to agree with version illustrated and perceived which best defines their relative existence. However, “with this personal identification with a community subgroup comes the threat of isolation” (Kuramitsu). The more an individual begins to recognize their heritage and embrace their origin, Gayatri Spivak, “Acting Bits/Identity Talk”, Critical Inquiry would assert, “history slouches in one’s origins, ready to comfort and kill.” The consequences of history offer to narratives, peace and equality or secondly protest and pain. In America which operates on the principle of Democracy, people and citizens believe in fundamental rights as intuitively recognizable. These provisions are grounded in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. During World War II these rights were quickly destroyed. Internment camp prisoner Henry Sugimoto and War Relocation Authority photographer Dorothea Lange’s; uncensored artwork and photography lifted the veil capturing the plight and destitute existence Japanese Americans citizens endured as a result of Executive Order 9066, issued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1942. During World War II in America, the “Model Immigrant” citizen endured imprisonment, racism, discrimination, and censorship. Once the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 instantly anti-Japanese hysteria spread across the United States. The oppression began as 110,000 Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans from the U.S. west coast were evacuated and imprisoned. “Many were forced to sell their homes and businesses, often suffering huge financial losses, and educations, careers and lives were disrupted, sometimes irrevocably,” says Gary Mukai, “Teaching about Japanese-American Internment.” The detainees were imprisoned for the duration of the war in ten permanent camps: two in each Arkansas, Arizona and California, and one each in Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah. During the 1940’s, “rumors of spies, sabotage, and attacks circulated widely,” co-editor Linda Gordon of NYU writes in, “Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American Internment”. Two-thirds of them we U.S. citizens many were woman and children. “They were imprisoned behind barbed wire and guarded by police with submachine guns” (Gordon). Dolores Flamiano, Japanese American Internment in Popular Magazines claims that, “Magazine articles gave two main justifications for the internment of Japanese Americans: military necessity and the Japanese assimilation problem. The media seemed to take its cue from Gen. John Lesesne DeWitt, who was responsible for implementing Executive Order 9066 and who cited these reasons as justifications for the internment. Several articles asserted that the evacuation order was an unquestioned military necessity because officials feared that disloyal Japanese Americans, who leased large tracts of land, could turn them “into a landing field for Japanese bombers.” As a consequence of this fear, Japanese anti pervasive sentiment was expressed in the mainstream media and press. Wartime officials are responsible and have successfully restricted unauthorized disclosures, while implementing their own version, propaganda, and agenda. Michael Sweeney, Secret of Victory: The Office of Censorship and the American Press and Radio in World War II, comments on the government by saying, “to obtain cooperation the executive branch has been actively engaged in public mobilization and diplomacy. A number of case studies have examined in detail how administrations made propaganda and information management efforts from World War I to the post-Cold War conflicts”. Takeya Mizununo, Censorship in a Different Name: Press “Supervision” in Wartime Japanese American Camps 1942-1943, describes how media outlets circumvent the truth of the oppressed, “When the federal government in 1942 forced Japanese Americans into relocation centers, camp officials allowed them to publish newspapers “freely,” under “supervision,” without “censorship.” In reality, however the camp press was hardly “free.” Newspapers published under governmental auspices were inevitably subject to various types of editorial interference. The camp authority’s “supervision” took various forms, including pre- and post-publication reviews, selective staff employment, supplying of news and propaganda material, and even direct and coercive editorial interference that officials themselves admitted to be “censorship.” Camp officials also elicited self- restraint from staffers, making strict supervision or censorship unnecessary”.
Artists have joined the protest against the deprivation of fundamental rights and the stigmatization of minorities. It is easy to declare these rights as inalienable, but to make their enjoyment freely available in real life is difficult. “What happened to the American dream the internees wondered? America is supposed to be the “melting pot,” the land of the free (Gordon). For years heavy silence hung over the 1940’s. In many Japanese families parents were ashamed of the interment and kept the harsh truth of the imprisonment from their children. Japanese immigrants enjoyed the lives they had made in America. Japanese born Americans felt a sense of pride after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Many families imprisoned watched as their loved ones joined the 442nd Regimental Combatant Team. “They proved by their compliance with the government orders that they were “good Americans” (Kuramitsu). In the spring of 1942, the War Relocation Authority hired Dorothea Lange to document the internment. “In the 1930’s she had been working for a government committed to relieving suffering,” Gordon writes of Lange who photographed the iconic “Migrant Mother” in 1936. But Gordon follows up with a comment regarding the imprisonment, “Now she was documenting a suffering created by the government.” Lange made over 760 photographs which are documented in four stages of the imprisonment: Before the evacuation, The Roundup, At the Assembly Centers, and Manzanar. For decades Lange’s images were sequestered at the National Archives. Lange worked under restrictions that included her being forbidden to photo graph guards or barbed wire. Linda Gordon writes, “These photographs exemplify Lange’s mastery of composition and of visual condensation of human feeling and relationships, they also unequivocally denounce an unjustified, unnecessary racist policy.” The September 1942 issue of Survey Graphic, which contained on the cover a pre-evacuation photograph “Oath of Allegiance,” by Lange of San Francisco children in a schoolyard saluting the American flag; which is an example of flag iconography in World War II photojournalism. Dolores Flamiano comments on the picture where minority students outnumbered whites and an Asian boy led the flag salute by saying, “this image seemed to reassure viewers that American principles prevailed despite the harsh realities of internment and the apparent suspension of civil liberties.” A writer for the New York Times, A.D. Coleman wrote about an exhibit of Lange’s pictures from the camps, “Lange functioned as our national eye of conscience.” With enormous outpouring of writings over the past four decades about the World War II internment or imprisonment of Japanese Americans it is sometimes difficult to imagine that there is anything new to say about the issue. Journalistic activities by uprooted Japanese Americans had remained unknown until the 1980’s, and even today much is left undiscovered. Japanese immigrants that were imprisoned formed art schools which were attended by forty percent of the internees. Henry Sugimoto portrayed life in the camps. He was born in Japan and immigrated in 1919. He attended college in California studying art, after graduation he went to Paris where painting landscapes became his focus. Once Executive Order 9066 was issued Henry and his family was sent to the Jerome Relocation Center in Southeastern Arkansas. Here at camp he captured the harsh feelings of disruption to their normal assimilated lives in America in which he had already enjoyed education and art. While in camp he painted, When Can We Go Home? (1944) this painting points out the painful ironies of the Japanese-American internment. His subjects primarily consisted of the internees at the Jerome Camp, in 1982 Sugimoto states, “I mostly concentrated on paintings for a record.” The director at the camp encouraged Herny’s work and often took several pieces at a time to display as good public relations. Kuramitsu explains, “From his position as an insider artist, he strove to capture the “essence” of camp experience, unreachable by any “outsider.” Sugimoto identified as an artist and many of the paintings from camp were of himself and his family. The painting When Can We Go Home? According to Kuramitsu, “Is composed of a montage of images swirling around a picture of a mother and child. The painting is unified by two crisscrossing, jagged “lightning bolts,” which break up the space. The left half of the montage contains symbols of “the outside” (a skyscraper, a train, and a bridge). The right side contains signifiers of internment (a guard tower, a sunflower, a storage barn and a sign denoting a block). The mother’s arms encircle the little girl, who gestures to the left of the painting longingly. These “outside” elements signal freedom and movement, which all internees desired. The “inside” elements are both negative and positive; the large sunflower dominates the left side of the painting and has leaves that radiate lines of growth and movement. The lines cutting through the composition also intersect at this flower. The growth of this flower indicates the resilience of the internees, a particular powerful point.”
Although his work was constrained by the economic and ideological realities of the war, he felt that he could transcend the medium to provide history with valuable insight regarding a controversial tragedy in American history. Artists were not considered a threat to the labor market, but they faced a dilemma. Internment arose from a long history of discrimination against all Asian immigrants. People spoke of “yellow peril” which declared Asians an inferior race. Long before World War II in 1913 the Alien Land Law excluded Asian immigrants and other noncitizens from owning property and limited them to menial jobs. The U.S. Constitution states: “All people are by nature free and independent and have inalienable rights.” During World War II in America, the “Model Immigrant” citizen endured Imprisonment, Racism, Discrimination, and Censorship. Works Cited
Flamiano, Dolores. “Japanese American in Popular Magazines: Race, Citizenship, and Gender in World War II Photojournalism.” Journalism History 36:1. Spring 2010: 23-35.ELibrary. E.W. Scripps School of Journalism. Web. 12 Nov. 2014.
Gordon, Linda and Gary Y. Okihiro. “Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American Internment.” American Journalism. Spring 2007: 136-138.ELibrary. American Journalism Historians Association. Web. 12 Nov. 2014.
Kuramitsu, Kristine C. “Internment and Identity in Japanese American Art.” John Hopkins University Press. Dec. 1995: 619-658.ELibrary. JSTOR. American Quarterly, Vol. 47, No. 4. Web. 12 Nov. 2014.
Mizuno, Takeya. “Censorship in a Different Name: Press “Supervision” in Wartime Japanese American Camps 1942-1943.” Spring 2011: 121-141.ELibrary. J&MC Quarterly, Vol. 88, No. 1. Web. 12 Nov. 2014.
Selz, Peter and Susan Landauer. “Art of Engagement: Visual Politics in California and Beyond Account.” 2005: 129-141.ELibrary. EBSCO. University of California Press. Web. 13 Nov. 2014.