reparations

Japanese-American camp, war emergency evacuation,[Tule Lake Relocation Center, Newell, Calif.] (LOC)

from The Library of Congress

• 9 older comments, and then…
• Shannon Dagher said:

  Amazing that they were still smiling. :) -- Seen in your 1930s-40s in Color set. (?)

• SewsSilkKnots said:

  I am wondering/pondering the same thing. Why?

• choodhott122 said:

  I love that they always kept their morale up even though they were being held in camps like prisoners. They managed to continue living as if they would outside of those camp walls.

• br@mbly said:

  Smiling politely at the camera, with a dignity all their own. What happened to the Japanese internees was really shameful.

• Konrad Aderer said:

  If you see lots of internment photos and films, as I have, the incarcerees usually look happy. These were their family photos, not conscious documentation of the injustice they were living under. muI think the daily life they built in the camps, which was filled with a lot of pretty "normal" activities like employment and pastimes, didn't leave much time for sitting around and looking miserable over the hardships and fundamental betrayal dealt them by the U.S. government. Also, photography by incarcerees was officially banned in the camps though the restriction was eventually relaxed. This undoubtedly caused a lot of negative sights to be hidden from cameras. I've read that Dorothea Lange took a lot of photos that revealed the harsh realities of the internment camps, but I haven't found them online yet -- hopefully they'll be available soon.