Discovery: Manipulated photos

USC Doheny Library Regional History Collection
A treasure trove for discovery & scholarship for this art history major.
By Susan Andrews
January 2009

Conducting research in USC College is exhilarating, rewarding & an essential component of the undergraduate experience according to art history major & senior Rachel Huichong Wen. She learned this first-hand after spending several weeks studying photographs & letters from the Japanese American relocation camps [government terminology] during WWII.

Approximately 10 War Relocation Authority Camps, 17 assembly centers & 8 Dept of Justice Detention Centers were built in the U.S. for more than 120,000 Japanese Americans following Japan's bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Approximately 64% of those incarcerated were American-born citizens.

Wen investigated photographs & letters from one of these camps. Located within USC's Doheny Library's History Collection section (at the USC Special Collections Library), these items are part of a repository consisting of a million photos donated to the library in the ’70s from the now defunct Los Angeles Examiner.


The Los Angeles Examiner Building


The neatly arranged files of photos residing inside a brown cardboard box represent a world of possibilities to Wen. "There is enough here for an entire class to study & research," she said enthusiastically. The photos are classified into 3 main categories: the relocation process, repatriation & "loyal Americans." The collection is categorized by relocation sites, which include Santa Anita, Tanforan, & Tule Lake in California; Poston in Arizona; & Payallup in Washington State.

"These photos & letters could be analyzed from multiple disciplines besides art history--sociology, international relations, psychology, to name a few," Wen said. "They can be interpreted from many different perspectives. I am only interpreting them through an art historian’s eye."

Within the Japanese American Relocation Collection, Wen found 5 images that were heavily manipulated. She focused her study on one of these photos & a second one from the Arizona-based Poston relocation camp, the Examiner’s report of November 30, 1943, & two 1943 memos from Parker, Arizona, which was located near the Poston camp. “These materials provide important accounts about the anti-Japanese American movement,” she said.

“One artifact is composed of images from different & unrelated photographs, which were cut & reassembled to create a different scene, as if by collage. The photograph shows a Japanese American behind the wheel of a U.S. army truck,” she said. “At first I thought they did not like the photo until I looked closer & saw the location where masking tape had been applied to the back to piece together the separate images of the man & of the truck.”

After these fabricated images were created, Wen explained, captions were written & then published in the Examiner. The caption of the first image read "Whose truck?" The Examiner’s reporter wrote in his article “This Jap, one of hundreds 'interned' at Poston who can leave the camp without guard, is driving a Civilian Conservation Corps truck that belongs to the War Department.”

Yoko Shirai, lecturer in the department of art history, believes that “This type of valuable physical evidence [masking tape] will in time disintegrate, & valuable physical evidence will be lost forever.”

The 2nd photo studied by Wen was of a building with hand painted signs captioned “Japs Keep Out.” She explained that “This sign shows how citizens of Parker felt about the Japanese. Another caption appears in the image stating that the Japanese still ‘have the run of the countryside.’”

Wen examined 2 documents. The first is a 3-page memo from reporter James E. Lewis to Jim Richardson, the Examiner’s city editor. In the memo, Lewis mentioned a riot in Poston as part of his trip to Parker as well as a petition from the Parker residents to the governor. Lewis wrote, “Townspeople in Parker have signs on their stores such as ‘Jap keep-out-you rat.” His description connects to the image of the anti-Japanese sign.

The 2nd document is a 2-page letter written by Gov. Sidney P. Osborn of Arizona to J.M. Hill (and the petitioners) responding to the petition, which requested that all Japanese at the Poston Relocation Center not be allowed into the town of Parker. The letter addresses the Parker residents’ concern & promises action to keep the Poston internees out of town.

http://college.usc.edu/news/2009/01/wen.html

Books (Non-Fiction )

The hardcover 1st edition from Willow Valley Press, "Dandelion Through the Crack" by Kiyo Sato (former Poston camp II internee) has been sold out!

Look for the new edition, from Soho Press, "Kiyo's Story: A Japanese Family's Quest for the American Dream." (new title)

Winner of the 2008 William Saroyan International Prize for nonfiction book!

Writer Kiyo Sato to Speak at Smithsonian

February 17, 2009

A survivor of the Japanese internment camps, Kiyo Sato, at 85 years young, has lived a remarkable life, and will be sharing her experiences during the Smithsonian’s Asian Pacific American Program to mark the 67th anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 9066, on Feb. 19 in Washington, D.C.

That order signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, led to the internment of 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry during World War II.

Forced to leave their Sacramento home & farm on May 29, 1942, Sato, the oldest of 9 children, & her family were taken to POSTON Camp II in Arizona.

Born in Sacramento, Sato was 19-yrs-old at the time of the internment & has chronicled her experience in her book "Dandelion Through the Crack: The Sato Family Quest for the American Dream."

Spanning 7 decades, her book published in August 2007, details her father, Shinji, leaving Japan for America in 1911; how her father met her mother Tomomi in Japan in 1922; her family’s life on the family farm in Sacramento, before & after the internment; how she overcame prejudice to become a nurse & rose to the rank of Captain in the U.S. Air Force Nurse Corps; a triumphant battle with developers who tried to take the family farm in 1975; and her mother’s passing in 1977.

"I wanted Dandelion to illuminate not only the challenges of prejudice & oppression, but also, & more fundamentally, the triumph of a family despite those challenges," says Sato. “I wanted readers to see life as we lived it, from the early years on a Sacramento strawberry farm, through the trauma of the war years, & rebuilding life afterwards."

Along this journey, she has received awards & accolades for Dandelion Through the Crack. On September 6, 2008, she was awarded the William Saroyan International Prize for writing in nonfiction by Stanford University Libraries, in partnership with the William Saroyan Foundation.

Also in 2008, she received the Award of Excellence in Publications from the Sacramento County Historical Society; won the Gold Award for Best First Book from Northern California Publishers & Authors; & was honored for her accomplishments by the California Writers Club, Sacramento Branch, & by State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell.

Now out of print, Dandelion Through the Crack is being published as Kiyo’s Story: A Japanese-American Family’s Quest For The American Dream by Soho Press.

The National Book Launch for Kiyo’s Story will be on March 28, 2009, at noon, in her hometown of Sacramento at Book Lovers Bookstore, 5800 Madison Ave.

Sato’s story is also available on Amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.

Dear Miss Breed: True Stories of the Japanese American Incarceration During World War II and a Librarian Who Made a Difference.
by Joanne Oppenheim. Scholastic Inc: 2006. ISBN 0-439-56992-3

From the Smithsonian Education webpage

Letters from the Japanese American Internment Camp

Retired engineer Richard "Babe" Karasawa works as a volunteer at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. He grew up in San Diego and was sent to the camps at Santa Anita and Poston, but he did not know of the Miss Breed letters until a few years ago, when the museum received the collection as a gift. While helping to organize the collection, he discovered that he knew many of the writers. David Kikuchi, who wrote the letter on this page, is still a friend of his.

Babe was fourteen at the time of the evacuation; David was nine. Both of them lived in converted horse stables at Santa Anita. One of Babe's most powerful memories is the moment when he and his family were shown their new home, which still smelled of the horses.

"My mom sees it and tears start coming down her face," he said. "My mom says, 'We're not going in there.'"

Babe was in a special position when he worked on the letters. He read them as history, but a history that was part of his own life.

"I was looking for reminders of what things were like," he said. What he found was "a definite inclination not to tell the worst." David's letter sums up the housing at Santa Anita in one statement: "We live in horse stables but there is another room added to the horse stable." Babe laughed when he read this, because it came so far short of describing all that he remembers.

"Many of us found it very difficult to clearly express our emotions," he said. "Generally speaking, we were quiet Americans. I think the tendency was to minimize complaints to anyone outside of our community."

But David Kikuchi, a retired architect, doesn't see it this way at all. His memories of camp life are mostly happy ones. Hikes to the nearby Colorado River and days spent fishing are what stand out in his thoughts of Poston. For him, the internment was "a great adventure" — a long camping trip with his family and all his friends along.

"Maybe it shouldn't have happened, but it did," he said. "Most of us did the best with what we had. There was no sugarcoating at all in those letters."

Both Babe and David say that many factors — including the difference in their age — account for their very different experiences.