People

About the Images

The images in this topic show the faces of Japanese Americans before, during, and after incarceration. Most of the photographs were taken by War Relocation Authority (WRA) photographers for publicity purposes and tend to show people who are smiling or stoic. The paintings by internee artists Estelle Ishigo and Henry Sugimoto suggest a more emotional and somber mood.

Overview

Before the war, Japanese Americans largely lived in rural areas and in ethnic enclaves such as Los Angeles' Little Tokyo. The photograph of the "Nisei queen" shows people looking relaxed and happy, going about their daily lives. Some Japanese Americans worked in agriculture or blue-collar jobs, such as the former longshoreman pictured here; others owned or worked in businesses; still others were teachers, or artists, or homemakers, or students. The picture of the Mitarais before evacuation shows this successful farm operator and his wife and children looking much like any other pre-war middle-class family.

During evacuation, Japanese Americans in the West were forced by government decree to leave their homes, businesses, jobs, school, and friends. The WRA photographs taken during the evacuation process show people waiting to be transported to the internment camps. The parents, grandparents, and children went as family groups. Many of the adults shown here are older adults and young women. In fact, a number of Japanese American men — like T/4 Taniguchi, shown with his wife and child, and the young man shown here in uniform — joined the US Army. One regiment, the Japanese American 442nd Regimental Combat Team, was the most highly decorated American unit in WWII.

Most of the official photographs show calm, smiling, and happy internees, going about their daily lives: a woman knits in a room with her father, two women show each other their babies, and a little boy smiles for the camera, as do a group of orphans. A grandfather teaches his grandson to walk, a man supervises a camp agriculture product, a woman smiles with her bicycle, and everyone gathers to say hello to Eleanor Roosevelt on her visit to Gila Relocation Center. A camp "Labor Day Queen" happily eats an ice cream cone, in an echo of the pre-internment photograph of Little Tokyo's festival queen. The message sent by these photographs seems to be "Life goes on as usual."

Internee art, however, tells a somewhat different story. Henry Sugimoto's painting Send Off Husband at Jerome Camp shows a mother and child waving goodbye as their husband/father goes back to war. But unlike the photographs, which avoid images of forced confinement, this painting also shows a guard armed with a bayonet attached to a rifle, barring the family from leaving camp. A stop sign also blocks their way, and a guard tower is shown in the background. Estelle Ishigo's painting, in quiet brown tones, shows an interned mother and child looking out past barbed wire fences.

After the war, families were released from the internment camps to resume their lives. The irony and poignancy of this time is reflected in Ishigo's sketch of her husband with the words "Are We Americans Again?" During resettlement, photographers seem to have been able to show Japanese Americans expressing a wider range of emotions. The image of people gathering to say goodbye to former internees who are being released shows one woman in tears. Still, most photographs show happy young faces, such as the Hiyashi family, who have resumed farming. The WRA is helping the Ikeyuchis (called "loyal Americans" in the caption, presumably because they were interned without incident), to find homes and jobs.

Many of the post-war WRA photographs make a point of the fact that Japanese Americans are being reintegrated into daily life. One blind veteran is surrounded by beautiful young women; Mr. and Mrs. Nishimura are back at work in their greenhouse and, according to the caption, "things are working out fine"; disabled veteran Isamu Oka and his family, interned at Heart Mountain in Wyoming, are now living in Los Gatos, where Oka is shown sitting in an orchard; and chrysanthemum specialist Ryohitsu Shibuya is back raising flowers in Mountain View, smiling despite the fact that he and his family are living in a small apartment and a packing shed while they wait to reclaim their apartment. Yet after the war, prejudice and discrimination still existed against Japanese Americans. Captain Daniel Inouye, who lost an arm in combat in Europe and would later become a US senator, recalled being turned away from a barber shop, even when he was dressed in his uniform