Impounded

Impounded

Adult nonfiction
"Dorothea Lange challenged the political culture that
categorized people of Japanese ancestry as disloyal, perfidous, and
potentially traiterous, that stripped them of their citizenship and
made them un-American. She would have liked to stop the internment
and, although she could not do that, she surely hoped it would not be
repeated. She was as eager to defeat the Axis powers as any other
supporter of democracy, and worked on other photographic projects to
honor those who contributed to the war effort--for example, in studies
of defense industry workers. She too thought World War II was a "good
war," honorable and necessary. If her photographs of a major American
act of injustice had nuanced this verdict just a bit, that fact would
hardly have undermined the national commitment. And the added nuance
might well have contributed to developing among Americans a capacity
for more complex critical thinking about ensuing U.S. race and foreign
policy."
I was elated when I learned that Linda Gordon, who clued us in
on the second coming of the KKK, had written other books that were
available by ILL. Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of
Japanese American Internment by Linda Gordon and Gary Y. Okihiro
looked especially intriguing. How often do you get a world class
historian, a trail blazing photographer, and pictures censored by the
United States gubmint all in one volume?
Lange had worked for the government, documenting Depression era
rural poverty, creating the photographs for which she is well known.
At a time when nationalism and racism were rampant she didn't buy in.
She took a lot of pictures of people of color. Not surprisingly, the
gubmint overlooked them, using only her pictures of overwhelmingly
white Okies. Wouldn't want to threaten those Southern good old boy
politicians.
Lange received a Guggenheim fellowship and then had to put it on
hold. Pearl Harbor happened, plunging the United States into World
War II. President Roosevelt ordered all Japanese Americans to be
interned in concentration camps and created the War Relocation
Authority to achieve this. The WRA hired Lange to document their
work. Unlike Ansel Adams, who took cheerful portraits, she took
pictures to show the abuse and degradation heaped upon innocent
civilians. I'm sure you can guess whose work the gubmint used.
Gordon's excellent narrative constitutes the first part of the
book. In the second part Okihiro exposes more lies we were taught in
high school. Pearl Harbor did not come out of the blue in any other
sense than that planes dropped the bombs. Fear of Japan has a long,
inglorious history in this nation. In the not so good old 1920s, for
example, (when the KKK was experiencing a revival and the Supreme
Court was making forced sterilization of undesirables the law of the
land) the organization that would become the FBI warned that Japanese
would swamp the "superior" white race. Preparations for internment
camps were started in 1936 by President Roosevelt. That's five years
before we were attacked.
The third part of the book is the best. It's the photographs
along with Lange's captions. They speak for themselves.
Those who don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat its
mistakes and evils. Impounded contains a lot of wisdom we need to be
learning. I highly recommend the book.
On a personal note, we had a lovely gardening day in Orono Saturday.
Sunday my church had our annual picnic with perfect weather. Today I
had my latest opinion piece published in the Bangor Daily News in the
center of the op ed page with the day's cartoon. As always I felt very
proud. I'm getting good feedback.
A great big shout out goes out to my editor and the BDN readers who
will read my piece.
jules hathaway


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