A closer look at the ethnic profiling of Japanese Americans
Posted October 2, 2009 at 3:09 am
Updated October 2, 2009 at 3:59 am
The Center for the Study of Ethics & Human Values assembled a series of speakers, artists and performances this weekend for the next chapter of its ethnic profiling program, titled “A Challenge to Democracy: Ethnic Profiling of Japanese Americans During World War II.”
Photographer Ansel Adams, famous for his iconic images of Yosemite Valley and the Sierra Nevada mountains, documented the Japanese internment at the Manzanar Relocation Center in northern California.
Japanese painter Chiura Obata depicted life in Topaz War Relocation Center from the inside, when he was interned there with his family.
The two artists were friends and colleagues in life, hiking and teaching together during the summers at Adams’ studio in Yosemite. Now their respective work on the internment hangs side by side in the exhibition in the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum.
Adams and Obata’s sons will join forces for a presentation on Friday called “Remembering the Internment: A Conversation by the Sons of Chiura Obata and Ansel Adams” to discuss the problem of ethnic profiling today and on the home front during World War II.
This weekend’s events also include two performances of the play “Dust Storm: Art and Survival in a Time of Paranoia” and a biographical presentation of Obata’s work by his granddaughter, Kimi Kodani Hill.
Student Life reporter Dana Glaser sat down with Michael Adams and Gyo Obata, alumni of the Washington University School of Medicine and Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts, respectively, to discuss their fathers’ legacies and their own experiences while observing the fate of Japanese Americans.
Michael Adams
Student Life: What was the relationship like between your father and Chiura Obata?
Michael Adams: I was pretty small, but they were very good friends. They’d been friends in the art world in San Francisco and Bay area. They had also been friends in the Sierra area in hiking and taking trips into the backcountry of Yosemite and into King’s Canyon.
SL: Do you know why he originally decided to document the Japanese internment?
MA: He was too old and had children, so he couldn’t be in the military, and I think he felt a little guilty that he wasn’t doing his share. Then he was contacted by a fellow by the name of Ralph Merritt, who was an old friend from the Sierra Club and who had been appointed administrator of the camp Manzanar and was told there was a unique situation that probably would benefit from documentation. My dad jumped at the opportunity and went to Manzanar.
SL: Since he was originally asked to go by the government, were there rules about what he could or could not photograph?
MA: He agreed to do it, but on the stipulation that it would not be paid for. He did this on his own, and the supervision, I think, was very minimal.
SL: What were his artistic or political goals in going to Manzanar?
MA: He was trying to document a life that was sort of a forced exodus that as it turns out is an embarrassment to us today. It was, in all respects, illegal—these were American citizens that had been pulled out of their homes. I think he felt strongly that these were citizens who had been displaced, whether at the time they felt the illegality of it was that strong.
Gyo Obata
SL: Can you tell us a little about your father?
Gyo Obata: My father was a landscape painter, a painter of nature. But when he was in the internment camp, he painted what he saw. There was always an artistry in his paintings. Poetry, let’s say. But he was also trying to depict what it was like there.
SL: And what was it like?
GO: It was terrible! These families were put in these tar paper shacks, each family had 15 by 15 space, they all had to go out to the bathroom, the shower and another barrack to eat. It was prison in a sense.
SL: Did you also go to Topaz Moon?
GO: No, I didn’t. I heard if you got permission from a university east of the three coastal states, they might let you leave. As soon as these notices were attached to the telephone poles in Berkeley—I was going to Cal—my father said, “This is crazy. You ought to try to get out.” I went to my professors at Cal and asked them what would be the closest good architectural school east of California, and they said, ‘Well, Washington University in St. Louis.’ I applied there, and after a series of telegraphs and so forth, they sent me an acceptance. I left Berkeley the night before my family was sent to the camp.
SL: Did you ever visit your family in the camp?
GO: Yes, I did. I came to St. Louis in the spring of ’42, and that Christmas of ’42 they let me visit my family over the break. I was a free person, and here my whole family was incarcerated. It was really a strange deal.
SL: Do you think ethnic profiling is still a problem today?
GO: It’s not so much against Asians now but against African Americans, certainly, and anyone who looks like they are from the Middle East are discriminated against.
1 Comments
Related Posts
Print This Post
Loading ...
On October 3, 2009 at 12:22 pm Crystal City said
Speaking of ethnic profiling…. do not forget that German Americans and Italian Americans were relocated and interned in the United States during World War II.
See: http://www.foitimes.com for more info…