Minidoka: An American Concentration Camp by Teresa Tamura (review)

Historians, writers, political activists, and many others are turning back to the story of Japanese confinement in the United States during World War II. Many begin more recent reflections by way of wrestling with the many racist responses to another community—Muslim Americans—especially in the wake of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. New books, essays, exhibits, articles, and oral history projects grant us richly textured and complex memories invaluable to our reexamining the legacy of Japanese American incarceration during the Second World War and help us to understand better the context of racism and multiculturalism in the United States. Despite the war itself being a heavily trodden subject area, certain aspects have been traditionally downplayed in the mainstream historiography, necessitating new work on a variety of important subjects. One new book, featuring over 180 photographs, poetry, and essays drawing on interviews, takes a closer look at a lesser-known American concentration camp. Authored by photographer and educator Teresa Tamura, this book documents the Minidoka War Relocation Center in Jerome County, Idaho, by interpreting its legacy through portraits, oral histories, and landscapes. Minidoka was named a National Historic Site in January 2001 in commemoration of the over 9,000 people who experienced the forced migration to the facility between 1942 and 1945. The town was home to just 112 people in 2010, but the internment camp at one time covered nearly 33,000 acres and over 600 buildings.

To begin, Tamura offers readers a brief summation of her own family's history, providing us a personal glimpse into a lesser-known aspect of the Japanese American community at the outset of war. Whereas the experiences of Japanese living on the West Coast are somewhat better known, the experiences of those living in other regions or places like rural Idaho are significantly obscured in American memory. Tamura makes clear that her family knew practically everybody else in the small, close-knit Japanese American community in Idaho before Pearl Harbor. With the War Relocation Authority about to construct a significant relocation center in the state, a new influx of migrants, moved to concentration camps against their will, would quickly change the social dynamic and result in new firsthand experiences for those living in the American West.

By presenting a unique and thought-provoking blend of black and white photographs with clips from primary sources, poetry, and quotes from oral history reflections, this volume provides insight into the many forms of racism that Japanese Americans encountered, the harsh and beautiful landscape of the region, and the many challenges involved in preserving and interpreting the site. This book is a large-format, photo-rich, nearly coffee-table-sized volume worthy of being shared outside the library. Looking over the occasionally desolate landscape portrayed in the images, it is striking to imagine a time when nearly 500 evacuees arrived daily to start new lives in the camp.

Featuring numerous portraits made on location, historic images, and a handful of other illustrations highlighting primary source documents, this book is more than simply a photography book. A small number of maps are well selected and useful additions to the volume. This project serves as a reminder that oral history interviewing can serve as an invaluable thread in creating a larger tapestry of challenging topics in history. Interviews coupled with portraits also serve to humanize difficult stories, making them more intimate and relatable.

Written in a clear style, Minidoka allows us to focus in on a single camp location much less well known than places like Manzanar, Tule Lake, Heart Mountain, or Topaz. Punctuating the book is an edited interview with Neil King, the former National Park Service (NPS) superintendent for the Minidoka National Historic Site. The interview points to the profound connections made when NPS staff collaborate successfully with members of broader communities, but it also illustrates many of the challenges inherent in interpreting historic sites—including an all-too-common perceived dissonance between federal, state, and local powers. In recent...