Colors of Confinement: Rare Kodachrome Photographs of Japanese American Incarceration in World War II ed. by Eric Mueller (review)

Colors of Confinement is a disturbing portrait of America’s World War II shame, the incarceration of 110,000 Japanese Americans and Nationals. Bill Manbo’s Heart Mountain amateur Kodachrome photographs of friends and family paint a poignant picture. The narratives and scholarly essays combine with the photos to forge a powerful statement. As humans we see the world in color, so the Kodachrome images convey the circumstances, as we would experience them if we were there. This level of reality is something that existing black and white camp photos cannot duplicate. In addition, Manbo’s work is authentic unlike the propaganda photos taken by white WRA photographers who often times photographed meanings they brought and not what they witnessed. Through Manbo’s camera lens it is painfully evident that internees were not criminals or enemies of the state but hardworking men, strong women, and playful children.

Manbo shows us a community that was effectively raped by their own government and in response they fought the stigma by diligently pursuing normal lives. Had they mentally embraced the rape as appropriate, it would have caused untold personal damage to already fragile psyches. As a result, his photographs contain a perspective of normalcy that belies the incongruous prison circumstances behind barbed wire and under the shadow of guard towers: Manbo’s father-in-law and mother-in-law pose in their Sunday best much like the “American Gothic” painting by Grant Wood, Boy Scouts proudly carry the stars and stripes, his son scales a barbed wire fence like a jungle gym, his relatives pose and smile in a group photo, and the Bon Odori festival dancers celebrate and honor the dead.

Bill Manbo’s understated style illuminates “irony” on multiple levels. The Bon Odori participants honor ancestors whose ethnic backgrounds caused the dancers to be incarcerated. As we examine the photos of the kimonoed dancers today, it is hard to imagine that many of these vibrant people are now dead. Just as they danced in 1943, their children and relatives now dance for them.

Understandably there are ironies not explicitly addressed by Manbo. None of his photos contain white people. None document the fact that many young men either volunteered or were drafted to fight in the U.S. Army. None show the shame and suffering bottled up in the hearts of the victims. None foreshadow the difficulty of returning home, starting new lives, or the 1988 government apology and redress.

As someone involved with the Seattle Japanese American Citizens’ League Pride and Shame traveling exhibit in 1970, which evolved into the impetus for national redress, I recommend Sadamu Shimabukuro’s book entitled Born in Seattle: The Campaign for Japanese American Redress.

After redress, “What tasks remain for the victims and community?” Japanese Americans were the first to suffer the injustice and as a result have a responsibility to tell their American story and to ensure that it never happens again. This is their legacy and one major theme of the book. A few borrowed lines from my unpublished poem after 9–11 entitled “Legacy” elaborate my thoughts.

I won’t turn my backin silence knowing vultureswill descend on shuttered storesand homes when hatestains holy walls.

Who will standon granite mosque stairs,link arms with brown brothersand sisters?

I will stand for myMother and Father,who sixty years agocould not stand against US Armybayonets, Browning rifles,President Rooseveltand Executive Order 9066.