Colors of Confinement
Rare Kodachrome Photographs of Japanese American Incarceration in World War II
Format:Hardback
Publisher:The University of North Carolina Press
Published:30th Aug '12
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In 1942, Bill Manbo and his family were forced from their Hollywood home into the Japanese American internment camp at Heart Mountain in Wyoming. While there, Manbo documented both the bleakness and beauty of his surroundings, using Kodachrome film, a technology then just seven years old, to capture community celebrations and to record his family's struggle to maintain a normal life under the harsh conditions of racial imprisonment. Colors of Confinement showcases sixty-five stunning images from this extremely rare collection of color photographs, presented along with three interpretive essays by leading scholars and a reflective, personal essay by a former Heart Mountain internee.
The subjects of these haunting photos are the routine fare of an amateur photographer: parades, cultural events, people at play, Manbo's son. But the images are set against the backdrop of the barbed-wire enclosure surrounding the Heart Mountain Relocation Center and the dramatic expanse of Wyoming sky and landscape. The accompanying essays illuminate these scenes as they trace a tumultuous history unfolding just beyond the camera's lens, giving readers insight into Japanese American cultural life and the stark realities of life in the camps.
Eric Muller's Colors of Confinement skillfully presents a multifaceted montage, integrating the insights of an historian, an expert on photography, and a former prisoner of Heart Mountain. The contributors demonstrate that Kodachrome images of Japanese American incarceration can offer a deeper understanding of the WRA camps, even as they raise troubling questions about memory, representation, and meaning.--Lane Ryo Hirabayashi, University of California, Los Angeles
|""The color photographs of Bill Manbo are at once beautiful, poignant, and stinging with irony. Young girls in vibrantly colorful kimonos dancing in front of black tarpaper barracks, a teenager in full Boy Scout uniform lifting the stars and stripes up high in a U.S. concentration camp--these are pictures of resilience and fortitude from a dark chapter of American history.""--George Takei|""I was imprisoned at Heart Mountain when I was twelve, so my memories of camp life are still vivid. Colors of Confinement brings back these memories in living color and gives them new life. It was almost scary to be able to relive the experience while reading this book.""--Norman Mineta
ISBN: 9780807835739
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 1140g
136 pages
New edition