Enemy Combatants?
20 X 24
Soon after the Japanese government attacked our naval fleet stationed at Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941 all persons of Japanese ancestry living near the coast in California, Oregon and Washington state were evacuated and held in internment camps until the war had ended.
They were removed from their homes and businesses --- their homes and property sold with little or no accounting. All they were allowed to take was what they could carry. Snow Falling on Cedars is an excellent film depicting the mood of the country and the prejudice and fear that existed.
I painted this from a composite of black and white photos by Dorothea Lange. Lange was hired by the U.S. government to document the process. The two young children with perhaps their grandmother, or maybe an aunt, in a park in Hayward, California, awaiting a bus, each with an ID tag. The woman appears to be bent down, maybe looking through a bag of all she had left. The baby on the right holds a sandwich given to her by a local church group. May 8, 1942.
While looking at old black and white photos in the book Impounded, a book of censored images of the interment, I couldn't help but say to myself, in jest of course, "Yeap, they look like enemy combatants to me." What do you think?
The Federal Reserve Bank in San Francisco was established to "aid the aliens." However there was enormous loss of property and lost freedom that took an immeasurable toll on these citizens. It wasn't until 1988 that Congress passed the Civil Liberties Act and issued a formal apology.
Watch a government video about the relocation
Note: Canada had a similar policy
"How could such a tragedy have occurred in a democratic society that prides itself on individual rights and freedoms?... I have brooded about this whole episode on and off for the past three decades..."
--Milton S. Eisenhower, in The President Is Calling
Paintings by Sally K. Green
Reproduction or use is by permission only - please contact me.
© 2008 Sally K. Green