At the start of U.S. involvement in World War II, federal officials hired photographer Dorothea Lange to document the roundup and detention of Japanese-Americans.
But the images yielded by the photographer, already famous for her work documenting the plight of migrant farm workers during the Depression, portrayed the internees as everyday Americans struggling to maintain their dignity while being stripped of their liberty under harsh conditions.
Officials buried her 800 images in the National Archives, where nearly all remained out of public view -- until 2006, when historians Linda Gordon and Gary Okihiro published them in the book Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American Internment .
A selection of Lange's photographs, exhibited with additional work by Ansel Adams, will be on display at the University of Utah's Irish Humanities Building beginning Feb. 19 as part of national Day of Remembrance events aimed at recognizing the hardships U.S. citizens of Japanese descent endured at the hands of their government. To mark the opening of the exhibit, the U.'s American West Center will host a lecture Feb. 19 at 4 p.m. by Okihiro, a professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University and founding director of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race.
"It's the human story of old people, women, men and children caught in the act of being forcibly removed from their homes and being detained in these horrible conditions," Okihiro said in an NPR interview with Gordon.
The historians selected 104 of the Lange pictures for their book, which sheds new light on the experiences of more than 110,000 Japanese Americans detained under Executive Order 9066, confining them to desolate camps like Utah's Topaz Japanese-American Relocation Center near Delta. Gordon, a professor at New York University, came across the images while researching her biography of Lange, who died in 1965.
"They were only suppressed during the war, but when they were placed in the National Archives no one brought them to public attention," Gordon said in the radio interview. Lange was ordered to point her camera away from razor-wire fences, guard towers and armed soldiers. "She believed these were not her best work because the circumstances under which she did this photography were extremely restrictive," Gordon added. "There were many things she was forbidden to photograph. She was prevented from entering conversations with the internees."
The University of Utah's American West Center hosts an exhibit of Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams' images shot of Japanese-American internees.
Where » Carolyn Tanner Irish Humanities Building at 215 S. Central Campus Drive
When » Feb. 19-March 13
Opening » Historian Gary Okihiro offers a lecture on the images Feb. 19 at 4 p.m.
Day of Remembrance events
Other local events marking the national Day of Remembrance include Plan-B Theatre's production of Utah playwright Matthew Ivan Bennett's "Block 8," a world-premiere drama about an unlikely friendship struck between a young Japanese American man and a Mormon librarian at Utah's Topaz Internment camp. The play runs Feb. 20-March 8 at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center's Studio Theatre, 138 W. 300 South, Salt Lake City.
