Home Making: James Numata’s Photography of Post-War Chicago

The terminology<p>Alinder, Jasmine. <em>Moving Images: Photography and Japanese American Incarceration. </em> Urbana, IL: University of Chicago Press. 2009.</p> used to discuss the experiences of Japanese Americans during World War II is particularly charged because at the time the government and military often reverted to terms that minimized their actions and the infringement of civil rights. The exclusion orders, for example, did not refer to Japanese Americans born in the US as citizens but instead targeted “all persons of Japanese ancestry…both alien and non-alien.” Captions written for War Relocation Authority photographs reflect a similar avoidance of acknowledging citizenship as writers referred to Japanese Americans born in the United States as persons of Japanese ancestry.Inaccurate terminology is also reflected in the often-used word “internment” to describe the process of confining Japanese Americans during World War II. That term is largely inaccurate, however, as it refers to a legal process of detainment for non-citizens. In historian Roger Daniel’s essay on terminology he writes, “internment in the United States generally followed the rules set down in American and international law. What happened to those West Coast Japanese Americans who were incarcerated in army and WRA concentration camps was simply lawless.”

Scholars have argued that euphemistic language has distorted this history. According to Raymond K. Okamura, euphemism “helped the government to maintain a decent public image…and kept the historical record in the government’s favor.” In 2013 the national Japanese American Citizens League published a handbook on language use suggesting terms that should be used in place of euphemism citing that the government used language “to control public perceptions about the forced removal of Japanese American citizens from their West Coast homes.”

Chart below from “Power of Words Handbook: A Guide to Language about Japanese Americans in World War II,” National JACL Committee, April 27, 2013.

“SUMMARY TABLE OF ACCURATE TERMS The table below, constructed from Ishizuka’s list (Ishizuka, 2006, p.72), summarizes the various euphemistic terms and their more accurate counterparts.

EUPHEMISM ACCURATE TERM
evacuation exclusion, or forced removal
relocation incarceration in camps; also used after release from camp
non-aliens U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry
civilian exclusion orders detention orders
any or all persons primarily persons of Japanese ancestry
may be excluded evicted from one’s home
native American aliens renunciants (citizens who, under pressure, renounced U.S. citizenship)
assembly center temporary detention facility
relocation center American concentration camp, incarceration camp, illegal detention center, inmates held here are “incarcerees”
internment center reserve for DOJ or Army camp holding alien enemies under Alien Enemies Act 1798”

Because photography involves mechanical reproduction and produces images that appear to replicate the subject represented, photographs can be mistakenly thought to be authorless mirrors. The term “photograph” itself means light writing, as if the photographer has little to do with the image created. But many scholars have fashioned theories of photographic meaning that acknowledge photographs as complex representations without fixed meaning. Cultural theorist Roland Barthes used semiotic theory to think about photographs as systems of meaning much like language. In that sense, one can read a photograph much like one reads a text. The photograph’s relationship to truth, and to its subject, is tenuous. Historian John Tagg argues that “every photograph is the result of specific and, in every sense, significant distortions which render its relation to any prior reality deeply problematic.” Photographic meaning shifts and is often dependent on context. As Graham Clarke writes, “Any photograph is dependent on a series of historical, cultural, social and technical contexts which establishes its meanings as an image and an object.” Photographs can serve as important primary sources and, although they might looks like windows onto the past, they require a high level of scrutiny and analysis just as any other primary source does.

When analyzing photographs as visual representations, here are some formal elements that might be worth considering:
Cropping
Frame
Flatness
Space
Format
Scale
Angle of Vision
Perspective
Time
Movement
Light
Exposure
Print
Focus
Color
Detail
Trick effects (multiple negatives, photoshopping, etc…)
Neutrality/Reality
Pose
Objects
Aesthetics
Sequence

When analyzing photographs as visual representations, here are some contextual questions that might be worth considering:

What is this photograph of?
• What is the denoted (literal) meaning?
• What are the connoted (symbolic) meanings?

Of what is the photograph a product?
• Who made the photograph?
• For whom was it made?
• Why was it made?
• When was it made?
• What is the relationship between photographer, subject, and viewer? Is there an (un)equal balance of power?
• Are technical concerns relevant?
• Are there any political or ideological motivations?

In what context are you viewing it?
• What was the original context and rhetorical function of its making?
• Does it belong to a sequence of images?
• Does it belong to a recognizable genre of image?
• Is there any written text associated with the image? If so, what is the relationship between the written text and the image?

Is there anything about the photograph that you can’t explain?
• What questions does this image raise?
What categories of historical analysis are relevant to the image? Labor? Race? Gender? War? Politics? Domestic life? Immigration?

For more on photography and meaning see:
Barthes, Roland. 1981. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. New York: The Noonday Press, 1988.
Barthes, Roland. Image, Music, Text. New York: Hill and Wang, 1998.
Berger, John. Understanding a Photograph. Aperture, 2013.
Clarke, Graham. The Photograph. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Lutz, Catherine and Jane Collins, “The Photograph as an Intersection of Gazes,” in The Photography Reader, ed. Liz Wells (New York: Routledge, 2003), 354-374.
Sontag, Susan. On Photography / Susan Sontag. New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977.

Sturken, Marita. “Camera Images and National Meanings,” in Tangled Memories. Berkeley: U of C Press, 1997, 19-43.
Tagg, John. The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988.