During Internment
Once the collection moves to the time inside the camp, the children in the pictures become much more reserved. The young girl pictured in the top photograph lacks any clear emotion, almost hiding behind a door. She cannot be any older than six, but she appears stoic, looking on quietly as her mother knits and her father reads a newspaper. This scene, at her home outside of the camp, would have been a scenic morning, a time to be together as a family. In the camp, she is alone, not surrounded by the groups of children scene in earlier pictures. The next photograph depicts another lone child, staring baffled at a soldier with a gun twice the size of the boy. He shows no fear, despite his lack of parents and the sheer size of the gun immediately in front of him. Instead, he is confused. He is confused by the American soldier who fought for his freedom so recently and now fights for his imprisonment. He lays his tiny hand on his tiny chest, as if asking the soldier if the gun is for him, a fellow American. In these early stages of internment, the young boy cannot come to terms with this new development. Two years later, a family stands outside their barracks in the bottom picture. No more sundresses and picnics. This family stands in almost military formation, the children showing a blank, confused expression. The mother smiles, hoping her children will follow suit. They barely react. They remain expressionless and stoic, looking more like dolls than people. In this way, the internment has succeeded; the Japanese American children no longer seem human.
A possible explanation for this can be found in Wyness' Childhood and Society. He quotes Postman, who posits that "it is quite possible for a culture to exist without a social idea of children" (Wyness, 8). This justifies the expressionlessness, the confusion of the children during internment, as they maintain the small stature and lack of experience characteristic of children, yet lose their social definition. They, for the time of internment, become small adults because their society within the camp walls throws away their cultural concept of childhood. |
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