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Camp Home: Tule Lake Today
Photos by Kevin J. Miyazaki
By Stewart David Ikeda
May 2008 - For our Asian American History Month edition this year, the
editors are thrilled to post our first photo exhibit in a long time. The following images
are excerpts from a larger collection, Camp Home, by noted travel and portrait
photographer Kevin J. Miyazaki.
The images were taken in the fall of 2007 during Miyazaki's tour of
the area surrounding the former Tule Lake internment camp, where Japanese Americans including his father were
incarcerated during World War II. Following the official government apology and
reparations to the former prisoners in the 90s, the image of the hastily constructed, wood
and tarpaper barracks used to house the internees in camps throughout the American West has
become iconic -- powerfully symbolic of wartime hysteria and the trouncing of our citizens'
civil liberties.
For Miyazaki, this association was powerful when he finally made his
first pilgrimage to the site, and the contrast between the Tule Lake of his imagination and
what he saw in that place last year inspired him to take on what may be his most personal
photography project to date.
Miyazaki describes the kernel of the project in an October entry on
his blog:
I've been in California the past few days, beginning a new project. In May, I came to
the site of the Tule Lake internment camp, where my dad's family lived for part of WWII.
On that visit, I assumed I'd find a memorial, and hoped to at least visit where the camp
once stood. But I learned that many buildings from the camp still stand - some, former
military quarters, form a small subdivision on the camp grounds. And the barracks, used
to house families like mine, were dispersed to returning veterans, as part of a
homesteading program in the newly irrigated surrounding land.
I was only passing through that day, but decided to return to photograph the
buildings in their current state. There were a few creative roadblocks in the past weeks...but
I've been on the ground and making pictures for the past three days. I'm not completely
sure of how to talk about the work in a concise manner, but it feels completely right to
be here - driving small county roads, meeting nice people, and sharing stories about the
past.
The buildings dot the landscape here - some have been remodeled and lived in as
houses since the 40's, while others were used for storage or outbuildings. And while
there are hundreds in the area, I can't escape the idea that one of them might have been
my dad's home, if only for a short time.
The idea, for Miyazaki, was haunting...
 ...and
although he'd undertaken a number of travel projects shooting lonely, forgotten sites and
structures in the past, this one was deeply personal and took him out of his comfort zone.
On a return visit to the area in the fall, he decided to approach the current owners about
photographing the land and the structures.
He continues:
[I] was a bit nervous going in
[to Tule Lake], but everyone I met was friendly and willing to help. And I came
to realize that the uncertainty, the interaction, the sharing of stories about the land
and about family - this is a crucial part of the project. This is, after all, about
family history, and about a specific place. I talked for hours about farming and the
land - things I knew little of. People responded to my questions and curiosity with a
surprising openness.
The best example might be the Prosser siblings (John, Judy, and Frank) who, in the
midst of harvesting potatoes, allowed me photograph in their late father's house, which
was once an internment camp barracks. I had a bit of difficulty explaining why
photographs of his kitchen sink meant something to me and my work, but they were
gracious and open.
The series is part architectural, part archeological. While
Miyazaki's initial fascination was with the current structures -- how the barracks that
stood so prominent in his family lore had been built upon and abandoned by other families,
transformed for other uses -- he also discovered a treasure trove of modest artifacts that
he felt captured an important "human element". He found
bottles, baseballs, decorations that had remained behind from some family that had passed
through there -- perhaps not his own family, and not in the same circumstances, but perhaps
in some way like his own -- faded
through decades of disuse.
He observes that:
Cameras weren't allowed in the internment camps, so there's a void in the Japanese
American family album. And though none of these things - baseball caps, jars on shelves
- were things that belonged to my family, they still represent the lives once lived
there.
Miyazaki plans to expand upon the series in the future. He
recently received a competitive fellowship grant from the Mary L. Nohl Fund, which supports
artists from Southeast Wisconsin, and says that he expects to use the funds to travel back
to Tule Lake this month.
To see more from this and other
series, visit
kevinmiyazaki.com
Readings of Related Interest
Kevin J. Miyazaki is a professional photographer who commercial work
has been published in major publications including The New
York Times, Travel + Leisure,
Fortune, GQ,
TIME and many others. His personal photography
including the Camp Home series is excerpted on his website, as well as annotated with some running
commentary on his personal blog at
http://kevinmiyazaki.blogspot.com. He hails from Milwaukee,
where his family settled via Minneapolis after the war, and where he has been active with the Wisconsin
chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League. A limited edition booklet and print
package of his personal works entitled
38
is available through his blog.
All images on this page are copyrighted by Kevin
Miyazaki and are reproduced here with permission. |
