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A Subway Exhibit on the Japanese Internment
Richard Oba of the Tanforan Assembly Center Memorial Committee convinced the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) to mount an exhibit of Dorothea Lange's photos of the Japanese internment in WWII, in a subway station. Approximately forty photographs were displayed during the month of May 2012, in the San Bruno (San Francisco) station, which was built on the spot where a temporary internment camp for imprisoned Japanese Americans was located (known as the Tanforan camp). This is one of the places that Dorothea Lange photographed extensively. Historian and OAH member Linda Gordon, New York University, had published these photographs for the first time in Impounded (W.W. Norton, 2007), and discussed them in her Dorothea Lange biography (W.W. Norton, 2009) and she helped curate the exhibit. Meanwhile, a photojournalist from the Sacramento Bee, Paul Kitagaki Jr., had been using Lange's photographs to locate and photograph camp veterans. Upon discovering Lange's photos, Kitagaki "wanted to find out the rest of the story: how the internment had changed the lives of people who had lost their homes, businesses and sometimes their families." Some of the individuals in Lange's photographs were just children in the camps, which were framed together with Kitagaki's portraits of them as they are today. The photographs were beautifully mounted, framed, and displayed in the airy, sparkling clean BART station. The opening was held on April 28, 2012, on the seventieth anniversary of the first "shipment" of prisoners to the camp. An opening reception attracted about 250 people. Each camp veteran was given a red carnation to wear. There were refreshments, including Japanese sweets, and beautiful weather. Congresswoman Jackie Speier spoke, offering a formal apology for the internment. Several camp veterans read poetry.
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