In conjunction with the Carleton Gould Library photography exhibit, “Colors of Confinement: Rare Kodachrome Photographs of Japanese American Incarceration in World War II,” curator University of North Carolina School of Law professor Eric Muller will speak Wednesday, Jan. 31 at 4:30 p.m. in the Gould Library Athenaeum. Muller will discuss the exhibit, featuring rare photographs taken from the Mountain Relocation Center in Wyoming between 1942-45. A reception with light refreshments will follow Muller’s presentation.
The featured photos were taken by amateur photographer Takao "Bill" Manbo, while he was incarcerated with his family at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center in northwest Wyoming. Heart Mountain was one of ten sites where the United States government confined 14,000 American citizens of Japanese ancestry during World War II because of their ancestry. Unlike most inmates who managed to take photographs in internment camps, Manbo used Kodachrome slide film, and the color has proved enduring and affecting. While documenting celebrations, landscapes, and family portraits, none of the images entirely escape their context, but many capture beautiful, even lighthearted moments that testify to the resiliency of this imprisoned community during this dark chapter in American history.
Muller is Dan K. Moore Distinguished Professor in Jurisprudence and Ethics at the University of North Carolina School of Law. He is the editor of Colors of Confinement: Rare Kodachrome Photographs of Japanese American Incarceration in World War II, published in 2012 by the University of North Carolina Press in collaboration with the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. Colors of Confinement features 60 extremely rare Kodachrome images of ordinary life behind the barbed wire of the Heart Mountain Relocation Center. The book won the Western History Association’s 2013 Joan Patterson Kerr Award for the best illustrated history of the American West.
This event is sponsored by the Carleton College Center for Global and Regional Studies. For more information, including disability accommodations, call (507) 222-4217.
“Colors of Confinement: Rare Kodachrome Photographs of Japanese American Incarceration in World War II” will be on display in the Gould Library though April 13, 2018. The Gould Library is located off College Street on the Carleton campus, and is also accessible via Highway 19 in Northfield.
