Manzanar, California (Entry Station) 10 x 12 1/2", platinum-palladium print with pastel. Prints are numbered and signed by the artist
In the spring of 1942, the United States began the removal and internment of 110,000 of its residents, two-thirds of them American citizens. These Japanese-Americans were not guilty of any crime and were not individually interrogated; yet, because of their ancestry, they spent the next one to three years in concentration camps located in some of the harshest and most desolate areas of the country. Photographs by Joan Myers of these camps were shown around the United States as part of a 3-year SITES (Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service) tour, 1996-1999. A book, Whispered Silences: Japanese Americans and World War II, with text by Gary Okihiro, accompanied the exhibit.
