Two photographers see the Japanese internet through the lens of their cameras in a new travelling exhibit to visit the Nanaimo Museum.
Photos by Ansel Adams and Leonard Frank will be on display Friday (May 20) until Aug. 21 in an exhibition produced by the Japanese Canadian National Museum.
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, the Canadian and American governments forced the relocation of citizens of Japanese descent from the coastal regions of the two countries. Nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans and 22,000 Japanese Canadians were affected, including Nanaimo’s small Japanese community.
This exhibit is a collection of photographs, which presents two views of internment and incarceration in the early 1940s, providing an opportunity to reflect on forced separation, uprooting and the effect on victims.
Adams, usually known as a landscape photographer, took trips to the Manzanar War Relocation Centre in 1943-44.
His powerful photographs captured the harsh daily life and resilience of the 10,000 Japanese Americans incarcerated there during the Second World War.
When he offered the collection to the Library of Congress, Adams wrote, “The purpose of my work was to show how these people, suffering under a great injustice, and loss of property, businesses and professions, had overcome the sense of defeat and dispair [sic] by building for themselves a vital community in an arid (but magnificent) environment.”
B.C. Security Commission hired Leonard to record the removal of Japanese Canadians from the coast as the documentary photographer of the internment. His photographs from the Hastings Park temporary holding area are stark and shocking.
Images of cavernous buildings give a unique perspective, focusing on the bureaucratic system rather than the suffering of the community. Frank also visited several camps in the B.C. Interior.
Nanaimo Museum is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. For more information, please call 250-753-1821 or visit www.nanaimomuseum.ca.
