Brit Micho, Associate Curator of Exhibitions
The Fort Wayne Museum of Art’s exhibition Diverse Directions: Rethinking the Landscape features work from artists whose practices explore the complexity of who (or what) shapes our landscapes. Featured in this exhibition are portraits, from photographer Osamu James Nakagawa’s, of witness trees found at War Relocation Authority (WRA) camps around the country. These camps housed thousands of Japanese Americans who were forcibly incarcerated during World War II.
The Witness Tree series takes its name from a term referring to a tree that witnesses important events in historic landscapes. Often found on battlefields, they are also other historically important trees, such as the Yoshino cherry trees along Washington, D.C.’s Tidal Basin, gifted to the U.S. in 1910 from Japan as a symbol of friendship.
Born in New York City in 1962, Nakagawa grew up in Tokyo, Japan and did not return to the United States until he was a teenager in 1977. Coming back to the U.S. post-WWII, he did not share the same experiences as many other Japanese Americans. Motivated by the social unrest in the wake of George Floyd’s death and the perpetuating racism in America following the Coronavirus, Nakagawa sought to explore his identity:
“In 2022 I made a 15,200-mile pilgrimage to the sites where these camps had been, in an attempt to understand how the racism inherent in my American experience had carried a former generation of immigrants to places of such desolation. These trees emerged from the thousands of photographs I took at the sites. I felt them staring at me with the weight of their unspeakable memories. As I inhaled the light, air, dust, wind, and smells of the former camps, I took their portraits, connecting past and present, positive and negative, analog and digital to draw out their aura. Now that I no longer have a home to return to, I have no other choice but to call this country my home.”
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. In the wake of wartime hysteria and xenophobia, this led to the removal and incarceration of over 125,000 people of Japanese ancestry (many already U.S. citizens) from two zones on the west coast. They were sent to U.S. Army, Department of Justice, Wartime Civil Control Administration, and War Relocation Authority (WRA) camps built in remote deserts, plains, and swamps.
There are few physical remains of this history at the sites; absent are the barracks, guard towers, and barbed wire fences that once filled the grounds. Save for a few skeletal remains of buildings, the trees are the only things truly still standing and living in these spaces. The result of Nakagawa’s pilgrimage resulted in a series of powerful portraits of lone witness trees set against the stark terrain; four large black-and-white photographs hang in the museum’s gallery.
Manzanar, California is probably the best known of the Japanese American incarceration camp sites through Ansel Adams’ and Dorothea Lange’s photographs, as well as Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston’s book Farewell to Manzanar. The mountain range in the background seems timeless, and the foreground bears little resemblance to the war-time encampment. In 1992, the U.S. National Park Service designated Manzanar a National Historic Site, cementing its significance in American history.
Constructed in 1942, Manzanar had a 500-acre housing section patrolled by military police and surrounded by barbed wire and guard towers. Crowded into 504 barracks were more than 10,000 Japanese Americans with little to no privacy inside or outside the living quarters. Other facilities included in the barracks were communal bathrooms and showers, a laundry room, and a mess hall. Nearly two-thirds of those interned at Manzanar were American citizens by birth, while the remaining were denied citizenship despite living in the U.S. for decades.
Amache 03, Granada, Colorado captures a particular tree in Colorado’s Amache incarceration camp that likely stood near the foundation of barracks. Nakagawa stated that he “noticed some trees had been planted 81 years ago in an empty desert to provide sunshades. I typically took photographs at these sites from early morning to night, following the sun’s path alone in the ruined campsite.” Built in 1942, Camp Amache had over 7,300 internees within three months. Eventually, more than 10,000 people passed through the camp, despite it being known as the smallest of the 10 relocation centers around the U.S.
Gila River 01 was taken at the Rivers, Arizona WRA center. Nakagawa captured a tall, looming cactus that he felt was staring at him, immediately reminding him of the portraiture of German photographer August Sander. Known for his black-and-white portraits of Germans from various social and economic backgrounds, he sought to capture the truth of the time through human portraits, stating “the individual does not make the history of his time, but he both impresses himself on it and expresses its meaning.” Sander’s quote encapsulates what Nakagawa achieves with his Witness Tree series, helping to visualize invisible aspects of history. The looming trees and cacti captured in black-and-white are haunting memorials and hopeful reminders that life continues after tragedy.
If you wish to see portraits from Nakagawa’s Witness Tree series, visit the Fort Wayne Museum of Art’s Diverse Directions exhibition before it closes on December 8th.