Illustration by Lauren Tamaki from the book Seen and Unseen
Lauren Tamaki is the illustrator of the award-winning book Seen and Unseen published in 2022. The book documents the experiences of Japanese Americans who were incarcerated during World War II under President Franklin Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066. Elizabeth Partridge wrote most of the spare yet compelling text. However, it is arguably Tamaki’s art that is the must-see by adults and youth age 12+ who believe in fairness and justice for all.
Lauren Tamaki’s illustrations add significant value to photographs of incarcerated Japanese Americans taken in the moment and on the spot by Dorothea Lange, Ansel Adams and Toyo Miyatake.
First, they serve as connective tissue, visually linking the candid images taken by Lange during five months of 1942, the public relations pictures taken byAdamsin the fall of 1943, and the surreptitious photographs taken by Miyatake over the course of his imprisonment at Manzanar from 1942 to 1945.
Second, each Tamaki drawing stands on its own, with strong historical content and emotional insight. For example, in this illustration of Japanese Americans under Executive Order 9066 to leave their homes and report for removal with only seven-to-ten days’ notice, Tamaki vividly depicts tension and displacement.
Illustration by Lauren Tamaki
Third, what further distinguishes Tamaki’s contributions to Seen and Unseen are compositions of her drawings integrated with images taken by the photographers. The meaning of the photographs is increased exponentially as a result. This innovative amplification is displayed in the following layout of a Tamaki drawing of people making mattresses with straw for their Tanforan barracks, displayed in a photograph by Lange.
Illustration by Lauren Tamaki. Photograph by Dorothea Lange.
That Tamaki has enhanced the impact of photographs taken by Lange is no small feat. Lange’s images are considered truthful reflections of Japanese American lives under the duress of Executive Order 9066. They are ubiquitous in books, films, and exhibits dealing with incarceration. However, out of view are the U.S. Army’s constraints on Lange’s scope of work. She was not permitted to photograph barbed wire fences, watch towers with machine guns and spotlights, or armed soldiers. The War Relocation Authority, which commissioned Lange to take photographs, dismissed her after only five months and impounded her output. Tamaki’s artwork beautifully meets the demand for a fuller illuminating visualization of justice denied to 120,000 children, elders, women, and men.
Illustration by Lauren Tamaki: Families being removed from their homes under armed guard, wearing tags not with their names but their numbers, permitted to take only what they could carry.
Illustration by Lauren Tamaki: A woman behind barbed wire at Manzanar seems to mourn her lost freedom.
For Tamaki, elaborating on Ansel Adams’s photographs of incarceration was to disclose what he did not. Adams curated his photos to present a point of view.
An environmentalist known for his photographs of the High Sierras, particularly Yosemite Valley, Adams was asked by the director of Manzanar to take photographs that might be useful in conveying to the public that Japanese Americans, once released from imprisonment, would not be safety or security risks. Adams agreed and devised a modus operandi to do so. He excluded from his photographs individuals whom he considered unpatriotic, as demonstrated by their responses to the loyalty questionnaire administered by the federal government. Additionally, Adams posed his subjects to represent his belief that “the acrid splendor of the desert, ringed with towering mountains, has strengthened the spirit of the people of Manzanar.”
How did Tamaki address images thus created by Adams to show Manzanar prisoners from his own personal perspective? In the following layout, Adams’s photograph shows a beaming mother with two daughters standing in front of what looks like a real home. Tamaki straightforwardly draws the rest of the structure, revealing it to be a prison barrack.
Photo: Ansel Adams. Illustration: Lauren Tamaki.
Tamaki faced a different artistic challenge with respect to the photographs of Toyo Miyatake. Miyatake was incarcerated at Manzanar with his wife and four children from 1942 to 1945. An Issei, he was an award-winning photographer and a leading member of the Los Angeles arts community. Cameras were banned at Manzanar, but Miyatake felt it was his duty to make a photographic record of every element of life there so that the injustice would never be repeated. He smuggled in film, a camera lens, and darkroom chemicals and persuaded a friend who worked in the Manzanar carpentry shop to clandestinely make the body of the camera box, disguising it to look like a lunch box. Miyatake was on a mission: he took photographs in the early morning light, while others slept; and he used the cover of night to develop film and make prints.
Tamaki chose to make many drawings of Miyatake for inclusion in the book. She transformed him from an “unseen” prisoner to a “seen” photographer who took risks to document incarcerated life at Manzanar. In the following layout, Tamaki features a portrait of Miyatake secretly making prints. The drawing incorporates two of Miyatake’s photographs. They are shots of communal toilets and a watchtower — subjects that the U.S. Army had forbidden Lange to photograph.
Portrait of Toyo Miyatake: Lauren Tamaki. Photographs: Toyo Miyatake.
Miyatake believed that a complete documentation of Manzanar was essential to securing future redress. Yet his photographs, even when combined with those of Lange and Adams, understandably fall short. Absent is a visual record of the uprising of December 1942, when martial law was instituted and soldiers fired into a mass protest, killing two men. To render the uprising “seen,” Tamaki devoted herself braveheartedly to creating trustworthy, artful pictures. Her illustrations of the uprising and shootings are dark, saturated with anger, chaos, and violence.
Illustration: Lauren Tamaki. Two-to-four thousand people protested. They faced 135 military police.
Illustration: Lauren Tamaki. 17-year-old James Ito was killed by gunfire. Nine others were shot but survived. 21-year-old Jim Kanagawa died days later from his wounds.
Toyo Miyatake and his family returned to Los Angeles when Manzanar closed in 1945. They had been incarcerated for three years. With affection and respect, Tamaki sends the family to freedom in the following illustrations. Whereas her portrait of the Miyatakes at Manzanar is in solemn black-and-white, she adds color and joy to their journey home.
Illustration: Lauren Tamaki: The Miyatake Family at Manzanar
Illustration: Lauren Tamaki: A time-lapse of the Miyatake family leaving Manzanar for Los Angeles.
Lauren Tamaki’s art in Seen and Unseen refreshes and enriches the photographic legacies left by Toyo Miyatake, Ansel Adams, and Dorothea Lange. The book has been named a “best book” by the likes of Kirkus, Booklist Editors’ Choice, and the New York City Library. The awards invariably mention the photographs, but not always the artwork created by Tamaki. Her illustrations seem to be obscured by photographs that have been published and exhibited many times before. Yet the illustrations by themselves are important and beautiful expressions of protest against the WWII imprisonment of Japanese Americans and the ever-precarious state of 14th Amendment rights in the US. When overlaid on the photographs, and when the photographs are overlaid on the drawings, Tamaki’s art recreates the photographs as unique, powerful, and contemporary statements about freedom of speech — that is, the lack thereof. For these reasons, Tamaki’s work deserves analysis, celebration, and remembrance.
Linda Wing, Ph.D. is an OLLI @Berkeley member and volunteer who spent more than 45 years working to transform public schools in order to enable students in the nation’s cities to learn and achieve at high levels.