AMERICA’S CONCENTRATION CAMPS, REVISITED

Presented at the DGA Lobby

In 1970, when Bob Suzuki from the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) approached UCLA film school student and photographer Robert A. Nakamura to create a modest photo display of World War II Japanese American internment camp pictures, little did the JACL know that Robert envisioned an opportunity far more expansive than the six to ten mounted pictures expected from a budget of $100.
The resulting photo sculpture, AMERICA’S CONCENTRATION CAMPS, demonstrated the impact of creativity and financial resourcefulness that became the working ethos of Visual Communications (VC), the non-profit arts organization that Robert A. Nakamura, Alan Ohashi, and fellow UCLA film school students Duane Kubo and Eddie Wong formed as a direct outcome of the JACL confinement site project.
AMERICA’S CONCENTRATION CAMPS, created in 1970 for the Japanese American Citizens League’s Campaign to Repeal Title II of the Internal Security Act of 1950, which gave the President authority to detain people who were simply assumed to be security risks, was more than a production of Visual Communications; it is also the origin story of Visual Communications.

The restored physical exhibit will be on view during the festival.
You can visit the online version of the restoration at camps.vcmedia.org