The collection I have chosen is “Activities and entertainment at Heart Mountain Relocation Center Photographs, 1942-1943.” The Heart Mountain Relocation Center is a Wyoming concentration camp that was used for the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, and the collection’s photographs depict the people and activities present there.<\/p>\n
Based on the materials from this collection, I can tell both more general and specific historical narratives about the Japanese-Americans who lived in the camp. On a more general level, I can describe the art and culture of Japanese-Americans, which they continued to practise even when living in the internment camps. These included doing calligraphy as well as playing ‘goh,’ a traditional game, as reflected in the photographs taken. I can also narrate the kind of environment the interned Japanese-Americans lived in – the photographs paint it to be a very large and open environment, but nonetheless one very distant from amenities like schools and shopping malls.<\/p>\n
On a more intimate level, I can describe the daily jobs of some people living in the camp. These included agriculture or manual labour. One can also deduce what the Japanese-Americans did to pass the time, which included activities such as dancing and watching sumo-wrestling matches.<\/p>\n
However, if I constructed the historical narrative entirely from records in this collection, I would lack a full understanding of how and why the internment camp was set up, why the internment process ended, and what happened to the internment camp after that. Essentially, I would be unable to track the camp’s physical changes throughout the years and the reasons behind them.<\/p>\n
I would not know anything about the authorities controlling the people in the camp, such as whether they were volunteers or appointed, and how strict they were in imposing and enforcing rules and regulations. In fact, I might not even know for certain whether these authorities existed.<\/p>\n
I also would not know people’s thoughts and feelings about being in the camp, as the items in this collection are all photographs and include no personal recounts or oral histories.<\/p>\n
The kinds of sources I would have to find to address the gaps in the narrative would depend on the kind of information I want to obtain. To understand how the internment camp was developed, I would need primary sources, such as historical documents, as well as landuse plans or maps depicting the construction and upgrading works at the camp’s site.<\/p>\n
To learn the reasons behind the setup and eventual dismantling of the camp, as well as who may have controlled the Japanese-Americans in the camp, I might need secondary sources, such as books and scholarly journal articles about the camp. These will be able to provide clearer and possibly more objective accounts of the camp’s setup and regulation.<\/p>\n
As for understanding people’s sentiments about being interned in the camp, I would need personal accounts, whether of a written or oral nature. These would allow me to gain a more detailed understanding of people’s feelings.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The collection I have chosen is “Activities and entertainment at Heart Mountain Relocation Center Photographs, 1942-1943.” The Heart Mountain Relocation<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1004\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}