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The U.S. Has Always Struggled To Accept Its History Of Racism Towards Asian Americans

Toyo Miyatake

At a time when the Asian-American community is facing widespread attacks, it’s crucial to remember the long legacy of racism within the US. Toyo Miyatake was a photographer who was interned at the Manzanar Relocation Center in California in 1942, one of ten internment camps set up for Japanese Americans by the US government after Pearl Harbor. His grandson Alan, who is a photographer himself, continues to operate his grandfather’s commercial studio in Los Angeles. The interview below has been edited and condensed for clarity.

"Toyo and his family came to the US from Japan in 1909. He aspired to be a painter, but his mother convinced him to be a photographer so he wouldn’t become a starving artist. He purchased his own photography studio in 1923, in the Little Tokyo section of Los Angeles. Back then, still life art photography was his first love. As his business and that part of his career developed, as we reached past the Depression years, just when they were coming out of it is when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. All the Japanese and Japanese Americans living in the US were interned in camps all over the country.

At that time, as a photographer, he decided it was his duty to document this. He smuggled a lens and a film holder into the camp, and he built a camera himself. At some point in that first year, he showed his son Archie (my dad) the camera, and told his son that it was his duty to document this in the hopes that it will never happen again.

In the beginning, he was photographing scenes around the camp only at sunset and sunrise, so he wouldn’t be seen. Eventually, he was appointed the official photographer at Manzanar, through some friendships from when he was trying to do art photography in Los Angeles. He was able to set up all the shots, but he was not allowed to snap the shutter. In order for the camp director to cover himself, he had one of the wives of the officials go around with him and snap the shutter. Eventually, that got kind of old, so he was pretty free to document camp life."

Toyo Miyatake

"They shot the pictures for the Manzanar high school yearbook, there’s a whole separate collection of studio portraits that he took. Many of them are of the younger internees, many of whom volunteered for the Army during the war in the 442nd regiment, which was composed entirely of Japanese Americans. A lot of the families said, hey, that’s great that you’re fighting for your country, but just in case, we need to take a family picture with all of us before you leave.

Toyo owned a house right outside Little Tokyo out here [in Los Angeles], and he had a lot of Caucasian clients. One of them was a white memorial hospital, which was very close to the house. They were clients and good friends. When he was forced to leave with his family, they offered to rent his house and hold all of his equipment while they were in the camp. A lot of people lost their homes. My grandfather was very fortunate that he had these kinds of connections, that he was able to save his house and the equipment.

Toyo and his family, my dad, Archie, they were there for the entirety of the camp — three years. My dad always claims that he was the first to arrive, the last to leave. I think about it all the time, because of the pandemic. How one year has affected us. Man, they were there for three years. One year is almost like nothing compared to what they went through."

Toyo Miyatake

"Many of my friends growing up had no idea about internment camps, but my family was different. Because my family had all these pictures and I grew up in the studio, I saw it all the time and we talked about it all the time. About ten years ago, I took my parents to Manzanar to take their picture there. They told me, “Hey, if it wasn’t for Manzanar, you wouldn’t be here! This is where we met.”

My view on the photos today is the same as it was when I was a kid. I remember on 9/11, this was one of the first things I thought of. When I saw it happen, and they started identifying who was responsible, I told my family, “Oh my god, I hope they don’t think of profiling and rounding up this group of people.” There was a lot of talk about it back then, and I related to racial issues all the time.

I go for a walk every morning, and recently my daughter texted me and told me not to go for a walk for a while. We’re very conscious. I tell my kids stories like, hey, when I was in grammar school growing up, I heard a lot of racism. The j-word, don’t forget Pearl Harbor. That was a long time ago, but with the environment now, it’s obviously still there. Right now, it’s especially difficult because it’s aimed at Asian Americans. This seems pretty bad. A lot of time, you’ll see graffiti or something like that. But it seems like the Japanese community...are they being too nice about it? Are we supposed to be making more noise about this and demonstrating more, in order to get the right amount of attention? Generally speaking, Asian Americans don’t riot. It’s a pretty tough issue.

I do continue the commercial end of Toyo’s business, as a third-generation photographer, and I touch upon stories in the media to keep his work visible about social consciousness and racial problems. Now it happens more often, because every time there is a racial issue — BLM or something like that — I get calls that bring attention to my grandfather’s work. Hopefully it will help make things better."