A photographic and historical essay on the Manzanar internment camp will have its opening reception at the Mancos Town Gallery on Friday, Jan. 13, from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m.
Manzanar was the largest of the 10 internment camps set up for Japanese-American citizens at the beginning of World War II. It housed more than 10,000 men, women and children over its three years of existence.
It was closed in 1945, and since has been designated by the National Park Service as a National Historic Monument. To this day, controversy over the establishment of these camps continues in hot debate.
Dr. James Hirabayashi, Professor Emeritus and former Dean of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University, wrote in 1994, Over 120,000 residents of the U.S.A., two thirds of whom were American citizens, were incarcerated under armed guard. There were no crimes committed, no trials, and no convictions: the Japanese Americans were political prisoners. To detain American citizens in a site under armed guard surely constitutes a concentration camp.
This photographic exhibit examines and illustrates what physically remains today of the traces of the people who were imprisoned. All the photos are black and white and represent many visits to the site over a period of three years in the late 1990s.
Bob Goldfeder, an architect, world traveler and photographic essayist, was born in New York City in 1931. He received his Master of Architecture from UC Berkeley in 1961, and remained in California to work. He retired in 1996, and followed a life-long interest in photography, paralleling his love of travel and adventures as a mountaineer.
In 2003, Bob and his wife, Betsy Harrison, moved to Mancos. Bob cared deeply about social issues, such as the injustice presented by the internment camps. Tragically, Bob was killed in an auto accident just one year after moving to Mancos. The show is presented in his memory.
