Licensing

Guest curator: Cynthia Kadohata (2)

Cynthia Kadohata (2)

Color pencil drawing made in Manzanar concentration camp, California, 1945.
Gift of Yoshiye Togasaki (99.14.3)

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“Dogs make us human.”

Old aboriginal saying

Some researchers believe that humans’ special relationship with dogs changed both of our fates. We would be different if dogs had not evolved by our side, and they would be different as well. What to make, then, of people who are not allowed their dogs?

I am very moved by the photograph of the dog in the back of a truck. Obviously, the worried family will not be allowed to relocate with their family pet. I’ve read that the animal shelters grew full at the time of the evacuation. It’s just another way that our ancestors – our grandfathers and grandmothers, our aunts and uncles – were stripped of their humanity. It’s another way that their hearts were torn out.

Then, in the drawing of a child with a dog, you see someone restoring the natural order, restoring a facet of a child’s humanity. That was the struggle one had in the camps – the struggle to maintain your humanity. This young child is winning that struggle.

Nothing can ever change what happened – it is what it is. But redress restored my faith that humanity triumphs in the end.