Images and Imaginings of Internment: Comics and Illustrations of Camp

Why Comics?

According to the definition made by Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics, a comic is “juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or produce an aesthetic response in the viewer.” Everyone knows that comic book art is intended to tell its story through pictures. The more successful a comic is in doing this, the more people like it. This is what makes a comic popular. Its not simply pictures, but its pictures telling a story important to the viewers. During WWII, the use of Japanese American incarceration camps in comics created, for many people, the only image of internment camps that they had.


Most Americans would never seen an incarceration camp because they were all located in remote and inhospitable places. Major comic companies such as DC and Marvel also created images of Japanese American internment that tried to convince the public that the incarceration sites were good. These images were very harmful and used negative stereotypes of Japanese American people. This shows how powerful images are in shaping the way that we perceive the world around us.  

Therefore we chose comics because it was likely one of the most common ways people outside of the camps were understanding the incarceration. As we move farther away from this history, the actual facts fade away. Looking at primary source documents (documents that were created during WWII in the internment camps and outside of the camps) give us insight into what people who were living through this period, thought about what was happening. 

(Quiz for what is primary source document)
a picture is worth a thousand words

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