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Modern Architectures of North America

Tule Lake Garden

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Zarah Ferrari: Tule Lake Segregation Center: Rising Above an Unjust System

Forever will the unjust internment of thousands of Japanese Americans during World War II remain an irrevocable stain on American history that reveals the fraudulent nature of the ideals of freedom, democracy, and acceptance that are fundamental to the American national identity.

Surrounded by towering mountains and stretches of barren land, the Tule Lake Segregation Center and National Historic Landmark, opened in 1946 was the largest of ten internment camps created by the War Relocation Authority, holding 18,000 detainees in a maximum security facility. Previously named Tule Lake Internment camp, the site was later named as a segregation center, made for Japanese Americans who answered ‘no-no’ to question 27 and 28 on a mandatory loyalty test.



These questions were unfair to many Japanese Americans, as answering ‘yes’ to question 27 meant they were willing to enlist in the army, and answering ‘yes’ to 28 was forgoing potential citizenship from a nation that had done less harm to them than America. Those who did not answer ‘yes-yes’, were considered to be disloyal and a danger to the American people. Unjustly detained in a concentration camp of 4,685 acres on semi-arid land, Tule Lake was built to be a completely self sufficient facility complete with housing, farming, schooling, and health care facilities. All enclosed by a barbed wire fence, guard towers, and the threat of military tanks, Tule Lake demonstrates the hypocrisy of a nation that prides itself of being a melting pot of diversity while fearing and forcibly removing from society all that is deemed as 'alien'.

The prison-like design of the camp was intended to degrade the Japanese American internees, cut off communication, and treat them as a dangerous ‘other’ in society. However, through augmenting the landscape of the camp in both physical and immaterial ways, the Japanese Americans revolted against the unjust and hysterical system that sought to dehumanize them.

A Prison By Design
Surveillance and Protection

A Plan of Isolation

Revolting Against the System

Citations
"Academic Spotlight Faculty Research, Performance and Exhibitions." Japanese Internees Use Environment As Resistance, Academic Spotlight (Bowdoin). Bowdoin, 11 June 2009. Web. 07 Apr. 2016 <http://www.bowdoin.edu/news/archives/1academicnews/006318.shtml>.

"Oregon Responds to World War II: Not Exactly Paradise: Japanese American Internment Camps." Oregon Responds to World War II: Not Exactly Paradise: Japanese American Internment Camps. An Oregon State Archives Exhibit, 2008. Web. 07 Apr. 2016.
Robinson, Greg. By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans.    Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2001. Print.

Roxworthy, Emily. Japanese American Trauma: Racial Performativity and World War II. Honolulu: U of Hawai'i, 2008. Print.

Staff, P.C. "Tule Lake Committee Files Lawsuit to Stop the Fence at Airport | Pacific Citizen | The National Newspaper of the JACL." Pacific Citizen. Pacific Citizen, 24 Oct. 2014. Web. 07 Apr. 2016.

Taylor, Alan. "World War II: Internment of Japanese Americans." The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 21 Aug. 2011. Web. 07 Apr. 2016.

Thomas, Rick. "Japanese Internment." Japanese Internment. In Time & Place, 2008. Web. 07 Apr. 2016. <http://www.intimeandplace.org/Japanese Internment/reading/camprules.html>.

"Tule Lake." Tule Lake. Densho. Web. 07 Apr. 2016.

"Tule Lake." Tule Lake. AJA WWII Memorial Alliance, 18 Aug. 2002. Web. 07 Apr. 2016. <http://www.javadc.org/tule_lake.htm>.

"Tule Lake (Calif.) Segregation Center." Tule Lake (Calif.) Segregation Center. Modern American Poetry, 1997. Web. 07 Apr. 2016. <http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/g_l/haiku/tulelake.htm>.

"Tule Lake Committee Web Site." Tule Lake Committee Web Site. 2013. Web. 07 Apr. 2016.

"Tule Lake Concentration Camp." Tule Lake Concentration Camp. Japanese American National Museum, 1998. Web. 07 Apr. 2016.
ARH 218 - Smith College - Spring 2016
Modern Architectures of North America
Recognizing that there are multiple ways of studying the built environment, these projects utilize different modes of inquiry to explore architecture. While each project comes to its own unique conclusions, many of these projects intersect in terms broader themes or questions that they raise. Through their organization into groups, these projects locate a number of productive ways of thinking about the built environment.

Although these projects represent a variety of methodologies and topics, each highlight the dynamic relationship between humans and architecture. The grouping Identity: What Lies Beneath Style and Form explores the way associations related to identity become attached to architecture. These projects astutely portray the way in which these associations are not monolithic nor static, and can be utilized to reinforce group identities--whether regional, religious, cultural, gendered, or national--for different reasons and to different ends. Suburbia focuses more narrowly on the identities associated with suburban housing. Looking to points at which design intersects with the lived experience, these projects investigate the agency of those who live in these spaces. Though predominantly inhabited by white, middle class families, each of these projects locates the way in which other questions related to gender roles, modern living, conformity, nature, and climate can be teased out of a sustained study of suburbia. While architecture can serve as a liberating means to express identity, it can be used to oppress others. The grouping Patients, Prisoners, Politics explores the ways in which architecture is used to further differentiate people marked as others. Although both projects recognize that these built environments were meant to be used as tools to control certain groups of people, they highlight the ways in which people forced into these environments found ways to insert their own agency in these spaces.
Architecture Relating to the Natural Environment shifts our attention to the way in which architecture is conceived in relation to the built environment. These projects explore the ways in which harmonious relationships between architecture and nature can be defined in aesthetic terms, climate conditions, or with attention to environmental responsibility. They invite us to consider who articulates this relationship, from trained architects to more informal architectural practices. Change and Adaptation reminds us that architecture has a life that extends beyond its conception and construction. This grouping takes on the issue of time--past, present, and future. Whether addressing the context of the moment in which the building is designed, aspirations for the future, or alterations over time, each of these projects also show how the issue of time intersects with the economy and hope for economic prosperity.