World War II...
Camp Granada Boy Scouts
Japanese American Boy Scouts in front of their barracks at Camp Granada, 140 miles east of Pueblo, also known as Amache Japanese Internment Camp. From a photo taken here in Colorado in 1943.
Most residents were American citizens from California and forced to sell almost everything they owned on short notice at cheap prices. They were only allowed to keep what they could carry into the camp in their arms. With a population of 7,500, it was the tenth largest city in Colorado at the time of this photo. No insulation, no furniture, and most of the food produced by their labor was sent elsewhere.
World famous Japanese American designer Isamu Noguchi attemped to halt this internment. As a free legal resident of New York, he bravely became the only voluntary internee of the Arizona Poston prison camp. He tried to better the conditions for the other prisoners, but was sadly accused of espionage by the FBI.
Noguchi’s most well known design is the iconic Biomorphic Noguchi Table. First designed in 1939, it was later put into mass production by Herman Miller from 1947 until 1973. It was revived in 1984 and has been in production ever since.
(Boy Scouts photo borrowed from Wikipedia, Noguchi Table photo blatantly borrowed from a Google Image search).
June 1st, 2011 / No Comments » / by Tom Lundin
