BF: Yeah, Merced was like a prison camp, surrounded by barbed wire, guard towers manned by military. I'm sure they had rifles or machine guns or whatever, and they had the jeep patrol come around, around the perimeter of the camp, and they would come fairly often. At night the searchlights were there, and they crisscrossed the camp. It's the first time we ever ate at the. . . there was no toilets in the, no water in the barracks, and they had these buildings where, they called 'em mess halls, where you're fed rations. Communal toilet, latrine areas. And there's dust and dirt all over the place. It was just a fairgrounds that had been converted into a prison camp, and there were about four thousand Japanese Americans put into that particular camp. And there are other, other similar camps up and down the state and also in Oregon and Washington.

RP: You shared a story about looking out the fence and seeing some grapes.

BF: Oh, yeah, we were there about, well, we moved there in May, and of course, by June, the grapes were ripening. And we happened to be, the camp happened to be next to a vineyard. And when the grapes get ripe, there's a distinct smell, and I thought, "Gosh, it wouldn't take much to cross that little road beyond the fence to get the grapes." I mean, you could see them, you could smell them. I know several times that I thought about crawling under the fence and just getting some grapes. But you're sort of trying to time the lights because, but they weren't, they weren't set into a standard pattern, so you couldn't judge where that light was gonna show the next, next point. And I tried, I figured, well, the lights were shining over there and they would be swinging over here and so forth, but they, I could never figure them out. And we were told, "You go beyond that fence, you're gonna get shot." So I guess I just didn't have enough courage to do that, and never tried to get those grapes. And that stayed in my mind for a long time, because later on when, in the years, when we were out of the camps and finally were able to get grapes, it was the time of the Cesar Chavez and his boycott of grapes. And I really honored that; I thought highly of that movement, the Farm Workers Movement, and boycotting grapes. So I was unable to purchase grapes, I mean, I just didn't do it. And I remember talking to some Mexican American friends of mine about that, and one of those guys that, "Oh, I don't, I don't," he says, "I buy grapes." I said, "How do you do that? How can you go in your good conscience, buy grapes?" He said, "Well, I buy non-union grapes." And I thought, "Well, that's still not right. You're undermining the movement." So I didn't until the strike was over, and then I could indulge myself. But that's, that was a very strong memory of grapes.

RP: Wanting the grapes and not quite being able to get them?

BF: I, I relish, I still enjoy buying Thompson seedless.

Bob Fuchigami, interview, May 14, 2008, Denver, Colorado. From Densho Digital Archive, <a class="external" href="http://www.densho.org/">http://www.densho.org/</a>. Interviewer: Richard Potashin, segment 15, denshovh-fbob-01 (accessed October 14, 2009).

Richard Potashin

BF: Yeah, Merced was like a prison camp, surrounded by barbed wire, guard towers manned by military. I'm sure they had rifles or machine guns or whatever, and they had the jeep patrol come around, around the perimeter of the camp, and they would come fairly often. At night the searchlights were there, and they crisscrossed the camp. It's the first time we ever ate at the. . . there was no toilets in the, no water in the barracks, and they had these buildings where, they called 'em mess halls, where you're fed rations. Communal toilet, latrine areas. And there's dust and dirt all over the place. It was just a fairgrounds that had been converted into a prison camp, and there were about four thousand Japanese Americans put into that particular camp. And there are other, other similar camps up and down the state and also in Oregon and Washington.

RP: You shared a story about looking out the fence and seeing some grapes.

BF: Oh, yeah, we were there about, well, we moved there in May, and of course, by June, the grapes were ripening. And we happened to be, the camp happened to be next to a vineyard. And when the grapes get ripe, there's a distinct smell, and I thought, "Gosh, it wouldn't take much to cross that little road beyond the fence to get the grapes." I mean, you could see them, you could smell them. I know several times that I thought about crawling under the fence and just getting some grapes. But you're sort of trying to time the lights because, but they weren't, they weren't set into a standard pattern, so you couldn't judge where that light was gonna show the next, next point. And I tried, I figured, well, the lights were shining over there and they would be swinging over here and so forth, but they, I could never figure them out. And we were told, "You go beyond that fence, you're gonna get shot." So I guess I just didn't have enough courage to do that, and never tried to get those grapes. And that stayed in my mind for a long time, because later on when, in the years, when we were out of the camps and finally were able to get grapes, it was the time of the Cesar Chavez and his boycott of grapes. And I really honored that; I thought highly of that movement, the Farm Workers Movement, and boycotting grapes. So I was unable to purchase grapes, I mean, I just didn't do it. And I remember talking to some Mexican American friends of mine about that, and one of those guys that, "Oh, I don't, I don't," he says, "I buy grapes." I said, "How do you do that? How can you go in your good conscience, buy grapes?" He said, "Well, I buy non-union grapes." And I thought, "Well, that's still not right. You're undermining the movement." So I didn't until the strike was over, and then I could indulge myself. But that's, that was a very strong memory of grapes.

RP: Wanting the grapes and not quite being able to get them?

BF: I, I relish, I still enjoy buying Thompson seedless.

May 14, 2008

6:55

Denver, Colorado

(Yoshimitsu) Bob Fuchigami

314, 315, 317, 318, 319, 320, 321, 322

LH: So you arrived at Puyallup. And when you entered, do you recall any of the way it looked?

MS: Well, you know, it was a former fairgrounds, which I had never been there before, so I didn't know. But the one thing I remembered was the animal smells, you know, that's how fairs are. You have your animal smells. I remember that. That was very different for me, and then the living quarters, of course, were some of the stalls and some of the buildings. But we had one of the row of stalls and so therefore the smells were greater there. And I remember that there were cots and, for some reason, some kind of mattress. It wasn't the kind of mattress I was used to but, and then army blankets. And then we had the bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. And each stall is yea big, and there weren't ceilings. They did not come to the top, so the walls, excuse me, didn't come to the ceiling. So you could see all the way across. If you climbed up on something high, you could see all the way to the other end, and voice traveled all the way through.

LH: So you're all there together with your mother, your father, your two brothers, and yourself. And in a barrack?

MS: Yes, we had one. [Laughs] It wasn't even a barrack -- it was a stall. It literally was a stall. And they told us it was temporary, so they just had to get us all assembled there so that they'll know which camps we're going to. So we had an idea that this was temporary and that's where we're supposed to get ready for this. So part of that was inoculations; we all had to have a series of shots.

LH: Now, what was that to prevent?

MS: Diphtheria and small pox and you name it. But I remember having at least three or four because my arms were just sore and then there were scabs. You know, these black scabs that came out. [Laughs] And I remember feeling like that must be how cows and animals feel like. Because we were all lined up, and we had to have a couple shots at a time, 'cause they couldn't, we couldn't keep coming back. So I remember having two shots and then being very ill for at least. . . I felt ill about it, and a sore arm.

LH: I can imagine that's a pretty vivid memory for a six-year-old.

MS: I remember those things that were kind of painful, and that definitely was a painful time.

LH: Do you recall -- is there any other memory that sort of sticks out in your mind about that time?

MS: Well, one of the things I thought were kind of strange was that we had the barbed wire fencing all around the fairgrounds. And there was a road that passed by close to the fairgrounds. And there were, they would bring busloads of non-Japanese people, and they would actually let 'em off and let them look at us like we were, you know, like we were caged animals. And I used to remember, "Why are they doing that?" But they actually came and looked at us while we were behind barbed wire fencing there. That was a little bit weird for me. I just remember we used to do gyrations. [Laughs]

LH: That's the first mention I've heard of these tour buses.

MS: Yeah. Well, they were either tour buses or buses that happened to stop by 'cause we were right along the main drag. And they actually let the people off and let 'em look at us and they'd go back. And I could hear them saying some things, you know, not quite understanding but just knowing that they were looking at us. So we must have been some kind of attraction for this group to come and look at us.

LH: And they were up against the barbed wire, looking in?

MS: Well, they didn't come too close to us 'cause we were near the wire and I think they were a little bit worried about what we might do.

LH: Were there ever any warnings from your parents about the barbed wire or the guards?

MS: Only that to obey whatever they told us to do. Only that. They didn't. . . I just. . . I have to say, I don't remember feeling threatened by them. Halfway just wondering why they were there and why they had guns. Because I couldn't imagine any of us doing anything. Of course, you know, I'm so young. Maybe the older folks might have been threatening to them, but I never felt, as a child, but everything is from a child, six-year-old's perspective.

LH: About how long were you at "Camp Harmony"?

MS: I think we were there for a few months. We weren't there for over that time. And then when my parents told us that we're going to be moving again, because I was wondering why they were getting the things all ready again. And I said, "Oh, where are we going?" Well, we're gonna. . . they said far away 'cause I wouldn't know where Minidoka was. So they said, "Far away," and enough so that we'd have to take a train to go there.

May K. Sasaki, interview, October 28, 1997, Seattle, Washington. From the Densho Digital Archive, <a class="external" href="http://www.densho.org/">http://www.densho.org/</a>. Interviewers: Lori Hoshino, Alice Ito, segments 14 and 15. Video, denshovh-smay-01-0014 (accessed October 14, 2009).

Lori Hoshino and Alice Ito

LH: So you arrived at Puyallup. And when you entered, do you recall any of the way it looked?

MS: Well, you know, it was a former fairgrounds, which I had never been there before, so I didn't know. But the one thing I remembered was the animal smells, you know, that's how fairs are. You have your animal smells. I remember that. That was very different for me, and then the living quarters, of course, were some of the stalls and some of the buildings. But we had one of the row of stalls and so therefore the smells were greater there. And I remember that there were cots and, for some reason, some kind of mattress. It wasn't the kind of mattress I was used to but, and then army blankets. And then we had the bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. And each stall is yea big, and there weren't ceilings. They did not come to the top, so the walls, excuse me, didn't come to the ceiling. So you could see all the way across. If you climbed up on something high, you could see all the way to the other end, and voice traveled all the way through.

LH: So you're all there together with your mother, your father, your two brothers, and yourself. And in a barrack?

MS: Yes, we had one. [Laughs] It wasn't even a barrack -- it was a stall. It literally was a stall. And they told us it was temporary, so they just had to get us all assembled there so that they'll know which camps we're going to. So we had an idea that this was temporary and that's where we're supposed to get ready for this. So part of that was inoculations; we all had to have a series of shots.

LH: Now, what was that to prevent?

MS: Diphtheria and small pox and you name it. But I remember having at least three or four because my arms were just sore and then there were scabs. You know, these black scabs that came out. [Laughs] And I remember feeling like that must be how cows and animals feel like. Because we were all lined up, and we had to have a couple shots at a time, 'cause they couldn't, we couldn't keep coming back. So I remember having two shots and then being very ill for at least. . . I felt ill about it, and a sore arm.

LH: I can imagine that's a pretty vivid memory for a six-year-old.

MS: I remember those things that were kind of painful, and that definitely was a painful time.

LH: Do you recall -- is there any other memory that sort of sticks out in your mind about that time?

MS: Well, one of the things I thought were kind of strange was that we had the barbed wire fencing all around the fairgrounds. And there was a road that passed by close to the fairgrounds. And there were, they would bring busloads of non-Japanese people, and they would actually let 'em off and let them look at us like we were, you know, like we were caged animals. And I used to remember, "Why are they doing that?" But they actually came and looked at us while we were behind barbed wire fencing there. That was a little bit weird for me. I just remember we used to do gyrations. [Laughs]

LH: That's the first mention I've heard of these tour buses.

MS: Yeah. Well, they were either tour buses or buses that happened to stop by 'cause we were right along the main drag. And they actually let the people off and let 'em look at us and they'd go back. And I could hear them saying some things, you know, not quite understanding but just knowing that they were looking at us. So we must have been some kind of attraction for this group to come and look at us.

LH: And they were up against the barbed wire, looking in?

MS: Well, they didn't come too close to us 'cause we were near the wire and I think they were a little bit worried about what we might do.

LH: Were there ever any warnings from your parents about the barbed wire or the guards?

MS: Only that to obey whatever they told us to do. Only that. They didn't. . . I just. . . I have to say, I don't remember feeling threatened by them. Halfway just wondering why they were there and why they had guns. Because I couldn't imagine any of us doing anything. Of course, you know, I'm so young. Maybe the older folks might have been threatening to them, but I never felt, as a child, but everything is from a child, six-year-old's perspective.

LH: About how long were you at "Camp Harmony"?

MS: I think we were there for a few months. We weren't there for over that time. And then when my parents told us that we're going to be moving again, because I was wondering why they were getting the things all ready again. And I said, "Oh, where are we going?" Well, we're gonna. . . they said far away 'cause I wouldn't know where Minidoka was. So they said, "Far away," and enough so that we'd have to take a train to go there.

October 28, 1997

5:36

Seattle, Washington

May K. Sasaki

314, 316, 317, 318, 319, 320, 321, 322

"Schoolchildren, Minidoka incarceration camp, Idaho, 1940s." Photograph. From Densho Digital Archive, <a class="external" href="http://www.densho.org/">http://www.densho.org/</a>. Courtesy of the Wing Luke Asian Museum, the Hatate Collection (Number 1992-41-4 AX), denshopd-i39-00038 (accessed October 14, 2009).

3464 x 2112 pixels

Black and white photograph of Japanese American children and two adults walking as a large group (appearance similar to a parade) through an incarceration center during World War II. Many children are carrying American flags. Appearance of camp is dry, dusty, and official.

314, 315, 316, 317, 318, 319, 320, 321, 322

http://feeds.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/categories/c1162/index_5.shtml

BBC

August 2009

Childhood and Evacuation forms part of a large-scale project, the WW2 People’s War, undertaken by the British Broadcasting Corporation between 2003 and 2006. It is billed as an archive of World War Two memories "written by the public, gathered by the BBC." Its core consists of 47,000 stories and 15,000 images provided by ordinary people from all parts of Britain. They are grouped into 64 categories that cover the home front as well as the military side.

To help with the daunting task of knowing where to start in such a vast array of material, there is a list of recommended stories in each category, chosen for reasons such as their vivid storytelling or their dramatic content. With its 14,336 stories, Childhood and Evacuation is by far the largest single category in the archive. Doubtless this is largely because most of those who were adults during the 1930s and 1940s would have died during the 60 or so years since the end of the war. None the less, it does also highlight the importance of the childhood dimension to any armed conflict.

The supporting documentation for the project is excellent. An Archive List helps readers find their way around the various categories, whilst a Timeline contains 144 fact files covering some of the key events in the war. These files are concise and accessible, though inevitably their authors find it difficult to explore in any detail the complex issues surrounding, say, the evacuation or the strategic bombing of enemy cities.

About this Site contains a mass of information on how the project was conceived, the house rules for moderating the stories (mainly to refuse copyright material), and the way the stories were gathered. At the outset, the project designers assumed that people old enough to have lived through the war would shy away from the new-fangled Internet, so the idea was that their children and grandchildren would research the family’s history and recount the stories. In the end, approximately 80 percent of the material came directly from people over 60 years of age, with some help from outreach volunteers and others to enter the accounts.

This section also includes a Learning Zone, featuring lesson plans on selected themes for teachers, families, and community groups. The latter includes one on Young People and War, pitched at both primary and secondary school pupils, with curriculum links to history, english, religious education, citizenship, and media studies.

The three lessons proposed for teachers focus on evacuation, bombing and rationing. These appear to be a reasonable reflection of the interests of the young. They draw on extracts from the stories and other resources specified for each lesson. The activities suggested for the class, and the supporting questions for the teacher to pose, make effective use of the website resources.

Firstly, they invite reflection on the nature of the source material, a useful exercise now that historians make extensive use of the childhood reminiscences of men and women at all levels of society. The organizers of the project note that they deliberately avoided any attempt to check the factual accuracy of the stories, as they attempted to convey "how the wartime generation remembered these years" rather than the received ideas of historians. The contributors themselves sometimes draw attention to the perils of a fading memory in old age: in the words of David Millar, "Flashes of incidents occur, but before they can be recorded they have disappeared."

Secondly, to demonstrate the positive contribution of the stories, the lessons use them to give a child’s perspective on well-known wartime events. They reveal, for example, the chaos and distress underlying the immense evacuation of 3 million people from the cities to safety in the countryside. Many of the city children settled in comfortably enough with their foster parents, while others struggled with the uprooting from their families. Exploring the site, one finds the case of Audrey J, who exasperated her host by constant bed-wetting:

One particular morning we awoke to find the bed drenched as usual, and Mrs Taylor was more angry than usual. It was a shear icicle day and she shoved me first into the back yard – naked, and threw a pail of freezing water over me, then proceeded to break the ice in the water butt to throw at me. It was like shards of glass hitting my body and of course drew blood.

Thirdly, the website gives an insight into the way children turned wartime conditions to their own advantage, as they explored bomb sites or swapped pieces of shrapnel.

Most of the contributions are long and full of detail on humdrum daily routines during the war, which may try the patience of young people today. Yet the website surely achieves its objective of providing a monumental learning resource for future generations.

Children of WW2 is another BBC website, covering similar ground, though this one is more specifically aimed at schools. It complements two TV programs, but claims to work also as a stand-alone resource – one suspects that it works more effectively in the former role. It does however have a section for Teachers and Parents, providing printable worksheets to support activities concerned with the rationing of food, a wartime home, and letters written by evacuees.

Interactive learning is encouraged in a Research Room where children can explore various types of source material under these three headings. The exercises on the computer are entertaining and informative, allowing the child to find out, for example, what would have happened if you tried to order a pizza in Britain in 1943, or to see how a ration book worked. There is also a series of pictures of a typical house of the period, with features of each room explained through a mouse click. The supporting documents are easy to access, though they emerge very much as little snippets of information. Doubtless it is a useful asset for schoolchildren in the second or third grade.

Colin Heywood

The University of Nottingham

The exercises on the computer are entertaining and informative, allowing the child to find out, for example, what would have happened if you tried to order a pizza in Britain in 1943, or to see how a ration book worked.

This sepia-tone (yellowed, black and white) postcard, from the early 20th century, shows a group of women and children, most likely belonging to the Mapuche people. One of the women is holding a cradleboard upright in front of her, and another is holding a young girl by the hand. Image caption reads: "Indias de Temuco."

Photographer's Annotation:

The annotations by U.S. soldier and photographer Glenn S. Hensley tell the story of a girl he knew as "Mukhta." "Several friends and myself noticed her choking back tears as she sat near the road between the air base and Khragupur. . . We asked her about her problem and in fairly good English, she showed us the stub of a broken comb. She had fallen and smashed one of her most cherished items, her comb. She was wearing only a loin cloth. While in town that day, we decided to buy Mukta a comb. . . On the way back to the base, we saw her again and presented her with the new comb. Then, her charm and personality began to glow. Her dimpled smile and older-than-her age conversation plus profuse thanks captured our hearts. She made a good photo model, too, as she climbed onto a nearby log and began to work with her long, black hair."

The encounter continued: ". . . the next time we saw Mukta. We decided she needed more than a loin cloth, so next time-we were in we bought her a brightly-colored, child-sized saree. That afternoon, she met us as we had asked and she was given the package containing her new clothes. What happened is illustrated. She hurriedly opens the package and quickly drapes herself with the garment. "The next photograph in the series "shows Mukta, surrounded by her friends just after she has donned the new saree. The American is Noel Hepp, Troy, NY. Behind Mukta, her father proudly shows an enlargement we had made of Mukta wearing only the loin cloth and combing her hair. Many crowd around to see."

Two black and white photographs from the island of Akyab in the Bay of Bengal, which is called Sittwe today, taken during World War Two (1945). Both are images of small children wielding heavy hardwood implements for hulling rice or grinding grain. The tools have a timeless quality and show obvious signs of constant use. The second photo is a close shot of a young child using a very large mortar and pestle tool; the tool is larger than the child.

Two black and white photographs depicting a Hindu cremation site, or burning ghat, in the city of Calcutta in 1944. The first photo shows the men of the family, including the deceased's sons, seated in front of the corpse, which lies shrouded and bedecked with flowers on a bier. The child sitting on one of the men's laps at the head is the youngest son, a child of no more than 4-6 years old. In the first photo the boy is wearing a shirt and some form of waist covering. In the second photo, the boy's head has been freshly shaven and he wears a white loin cloth and is in the act of setting fire to the pyre. The photographer's annotation states that the turbanned man assisting the young child in the second photo is his grandfather.

http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/nochildsplay/index.asp

Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum

August 2009

The exhibit No Child's Play at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem presents the photos, drawings, toys, dolls, and board games of children who were victims of the Holocaust. Of the ca. 6 million persons killed, one and a half million were children. The intent of the site is to provide viewers with insight into the lives of children during the Shoah by focusing on the personal stories and material culture of those few who survived. The children's stories are presented here with texts and images, written and edited by Yehudit Inbar, curator of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum.

This collection of narratives and artifacts reveals that children found comfort and companionship in the material culture of their childhood that also enabled them to create a reality different from that which surrounded them. Moreover, the array of child-centered documentary sources demonstrates how children provided their parents with encouragement, hope, in addition to money and food, that enabled them to continue their desperate daily fight for survival. The introduction is followed by a sequence of chronologically-organized links: the world of children before the war; in the shadow of the war; in the ghettos and the camps; in hiding, and in their new life. The viewer can easily click through the individual pages of each chapter—which contain between three to 15 images—while maintaining direct access to the chapter titles located in the left-hand navigation bar.

The texts that accompany the images offer useful explanations and clearly highlight their significance in a broader context. As the author emphasizes about the photographs in the "Before the War" section, all children lived their own individual lives, and none of the images present anything unusual or extraordinary. These images of ordinary children's lives underscore, however, the horror that was to come. During the war, many parents tried to save their children by sending them abroad. Youth Aliyah, for instance, successfully sent some 5,000 children to Palestine, while 9,000 left Germany after Kristallnacht for Great Britain. The rising tide of anti-Semitism, however, forced the return of refugees such as Liesel Joseph, a passenger on the ill-fated Saint Louis. The ocean liner depicted in Liesels colorful drawing that was prevented from disembarking Jewish passengers in Cuba returned to Europe.

The chapter, "Ghettos and Camps," includes illustrations of pre-ghetto life by Czech artist Bedrich Fritta created in celebration of his son's third birthday. Also included are several illustrations of the Theresienstadt ghetto drawn by an artistically talented teenage boy and dolls owned by two survivors whose stories also shed light on the enormous importance of toys to children living in ghettos and camps. There are even photos of a monopoly-like board game created in a graphics workshop engaged in underground activities that sought to provide children with useful information about how to survive the ghetto. (Unfortunately, much of the text printed on the game board and playing cards is frustratingly illegible in the site's magnified version.)

For the section "In Hiding" the curator/editor included a selection of photographs of children with classmates and toys, as well as the teddy bear that belonged to a boy while hidden in Holland by a Christian family. The recollections of survivors included throughout the site provide unique insight into the personal meanings of children's possessions in a historically-specific context. The final section, "Toward a New Life," consists of only three black and white photos of groups of children and one boy who did not want to let go of a toy gun once he had been liberated from Buchenwald.

However small the selection of sources, No Child's Play is sure to provide students with a deeper understanding of the impact of the Holocaust on children by giving voice to its victims. Teachers might find the need to include supplementary sources (both primary and secondary) due to the site's scant documentation of the horrors of the Holocaust. There is no guide to additional resources, however. And, in the absence of useful teaching strategies, instructors might find it helpful to discuss with their students the different methods of analysis needed to unpack the variety of documentary sources—photographs, artifacts, narratives, etc.—that were created by and for children of the Holocaust.

Albrecht Classen

University of Arizona

The exhibit "No Child’s Play" at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem presents the photos, drawings, toys, dolls, and board games of children who were victims of the Holocaust.

http://ihrc.umn.edu/research/collage.php

University of Minnesota's Immigration History Research Center

August 2009

Scholars and teachers of the history of immigrant children will find useful materials at COLLAGE, a website hosted by the University of Minnesota's Immigration History Research Center. COLLAGE is a sub-set of the Center's extensive research collections. The images available here come from various ethnic communities, organizations, and institutions across the United States and spans the 20th century. While the collections do not focus exclusively on children, searches for "youth," "children," "boys" and "girls" will yield rich veins of useful material for the study of childhood. Even though COLLAGE is specifically for photographs, its useful finding aids knowledgeably describe and define the institutions from which the photos derived. These descriptions are of pedagogical value, for they provide valuable histories of ethnic organizations.

One of the site's richest sources of images is the Central Cooperative Wholesale (CCW) collection, which documents the Finnish American farmer's co-op movement. The description explains that Finnish immigrant farmers at the turn of the last century formed consumers' cooperatives as a way to strengthen their communities' economic standing. The photographs in the CCW records – a subset of the Center's Finnish American collection – attest to the CCW's role as more than a business venture for adult farmers; it also served a role for the children of those families, providing them with a connection to their ethnic heritage while encouraging them to thrive and succeed in American life. For example, the CCW sponsored essay contests and hosted summer camps for youth, whom they photographed in these activities to promote the cooperative and its products. In this picture, boys at a CCW camp do crafts using the co-op's own brand of spray-paint. In other photos, essay-contest visitors make an appearance on local radio and watch demonstrations of CCW employees at work.

These photos from the 1930s and 1940s suggest that the CCWs camps and essay-contests were aimed at boys; the few photos of little girls in the CCW collection show them playing with dolls in a co-op store. However, some photographs from a later period – the 1950s and 1960s – show adolescent girls in Cooperative-sponsored activities, such as its "Youth Conference" in the late 1950s.

COLLAGE also contains images from other Finnish-American institutions that served youth; this photo, from 1930, shows Massachusetts teens in a "gymnastics group" organized by the Tyomies Society. As the finding-aid explains, "The Tyomies Society was a radical Finnish-American publishing company which produced the daily newspaper Tyomies. The Company began as a Finnish American Socialist organization, later Communist."

Indeed, COLLAGE has numerous photos from Socialist or Communist youth-organizations. Teachers could use this sort of material, not only to illustrate the importance of ethnic communities for first-generation children, but also to discuss the role of radical politics in the education of youth during the early 20th century. There was a strong Leftist strain in American politics of that period, particularly among immigrant laborer populations, and one prominent feature of that movement was its focus on youth-education. The COLLAGE photos demonstrate the intersections of ethnicity, social class, and politics in the lives of American immigrant youth.

Although the Finns seem to be the best-represented nationality on the COLLAGE site, they are by no means the only one. Materials from The International Institute of San Francisco include photos of teenage boys and girls dancing at a Chinese Youth Club, and performing at the Institute's "China Night", both in the 1960s. While the dancing teens seem "Americanized" in every way, the photos from "China Night" show youth engaged in a celebration of Chinese language and culture. The juxtaposition of such photos can help teach students that racial/national identities are often plural and fluid, not singular and static, in the lives of immigrant populations.

Visitors to COLLAGE can also see Greek-American teens of the 1950s studying Greek; Italian-American youth in an ethnic celebration in Massachusetts; Polish-American children marching in traditional costumes in a 1950s Boston parade; young folk-dancers at the 25th anniversary of the Organization for the Rebirth of Ukraine in New York; and covers from a magazine published in the 1970s for Belarusan youth.

The photographs at COLLAGE are, in themselves, valuable and engaging tools for research and teaching. The site's only failing – and this is a substantial one – is its poor organization and navigability. A visitor who searches the photo collections will want to read the finding aids' descriptions of the photos – yet once you are in the website's finding-aid section, there is no link provided to get back to the COLLAGE search. Nor are there any categories provided for browsing the photos. One can only browse the collections' names by title (many of which are named for private individuals, with no indication of which nationality or subjects the collection represents), or conduct a search by typing specific words into the search-box. If the Immigration History Center wants to improve its website for pedagogical purposes, it will need to group its photographs into numerous cross-listed subject headings. Until that time, teachers who wish to use these materials in classrooms will need to chart a path for themselves before-hand and bookmark the relevant materials.

Ilana Nash

Western Michigan University

The images available here come from various ethnic communities, organizations, and institutions across the United States and spans the 20th century.