Placing Guantanamo Memories

More than a year ago I wrote about Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American Internment.   At the time,  I pointed out that the detention center the United States is currently operating in Guantanamo Bay Cuba is by no means unprecedented.   So when I happened upon Todd Stewart’s Placing Memory and Mahvish Rukhsana Khan’s My Guantanamo Diary,  I knew I would have to once again write about this shameful situation.

Stewart,  a photographer has visited and photographed all ten of the Relocation Centers where US citizens of Japanese ancestry were detained during World War II.   All of the camps are now mostly rubble and to be perfectly honest,  I did not find the pictures of rather non-descript and decrepit buildings at all compelling.   Much more interesting were the occasionally intersperesed historical photographs of the people at the internment centers,  including a few by Dorothea Lange.

Mahvish Rukhsana Khan is a first generation Afghani-American and a third year law student who volunteered to work as a translator for the attorneys who are representing some of the detainees from Afghanistan.    I have to confess that I did not read all of Ms. Khan’s book,  excellent though it was.

After only four chapters and three stories of upstanding citizens of Afghanistan,  who had fled from the Taliban’s regime and returned only after the US  “liberated” their country,  who were aparently turned in to the Americans by Pakistanis who were primarily interested in the reward money offered,   I was so consumed by my desire to beat former President Junior over the head with the book,  that I simply could not continue to read.   It is,  however,  a credible and well-written account of the real story behind one of the most shameful moments in US history and is Highly Recommended.     As for the Stewart photography book,  I’d suggest taking a pass.