Suffer the little children

There are literally hundreds of photographs of the Japanese resettlement camps from World War II, and to my mind the most interesting thing about them is that the people being herded off are almost always smiling. What's up with that? Contrast this with, say, the equally voluminous archives from the Warsaw Ghetto. (Americans and Germans share a zeal for documenting the sufferings of their victims.) The Jews do not have on their happy faces! The Jews know. But then, presumably, so did the Japanese. It must have something to do with the importance of saving face, so that in the end, an individual's response to his own suffering is just another cultural artifact, something the manufacturers of Paxil, Zoloft and Effexor have invested huge amounts of research and development money to keep you from figuring out.

I muse thusly because once again I am hard at work on History Day posters and this combined with the flailing business, the scut job, parenting, marriage and the occasional pause to shove some food into my mouth and close my eyes have essentially robbed me of any inner life. It's a hard life, and I have to keep reminding myself that while it's harder than many, it's not harder than most (cue that camera towards war-torn Iraqi orphans peaking out from behind the smoldering carcass of an M1.)

From reading the judges' notes, I see that the boys actually won their county first mostly on the basis of their interview. This eased my conscience considerably – I don't actually approve of parents who do their children's homework.

"Your interviews were great!" read the comments. "And our interviews with you were exceptional. Liked the historical population graph. Time line very nice."

("This is what you have to say," I coached Robin on the drive over. "'Those who do not remember history are condemned to repeat it.' Can you remember that?"

"Those who do not remember history have to keep doing it again," Robin chirped. He looked so cute in his white shirt and tie and slightly-too-large blazer.

"No, no, no," I said. "You have to use those exact words! The impression we're aiming for here is adorable precocity.")

The flibberty-gibbitty Mrs. B's feedback was much less helpful, but then consider the source. "You need to use a paper cutter," she sniffed. "The poster needs a background. And color. Too much black and white."

Can I help it if Dorothea Lange and the other photographers who contributed to the Bancroft Library archives shot entirely in black and white?

Anyway, I had this artsy-fartsy notion that I would hand color the people in the photographs, to loan them a more contemporary humanity (since ours is a Technicolor present tense.) The process of hand tinting is an adventure in digital detective work, it turns out. Because while the adults in the photographs may be smiling, the children are not. They look resentful and scared. Their suffering is not a culturally mediated response but individual, unique and all their own.

I am not looking forward to the San Diego trip. An eighteen hour car trip (there and back) with Mrs. Ilgin who speaks no English and doesn't drive, plus the boys. Stage parents. State education officials. Too late to back out now.