Conversations with Charlie Dyer, Guest: Paul Kitagaki, Jr.

In the late 1970s, Paul Kitagaki, Jr., author of Behind Barbed Wire: Searching for Japanese Americans Incarcerated During World War II, learned that the great documentary photographer Dorothea Lange had photographed his grandparents, father and aunt in 1942 as they awaited a bus in Oakland, to begin their journey into a Japanese detention camp. Several years later, while looking through over 900 of Lange’s photographs at the National Archives he found the original images of his family, and of many others.  He grew up in California and knew very little about the incarceration of Japanese people until his teens. Then he started asking his parents about their experiences, but they wouldn't talk. So, he decided to track down the subjects of many of the famous photos.