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    "url_title": "Gretchen Van Tassel",
    "title_sort": "vantasselgretchen",
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    "modified": "2023-12-19T03:17:00",
    "title": "Gretchen Van Tassel",
    "body": "<div class=\"mw-parser-output\">\n <div id=\"databox-PeopleDisplay\">\n  <table class=\"infobox\" width=\"200px;\">\n   <tbody>\n    <tr>\n     <th scope=\"row\" style=\"text-align:left;\">\n      Name\n     </th>\n     <td style=\"text-align:left;\">\n      Gretchen Van Tassel\n     </td>\n    </tr>\n    <tr>\n     <th scope=\"row\" style=\"text-align:left;\">\n      Born\n     </th>\n     <td style=\"text-align:left;\">\n      1918\n     </td>\n    </tr>\n    <tr>\n     <th scope=\"row\" style=\"text-align:left;\">\n      Died\n     </th>\n     <td style=\"text-align:left;\">\n      January 11 2011\n     </td>\n    </tr>\n    <tr>\n     <th scope=\"row\" style=\"text-align:left;\">\n      Birth Location\n     </th>\n     <td style=\"text-align:left;\">\n      New York, NY\n     </td>\n    </tr>\n   </tbody>\n  </table>\n </div>\n <div id=\"databox-People\" style=\"display:none;\">\n  <p>\n   FirstName:Gretchen;\nLastName:Van Tassel;\nDisplayName:Gretchen Van Tassel;\nBirthDate:1918-01-01;\nDeathDate:2011-01-11;\nBirthLocation:New York, NY;\nGender:Female;\nEthnicity:White;\nGenerationIdentifier:;\nNationality:US;\nExternalResourceLink:;\nPrimaryGeography:;\nReligion:;\n  </p>\n </div>\n <div class=\"floatright\">\n </div>\n <p>\n  Gretchen Van Tassel (1918–2011) was hired by the\n  <a class=\"encyc notrg\" href=\"/War_Relocation_Authority/\" title=\"War Relocation Authority\">\n   War Relocation Authority's\n  </a>\n  \"Reports Division\" in Washington, D.C., where she worked from 1943 to 1946. Van Tassel was the office manager in charge of editing, filing, and distributing official WRA still and moving images. Because of her background as a photographer, she eventually also went out on shoots and supplemented the\n  <a class=\"encyc notrg\" href=\"/Government_photography_of_the_WRA_Camps_and_Resettlement/\" title=\"Government photography of the WRA Camps and Resettlement\">\n   WRA Photographic Section\n  </a>\n  's (WRAPS) photos on the eastern seaboard.\n  <sup class=\"reference\" id=\"cite_ref-ftnt_ref1_1-0\">\n   <a class=\"\" href=\"#cite_note-ftnt_ref1-1\">\n    [1]\n   </a>\n  </sup>\n </p>\n <p>\n  Gretchen Van Tassel was born in New York City. Hailing from an old American family with Dutch roots, she had a comfortable upbringing. Perhaps in contrast to the practices of the day, her parents and a favorite aunt encouraged Van Tassel to make the most of her abilities.\n </p>\n <p>\n  After high school, Van Tassel studied at Bennington, an innovative, arts-oriented women's college. Majoring in art, Van Tassel studied photography and architecture at Bennington, and learned to both shoot and develop in the darkroom while she was an undergraduate.\n </p>\n <p>\n  Graduating in 1939, Van Tassel went to New York to work. First finding employment with a fashion photographer, she next worked for Mattie Edwards Hewitt who specializing in architectural photography, and then worked for a well-known photographer, Jeffrey Marmes.\n </p>\n <p>\n  When the U.S. entered the war, Van Tassel moved to Washington D.C., where she was employed for a time as a draftsperson at the Naval Research Laboratory there. When she heard about the WRA, however, Van Tassel was interested and applied for a job. She was hired by the Reports Division that among other things managed all of the official WRA images that were being produced by the WRA's Photographic Section in Denver, Colorado. Van Tassel began by keeping the photo files, which consisted of the original negatives of approved shots plus a print, in order. When media, civic organizations, or authors requested images, it was her responsibility to select and send them the size and number of required. She was also involved in the Reports Division's film projects, and the issuance of PR publications such as a RD pamphlet on\n  <a class=\"encyc notrg\" href=\"/Nisei/\" title=\"Nisei\">\n   Nisei\n  </a>\n  soldiers in the U.S. Army.\n </p>\n <p>\n  As of 1943, resettlement became the WRA's main objective, and Van Tassel went out on assignment. Although she took some shots of the WRA camps, her main focus was on the Japanese Americans who had left camp and moved to the eastern seaboard, in part because she was closer to these sites, and it was more difficult for the WRAPS photographers based in Denver to come out to the east coast to shoot.\n </p>\n <p>\n  Van Tassel has a little over 200 images online at the Japanese American Relocation Digital Archive (JARDA) web site. Although her photos are largely portraiture of resettlers and discharged veterans, she also took a series of shots at\n  <a class=\"encyc notrg\" href=\"/Jerome/\" title=\"Jerome\">\n   Jerome\n  </a>\n  and\n  <a class=\"encyc notrg\" href=\"/Rohwer/\" title=\"Rohwer\">\n   Rohwer\n  </a>\n  , the easternmost of the ten WRA camps.\n </p>\n <p>\n  After the WRA closed in early 1946, Van Tassel continued to do photography for the Federal Housing Authority and the International Bank. When she married and eventually had children, Van Tassel retired and devoted herself to being a mother. Of interest is that one of her children, Alison Shaw, followed in her mother's footsteps and became a well-known American photographer working out of the Northeast.\n </p>\n <p>\n  Gretchen Van Tassel-Shaw passed away on January 11, 2011, at her home in Brunswick, Maine, just a few weeks short of her 93rd birthday.\n </p>\n <div id=\"authorByline\">\n  <b>\n   Authored by\n   <a class=\"encyc notrg\" href=\"/Lane_Ryo_Hirabayashi/\" title=\"Lane Ryo Hirabayashi\">\n    Lane Ryo Hirabayashi\n   </a>\n   , UCLA\n  </b>\n </div>\n <div id=\"citationAuthor\" style=\"display:none;\">\n  Hirabayashi, Lane\n </div>\n <div class=\"section\" id=\"For_More_Information\">\n  <h2>\n   <span class=\"mw-headline\" id=\"For_More_Information\">\n    For More Information\n   </span>\n  </h2>\n  <div class=\"section_content\">\n   <p>\n    Hirabayashi, Lane Ryo, with Kenichiro Shimada.\n    <a class=\"external text offsite\" href=\"https://archive.org/details/japaneseamerican00hira_0\" rel=\"nofollow\">\n     <i>\n      Japanese American Resettlement Through the Lens: Hikaru Carl Iwasaki and the WRA's Photographic Section, 1943–1945\n     </i>\n     .\n    </a>\n    Photographs by Hikaru Carl Iwasaki. Foreword by Norman Y. Mineta. Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2009.\n   </p>\n   <p>\n    Japanese American Relocation Digital Archives (JARDA).\n    <a class=\"external free offsite\" href=\"https://calisphere.org/exhibitions/t11/jarda/\" rel=\"nofollow\">\n     https://calisphere.org/exhibitions/t11/jarda/\n    </a>\n   </p>\n  </div>\n </div>\n <div class=\"section\" id=\"Footnotes\">\n  <h2>\n   <span class=\"mw-headline\" id=\"Footnotes\">\n    Footnotes\n   </span>\n  </h2>\n  <div class=\"section_content\">\n   <div class=\"reflist\" style=\"list-style-type: decimal;\">\n    <div class=\"mw-references-wrap\">\n     <ol class=\"references\">\n      <li id=\"cite_note-ftnt_ref1-1\">\n       <span class=\"mw-cite-backlink\">\n        <a class=\"\" href=\"#cite_ref-ftnt_ref1_1-0\">\n         ↑\n        </a>\n       </span>\n       <span class=\"reference-text\">\n        Data for this entry were taken from Gretchen Van Tassel's official WRA employment records. I would also like to acknowledge Alison Shaw, her daughter, who videotaped an extended interview with Gretchen Van Tassel-Shaw about her work with the WRA \"Reports Office\" in Washington D.C., which I have also drawn from here.\n       </span>\n      </li>\n     </ol>\n    </div>\n   </div>\n   <!-- \nNewPP limit report\nCached time: 20231219031700\nCache expiry: 86400\nDynamic content: false\nComplications: []\nCPU time usage: 0.012 seconds\nReal time usage: 0.016 seconds\nPreprocessor visited node count: 163/1000000\nPost‐expand include size: 1788/2097152 bytes\nTemplate argument size: 262/2097152 bytes\nHighest expansion depth: 6/40\nExpensive parser function count: 0/100\nUnstrip recursion depth: 0/20\nUnstrip post‐expand size: 643/5000000 bytes\nExtLoops count: 0\n-->\n   <!--\nTransclusion expansion time report (%,ms,calls,template)\n100.00%   10.206      1 -total\n 22.39%    2.285      1 Template:Reflist\n 21.59%    2.204      1 Template:Databox-People\n 13.71%    1.399      1 Template:Published\n 13.36%    1.364      1 Template:AuthorByline\n-->\n   <!-- Saved in parser cache with key encycmw:pcache:idhash:1396-0!canonical and timestamp 20231219031700 and revision id 35716\n -->\n  </div>\n </div>\n</div>\n<div class=\"toplink\">\n <a href=\"#top\">\n  <i class=\"icon-chevron-up\">\n  </i>\n  Top\n </a>\n</div>",
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