Ansel Adams, Photographs of Japanese Internment at Manzanar Relocation Center, 1943

Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which allowed military commanders to designate "military areas" from which "any and all persons" could be excluded.  Under Executive Order 9066, as many as 120,000 Japanese-Americans, 62% of them United States citizens, were barred from the West Coast. Ten thousand Japanese-Americans were interned at Manzanar in a remote area of California. Today the site is a national park commemorating "hope, resistance, and beauty" as well as daily life in the barracks. In 1980 the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians appointed by President Jimmy Carter concluded that disloyalty by Japanese Americans was rare and that internment was the result of racism.  Under President Ronald Reagan survivors of the camps were paid reparations of $20,000 each.

Ansel Adams, famed environmental photographer of the western United States, was troubled by Japanese internment during World War II and received permission from the government to visit the camp. Here is a sample of the photographs Adams took at Manzanar.

Questions to Think About and Discuss
  1. Based on these photographs, how would you describe the experiences of daily life among those interned at Manzanar? What features of internment are most surprising?
  2. Do Adams's photographs raise questions about the government policy of internment? If so, explain how. If not, how do the photographs support internment?

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