Displaced: Manzanar 1942-1945 The Incarceration of Japanese Americans

by Evan Backes (Editor), Pico Iyer (Foreword), Nancy Matsumoto (Introduction)

In the weeks following the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, American suspicion and distrust of its Japanese American population became widespread. The US government soon ordered all Japanese Americans (two thirds of them American citizens) living on the West Coast to report to assembly centers for eventual transfer to internment camps, openly referred to by the New York Times as "concentration camps." Within a few months of Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066; soon after, the War Relocation Authority (WRA) was established and by the end of March, the first of 10,000 Japanese evacuees arrived in Manzanar, an internment camp in the Owens Valley desert at the foot of the Sierras. Families were given one to two weeks' notice and were allowed to pack only what they could carry. Businesses were shuttered and farms and equipment were sold at bargain prices. Upon arrival at Manzanar, each person was assigned to a barrack, given a cot, blankets and a canvas bag to be filled with straw in order to create their own mattresses.

Dorothea Lange was hired by the WRA to photograph the mass evacuation; she worked into the first months of the internment until she was fired by WRA staff for her "sympathetic" approach. Many of her photographs were seized by the government and largely unseen by the public for a half century. More than a year later, Manzanar Project Director Ralph Merritt hired Ansel Adams to document life at the camp. Lange and Adams were also joined by WRA photographers Russell Lee, Clem Albers and Francis Stewart. Two Japanese internees, Toyo Miyatake and Jack Iwata, secretly photographed life within the camp with a smuggled camera.

Gathered together in this volume, these images express the dignity and determination of the Japanese Americans in the face of injustice and humiliation. Today the tragic circumstances surrounding displaced and detained people around the world only strengthen the impact of these photos taken 75 years ago.

176 pages, Hardcover

Published October 23, 2018

Reviews

[Jordan · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredibly important photography book that humanizes a dark time in American history when Japanese Americans were put into concentration camps. As someone who was taught this history in school in such a brief, detached and impersonal way, I felt the weight of this time so much more when confronted with the faces and stories of the people who had to go through this, who somehow were able to find joy and hope amidst such injustice. It’s a reminder of just how much history repeats itself — the ways a powerful government can deem a group of people as less than. Heartbreaking.

[Bruce Cline · Rating 4 out of 5]

DISPLACED, Manzanar 1942-1945, The Incarceration of Japanese Americans (pp 273). This photo-book includes photographs by Dorothea Lange, Toyo Miyataka (a resident-prisoner), Clem Albers, Francis Stewart, Ansel Adams, Jack Iwata (resident-prisoner), Russell Lee, and assorted AP photographers. These photos were, by regulation, non-controversial and visually benign. Also, some non-resident photographers were sympathetic to the internees (e.g. Dorothea Lange), others less so (e.g. Ansel Adams). Notwithstanding the innocuous looking pictures, viewers must remind themselves the people were prisoners living in barbed wire-inclosed and guarded concentration camp in the California desert. Some were U.S. citizens. Each was a prisoner living in relatively if not absolutely harsh conditions. The photos include intruding Tory notes and informative captions, many with names and ages of the men, women, and children. It’s worth mentioning than over 110,000 Japanese Americans were put into these camps, and there is not a single documented case of sabotage by Japanese-Americans during WWII.