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Revealing photographs of life at Manzanar in the 1940s, America's internment camp for Japanese Americans

In the weeks following the bombing of Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, American suspicion and distrust of its Japanese American population became widespread.

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All images courtesy of T.Adler Books and copyright of artist.

All images courtesy of T.Adler Books and copyright of artist.

The US government soon ordered all Japanese Americans (two-thirds of them American citizens) living on the West Coast to report to assembly centres 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 a new book, Displaced: Manzanar 1942 - 1945, 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.

“This sorry episode has been illuminated in books and documentaries. But I’ve never felt its emotional texture – the unexpected mix of dereliction and upstanding hopefulness – so vividly as in this set of photographs taken by Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange and five others, among them an artist incarcerated at Manzanar," says Pico Iyer, who wrote the foreword in the book.

Displaced: Manzanar 1942 - 1945, published by T.Adler Books, is available for pre-order via artbook.com.

Black and white photograph of a 1940s car parked outside a grocery store storefront bearing a large sign reading "I AM AN AMERICAN
Newspaper front pages pinned to a pole with headlines reading "Oyster of All Jabs in California Near!", San Francisco Examiner extras, depicting anti-Japanese American sentiment during World War II
Man in plaid jacket carrying suitcase outside Alpine View Garage during Japanese American evacuation to Manzanar internment camp, 1942
Young child looking out the window of a Southern Pacific railroad car during Japanese American evacuation to Manzanar internment camp, 1942
Young boy reading a comic book titled Boyz while seated against wooden barracks at Manzanar internment camp
Japanese American family with luggage labelled "Inochida" stands together at Manzanar internment camp in the 1940s
Young Japanese American girl wearing a wide-brimmed hat and coat with identification tag, standing with adults at Manzanar internment camp
Young boy in military-style uniform with cap and belt standing in front of gathered adults and children at Manzanar internment camp
Man in suit and hat holds a walking stick and bundle of possessions while sitting on a bench in a park, looking upward with a grave expression
A crowd of Japanese American evacuees and officials gather around a bus marked "Special" at Manzanar internment camp, with a church steeple visible behind them
Wooden transport truck with slatted sides carrying Japanese American evacuees, with faces visible through the gaps, during forced relocation to Manzanar internment camp in 1942
American flag flying above a central building at Manzanar internment camp, with barracks lining both sides and snow-capped mountains in the distance
Black and white portrait photograph of a young Japanese American girl wearing a patterned short-sleeved shirt at Manzanar internment camp in the 1940s
Two young men in 1940s casual clothing stand against a wall at Manzanar internment camp, one wearing glasses and striped shirt, the other in round sunglasses and plain shirt
Three young men in work shirts leaning against a wooden structure at Manzanar internment camp
Laundry hanging on a clothesline in a desert landscape at Manzanar internment camp, with a barren field stretching behind it in black and white photography
A young man wearing a cap and jacket smiles at the camera while holding two large heads of cabbage, one in each hand
Four men and boys sit together on steps outside a wooden building at Manzanar internment camp, smiling and looking off to the side in this black and white photograph
Black and white portrait photograph of a Japanese American woman with dark hair styled in victory rolls, wearing a patterned collar and dark jacket, taken at Manzanar internment camp in the 1940s
Japanese American internees walking across the flat desert landscape of Manzanar camp, with barracks and mountains visible in the distance under a cloudy sky
Man playing guitar while seated against a wooden post inside a Manzanar barracks, 1942
Black and white portrait photograph of a man in a light-coloured shirt at Manzanar internment camp
Japanese American detainees gather inside a wooden barrack structure at Manzanar internment camp in the 1940s
Black and white portrait photograph of a Japanese American woman with dark wavy hair and a white blouse with eyelet detailing, looking directly at the camera
Book cover titled Displaced showing a black and white photograph of a person sitting on a cot in a sparse room, documenting Manzanar 1942-1943 and the incarceration of Japanese Americans
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