Elizabeth Partridge - Seen and Unseen: What Dorothea Lange, Toyo Miyatake, and Ansel Adamss Photographs Reveal About the Japanese American Incarceration

1. We sometimes refer to both Issei and Nisei as Japanese Americans as it is widely accepted in the Japanese American community that the Issei were Japanese Americans, though they were barred from citizenship.

2. Operated by the War Relocation Authority. Camps run by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (not noted here) primarily held German, Italian, and Japanese enemy aliens.

HOURS LATER IN FARAWAY LOS ANGELES, Toyo Miyatake was photographing a fancy wedding. Suddenly, agents from the US government barged in. They arrested several men and took them away.

Up and down the West Coast, leaders of the Japanese American community were rounded up and taken away: bankers, priests, newspaper reporters, even teachers.

Where had they been taken,

and why?

Families were given no information.

The next day, the United States declared war on Japan.

Some Americans were afraid the Japanese military would attack again, this time on the mainland. Were Japanese Americans along the West Coast planning to sabotage the United States? Would fishermen signal to Japanese submarines where to creep into US ports? Were farmers sending coded radio messages to the Japanese military from their fields? Rumors flew from person to person, newspaper to newspaper.

The US government acted swiftly against all people of Japanese ancestry. Their radios, cameras, and weapons were considered contraband and were confiscated. Bank accounts were frozen so they could not access their own money. Curfews and travel restrictions were set up: No one was allowed to go more than five miles from home, and everyone had to be back in their houses by 8:00 p.m.

Japanese and Japanese Americans were afraid, too.They had the face of the enemy. They needed to show they were not disloyal to the US government. Mothers pulled kimonos from the closet. Fathers took calligraphy off the walls. Books, letters, and photographs from relatives in Japan were heaped in a pile.

Everything was burned.

No one knew what would happen to the Issei, the older Japanese who had immigrated to America but had not been allowed to become citizens. And what about their children, the Nisei, Japanese Americans who were born in the United States and were citizens?

I dont know whats going to happen to your mother and me, future US Congressman Norman Minetas Issei father told him and his four siblings. But just remember: All of you are US citizens and this is your home. There is nothing anyone can do to take this away from you.

He was wrong.

ON FEBRUARY 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066. It authorized the removal of more than 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast.

The government called it an evacuation.

Evacuees would be taken to assembly centers until internment camps were ready.

IT WAS NOT AN EVACUATION.

People are evacuated from an emergency, like a fire or flood. The evacuation was a forced removal. The few Japanese Americans who didnt comply faced criminal charges.

Assembly centers were temporary detention centers, with fences and armed guards.

Internment or relocation camps were actually prison camps where the Japanese and Japanese Americans were imprisoned for most of World War II. It was a separate system from the US criminal justice system.

Evacuees were prisoners.

PHOTOGRAPHED FOR THEWAR RELOCATION AUTHORITY (WRA)MARCH 1942JULY 1942

IN THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA, Dorothea Lange was asked to photograph the roundup and forced relocation of all Japanese and Japanese Americans on the West Coast. Officials wanted documentary photos to show it was being carried out in a humane, orderly way.