Just two months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 into law, making it possible for the government to create a military exclusion zone on the western coast of the United States “from which any or all persons may be excluded.” Starting in April of 1942, all Japanese Americans living […]
Photographic documentation from camp glosses over the conflict many residents felt. Cheery images of Japanese-American citizens commemorating Memorial Day, playing baseball, gardening, and sitting in classes portray Manzanar as just another American community (Figure 1). Yet Japanese heritage was much more widely expressed than can be seen in most uncensored government photography. Heitz. “Pictured Pioneers,” […]