Ansel Adams: “Manzanar Relocation Center” Photograph

The Images, Cartoons, and Other Visual Sources That Shaped America
Table of Contents
Ansel Adams: “Manzanar Relocation Center” Photograph
Overview
Document Image
About the Artist
Context
Explanation and Analysis of the Document

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Abstract

This photograph is of a typical Japanese American detention center created by the U.S. government in February 1942. The order allowed the creation of an exclusion zone that effectively excluded Japanese Americans from living or working in the western half of California, Oregon, Washington, and the southern half of Arizona. This order extended to anyone with one-sixteenth Japanese ancestry. When President Franklin Roosevelt signed the order, the government had no facilities ready to house the roughly 120,000 Japanese Americans living in the exclusion zone. Interestingly, the approximately 150,000 Japanese Americans living in Hawaii or Alaska were not forcibly relocated.

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