Ansel Adams’ slides portray the lives of detained Japanese Americans in 1943 WWII internment camps

Louise Tami and Joyce Yuki Nakamura hold Mrs. Naguchi's hands
Source: Library of Congress collection of Ansel Adams’ Japanese internment camp photos, 1943

110,000 Japanese American citizens, some of them US military personnel, were detained in detention camps during the WWII. In 1943, Ansel Adams documented the lives of Japanese living in the Manzanar War Relocation Camp in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Adams donated the photographs to the Library of Congress in 1965, commenting,

The purpose of my work was to show how these people, suffering under a great injustice, and loss of property, businesses and professions, had overcome the sense of defeat and dispair [sic] by building for themselves a vital community in an arid (but magnificent) environment.” read more