Yuri Kochiyama, 1980. Workers at Silver Palace, a now-closed restaurant in New York City’s Chinatown, organized a protest with the Chinese Staff and Workers Association in 1980. They opposed management’s practice of deducting the workers’ tip money for social security benefits.
A poster announces an Asian American Political Alliance rally at University of California, Berkeley on July 28, 1968. The event included speeches by Bobby Seale, Chairman of the Black Panther Party, and George Wu of Hwa Ching, a militant Chinese rights group from San Francisco’s Chinatown.
Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act on August 10, 1988. The Act officially apologized for the incarceration of Japanese American citizens and permanent residents during World War II. Onlookers include Pete Wilson, Spark Matsunaga, Norman Mineta, Robert Masui, and Bill Lowrey.
Lillian Baker (left) angrily rips testimony pages from the hands of James Kawaminami, president of the 100th/442nd Veterans Association of Southern California, at a Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians hearing in Los Angeles. The nine-member, federally-appointed body held hearings in major U.S. cities and heard testimonies from more than 750 witnesses. Some Americans, like Lillian, continued to defend the WWII incarceration of Japanese Americans. They opposed redress and reparations, which would acknowledge that the government acted wrongly.
From left to right, Gordon Hirabayashi, Minoru Yasui, and Fred Korematsu, 1983. Pres. Clinton awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor, to Korematsu in 1998. Pres. Obama awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously to Gordon Hirabayashi in 2012 and Minoru Yasui in 2015.
In 1941, Gene Sogioka was a 26-year-old background artist at Walt Disney Studios. By 1942, he was incarcerated at Poston on the Colorado River Indian Reservation in Arizona. It was there that he painted this work, entitled Dust Storm, along with 133 other watercolors depicting his experiences.
The militarization of the Tule Lake Segregation Center, where “disloyal” inmates were sent, provoked a similar, militant response from those incarcerated there. Fanatical pro-Japanese groups marched every morning in military style to protest the incarceration and the treatment of inmates. They encouraged second-generation Nisei to renounce their U.S. citizenship.
In 1942, Lieutenant James Glatt (left) and Lieutenant Cal Ferris (right) reviewed evacuation details as the last 300 residents of Japanese ancestry were forced out of their Redondo Beach homes and sent to a temporary detention center in Arcadia, CA.
Dressed in uniform marking service in the First World War, this veteran enters Santa Anita Assembly Center, one of the first stops for persons of Japanese ancestry forcibly removed from the West Coast.
Families lived in barracks at Tanforan Assembly Center in buildings originally built to house horses. The Assembly Center was opened two days before the photograph was taken. The army painted the floors and walls of the stables, but the odor of horse urine and manure remained. San Bruno, CA.
This document certified that Wong Kim Ark was entitled to return to the United States after a trip to China. Three men signed this letter, which also features a photo, attesting to his identity.
One hundred and thirteen of Fusaye Yokoyama‚'s friends and acquaintances signed their names on this shirt while she was at Tule Lake Relocation Center in 1943. She then embroidered over their signatures. An American citizen, Yokoyama was born in Perkins, CA. Photograph by David Izu. Japanese American Archival Collection #JA 141, Special Collections and University Archives, California State University, Sacramento (CSUS).
Informal school classes began at the temporary centers and continued through the first months at permanent camps, taught mostly by college-educated inmates. Formal classes started in the fall of 1942 and continued for the duration of the war. Photograph by Dorothea Lange, Owens Valley, California, July 1, 1942. National Archives 537966.
For Japanese Americans who returned to their West Coast homes after the war, many found their pre-war lives in ruins. Squatters had claimed their homes while thieves left behind little of value. Only 25% of pre-war farm operators recovered their land after the war. Occasionally, non-Japanese friends maintained or looked after properties. Near Sacramento, Bob Fletcher (pictured here at a farm formerly operated by J. Nitta) quit his job to manage the fruit farms of three incarcerated Japanese American families. Photograph by Francis Stewart, c. 1940s. Florin, California. WRA Collection via the Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley.
Few toys found space among the limited necessities people were allowed to bring with them to the camps. This toy lending facility at Manzanar War Relocation Center was coordinated by the Religious Society of Friends (also known as the Quakers), which spoke out against the incarceration and sent volunteers to make camp life less hostile. Photograph by Toyo Miyatake, Toy Loan Center, c. 1944. Courtesy Toyo Miyatake Studio.
Dust storms occurred with great frequency at Manzanar. Photographer Dorothea Lange later wrote, ‚"Well, they had the meanest dust storms there and not a blade of grass. And the springs are so cruel. When those people arrived there they couldn‚'t keep the tarpaper on the shacks. Oh my, there were some pretty terrible chapters in that history.‚" Photograph by Dorothea Lange, Owens Valley, California, July 3, 1942. National Archives 539961.
Five-year-old Mamoru ‚"Mamo‚" Takeuchi reported for pickup in his Boy Scout uniform. Months earlier, his father, Jingo, was picked up by the FBI as a ‚"dangerous‚" alien. Jingo‚'s ‚"crimes‚" included teaching at a Japanese-language school and running a school that offered instruction in Japanese sword fighting. Photograph by Dorothea Lange, Centerville, CA, May 9, 1942. National Archives 537552.
As with language, the U.S. government attempted to control public perception through imagery. The government hired professional photographers to document the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans but gave them strict orders: they were not to show barbed wire, armed military personnel, the camps‚' squalid conditions, or anything that could negatively affect the public‚'s view of the camps. Dorothea Lange was one of the photographers hired to document the plight of Japanese American residents as they left their homes in California. Here, she captured the weight of forced removal and incarceration on a tenant farmer, who had tidied everything and neatly packed for the next day‚'s expulsion. Just before the trains pulled out of town, Lange suffered a nervous breakdown. ‚"I went down to the lobby to type a letter,‚" wrote her assistant, Christina Gardner. ‚"When I came back, she was just in a paroxysm of worry about what was going to happen to these people. What was going to happen? Our government was doing this. She saw the greater fabric in a way very few people did at the time.‚" Photograph by Dorothea Lange, Woodland, California, May 20, 1942. National Archives 537759.
As Japanese Americans began to leave the incarceration camp in Poston, Arizona, the buildings began to be repurposed by both tribal members who originally lived on the land and relocated Hopi and Navajo residents. On September 1, 1945, 16 families‚ a total of 78 people, moved into the barracks at Poston. Here, residents pose outside of their new homes, drafty buildings made from tar paper, never intended to be permanent. Photographer Hikaru Iwasaki was the only Japanese American to work in the WRA and document the incarceration camps as a full-time staff photographer. Photograph by Hikaru Iwasaki, September 1945. National Archives 539890.
Los Angeles residents shoved their belongings onto trains bound for Manzanar Relocation Center in California. The packed trains were hot and stuffy. Military police with rifles and bayonets guarded each car. People were not allowed to lift the blinds on the windows. The army said it was for the passengers‚' own protection. Photograph by Clem Albers, Los Angeles, California, April 1, 1942. National Archives 536765.
The Mochida family, relatives of Fred Korematsu, painted their name and an identifying symbol on each of their bags so the children could keep track of their possessions. The War Relocation Authority required them to wear tags with assigned identification numbers: one number per family and a letter for each family member. ‚"A‚" denoted the head of the family or, if the elders did not speak English, the Nisei child who would be the chief point of contact with the authorities. Photograph by Dorothea Lange, Centerville, CA, May 9, 1942. National Archives 537505.
Ernest Besig was the Founder and Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Northern California from 1934-1971. In 1942, Besig visited Fred Korematsu in jail after Korematsu refused to be relocated. Besig asked if Korematsu would be the plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the forced removal of people of Japanese ancestry as a violation of basic constitutional rights. Besig explained that strong anti-Japanese prejudice, coupled with judicial deference to wartime military decisions, made their prospects grim. Nevertheless, Korematsu agreed to be a plaintiff. Besig‚'s assessment proved right, and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the exclusion laws. However, the case eventually became a symbol of injustice. Korematsu later recalled that Besig ‚"was sticking his neck out for me‚" because ‚"at the time, racial prejudice was pretty strong.‚" Besig had even faced opposition from within the national ACLU to bring the case forward. His willingness to continue, regardless of objections, is a powerful example of solidarity. During the war, Besig and the ACLU also investigated harsh conditions in the incarceration camps and defended the rights of conscientious objectors.
Nisei soldiers upon entry into Marseille, France, Sept. 1944. Accompanying this image on a scrapbook page was the caption, ‚"Our entry into Marseille, France, after a rough 2 day trip where nearly everyone got seasick. Pretty tough trying to get the gals to understand. Cigarettes sold for $20 to $25 a carton.‚" Courtesy Taki Family Collection, Densho Digital Repository.
Many of the photos in this exhibit were taken by government-hired photographers to document events. However, the government wanted to present a positive view of the incarceration. Photos that showed barbed wire, armed guards, machine guns, or any sign of resistance, like this one, were ‚"impounded.‚" The negatives were confiscated but, surprisingly, not destroyed. Photograph by Clem Albers, Manzanar Relocation Center, c. 1942. National Archives 537423.
Recruiting volunteers for the U.S. Army, Captain William S. Fairchild addressed Japanese Americans at the Granada (Amache) Relocation Center. He later handed out a questionnaire designed to determine their loyalty. About 12,000 inmates refused to respond or answered ‚"No‚" to one or both of the loyalty questions. Some Nisei felt the questions were inappropriate for U.S. citizens, or would call them into military service. Others could no longer affirm their allegiance to the United States. Photograph by Tom Parker, Amache, Colorado, February 9, 1943. National Archives.
Fellow inmate Toyo Miyatake photographed Teru Arikawa at the memorial service for her son, Private First Class Frank Nobuo Arikawa, who was killed in action on the Italian front. ‚"Manzanar has its first gold star mother,‚" wrote the Manzanar Free Press. ‚"We had dreaded the day when some family in Manzanar would receive the fateful telegram.‚" Photograph by Toyo Miyatake, Memorial Service, July 1944. Courtesy of Toyo Miyatake Studio.
Students at San Francisco's Raphael Weill Elementary School began the day by reciting the Pledge of Allegiance just before the Japanese American children among them were forced to leave with their families. Second-generation Japanese American children in San Francisco lived bicultural lives. They were tied to Japan through their immigrant parents and connected to the American culture around them. Photograph by Dorothea Lange, San Francisco, California, April 20, 1942. National Archives 536053.
Henry Welsh, a member of the Mojave tribe, poses with his horse in Parker, AZ. Welsh was chairman of the Colorado River Indian Community‚'s Tribal Council when the U.S. government undermined Indigenous sovereignty by planning to build the Poston War Relocation Center on tribal lands without first securing permission and despite tribal objections. Photograph by Clem Albers, April 10, 1942. Library of Congress 2021641693.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawai'i, initiated U.S. participation in World War II, stoked a wave of fear and anti-immigrant sentiment, and led to the incarceration of 125,000 Japanese Americans. Here, the battleship USS ARIZONA sinks after being hit by a Japanese air attack on December 7, 1941.
Courtesy U.S. Naval Service.
Toyo Miyatake captured the uncertainties and lack of freedom characteristic of life in camp in this well-known photograph. The first-generation Japanese American photographer fashioned his own camera in camp to document the experience. Initially barring him from taking photos, the camp administration eventually permitted him to do so. He became the official camp photographer at Manzanar. Photograph by Toyo Miyatake, Three Boys Behind Barbed Wire, c. 1944. Courtesy Toyo Miyatake Studio.
Although it is no easy feat to become a U.S. citizen, people from all walks of life continue to strive to become Americans. Here, 23 individuals from 12 different countries -- including Colombia, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Japan, Mexico, Morocco, Australia, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay, Venezuela, Vietnam, and Zambia -- celebrate after becoming U.S. citizens. Many family members and close friends came to show their support at this event, which commemorated both Constitution Day and Citizenship Day. Photograph by Michael Quinn, Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona, September 23, 2010.
Marchers in Philadelphia, PA, protest the proposed dissolution of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which protects young immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. Slogans related to other recent immigration legislation, such as strengthening the U.S.-Mexico border wall, are also seen here. Photograph by Joe Diette, September 5, 2017.
"We lost so much during the war‚" recalled Maremaro Shibuya (the boy in overalls), who joined his family in front of their home. Before the war, Maremaro‚'s father, Ryohitsu Shibuya (back row, left), was a major producer of the Homecoming mum flower. Photograph by Dorothea Lange, Mountain View, CA, April 18, 1942. National Archives 536037.
Japanese Americans made up a tiny portion of California‚'s population but produced 40% of the state‚'s vegetable crop, including nearly all of the tomatoes, strawberries, celery and peppers. The government warned farmers they would be charged with sabotage if they left their fields in early 1942, but they were forced to leave long before the fall harvest. Photograph by Dorothea Lange, near Mission San Jose, California, April 5, 1942. National Archives 537838.
