Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange at Manzanar: Photojournalistic Activism and the Japanese American Incarceration

Abstract

Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange's photojournalist activism during World War II was a direct response to President Franklin Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 (EO 9066), which led to the incarceration of 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans in 10 camps across seven mostly western states. The incarceration was an illegal, racist, haphazard, and illogical event. Approximately two-thirds of those imprisoned were U.S. citizens. Japanese and Japanese Americans living in many other parts of the country were not imprisoned; and only one percent of those living in Hawai'i were incarcerated, despite the islands' location in the actual Pacific theater of war. In 1983, the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians estimated that incarcerees lost an estimated $2.5 to $6.2 billion in property and entitlements. President Ronald Reagan later described the incarceration as "a grave wrong" and "a mistake." Lange was in a very different photographic position than Adams, despite bringing extensive and applauded experience from documenting.