PHOTOS BY ANSEL ADAMS REVEALS THE LIFE OF PEOPLE FROM INSIDE JAPANESE INTERNMENT CAMPS DURING WWII

One of the darkest periods in American history is undoubtedly the creation of Japanese internment camps. Approximately 120,000 individuals of Japanese ancestry were forcefully moved into these detention camps between 1942 and 1946. This was carried out due to baseless fears that, in the wake of the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbour, Japanese Americans might act as spies or saboteurs. Renowned American photographer Ansel Adams visited the Manzanar War Relocation Centre in California in 1943 and produced a timeless record of the day-to-day activities there.

The pictures departed from Adams' distinctive aesthetic; the famous photographer was well-known for his landscape shots, which made him a supporter of environmental preservation. The more than 200 photos he took at Manzanar, which focused more on capturing history than landscape, include striking portraits of internees, eerie details of the facilities against the Californian mountains, scenes of people working, and glimpses into their lives, frequently showing them finding comfort in leisure activities and in each other.

"The misery [of] being uprooted and the suffering these citizens endured are not depicted in the photos. According to The Ansel Adams Gallery, they depict their lives and coping mechanisms. "As Americans—family life, working in the fields, servicing cars and equipment, raising cattle, reading the newspaper, playing baseball—not as some foreign culture." 

Outrage erupted in 1945 when Adams displayed these images in the Born Free and Equal exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. Given that America was still at war, many saw the show's early closure as disrespectful, and copies of the book on display were burned.

"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," Adams wrote in a letter to the Library of Congress in 1965. Overall, I believe the Manzanar Collection is a significant historical record that will be useful.