nisei

The camp is so large, the photographer can't get it all into the frame.

Wow it is huge. It looks like it could contain tens of thousands of people that happened to be the wrong race at the wrong time. What a shame.

Visited the site in 2007. I think this photo must have been taken from up on Castle Rock.

The invasion of the Western US was a very real threat at the time.. had we not relocated them and had the Japanese been able to land large numbers of sabotuer teams on the West coast the damage could have been immense.

I had no clue the internment camps were this massive, crazy shit

Amazing that they were still smiling. :) -- Seen in your 1930s-40s in Color set. (?)

I am wondering/pondering the same thing. Why?

I love that they always kept their morale up even though they were being held in camps like prisoners. They managed to continue living as if they would outside of those camp walls.

Smiling politely at the camera, with a dignity all their own. What happened to the Japanese internees was really shameful.

If you see lots of internment photos and films, as I have, the incarcerees usually look happy. These were their family photos, not conscious documentation of the injustice they were living under. muI think the daily life they built in the camps, which was filled with a lot of pretty "normal" activities like employment and pastimes, didn't leave much time for sitting around and looking miserable over the hardships and fundamental betrayal dealt them by the U.S. government. Also, photography by incarcerees was officially banned in the camps though the restriction was eventually relaxed. This undoubtedly caused a lot of negative sights to be hidden from cameras. I've read that Dorothea Lange took a lot of photos that revealed the harsh realities of the internment camps, but I haven't found them online yet -- hopefully they'll be available soon.

This image needs to be rotated 90 degrees clockwise...

Yes, please rotate the image! It's hard to read as it is now. (Japanese is written top to bottom, starting on the right side of the paper.)

Thanks for the comments! I've rotated the image, hopefully its easier to read now! Mary U.S. National Archives

Thank you!