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T. ADLER BOOKS
Displaced: Manzanar 1942–1945
The Incarceration of Japanese Americans
Edited by Evan Backes. Foreword by Pico Iyer. Introduction by Nancy Matsumoto.
"This sorry episode has been illuminated in books and documentaries. But I've never felt its emotional texture—the unexpected mix of dereliction and upstanding hopefulness—so vividly as in this set of photographs taken by Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange and five others, among them an artist incarcerated at Manzanar." –Pico Iyer
In the weeks following the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, American suspicion and distrust of its Japanese American population became widespread. The US government soon ordered all Japanese Americans (two thirds of them American citizens) living on the West Coast to report to assembly centers for eventual transfer to internment camps, openly referred to by the New York Times as "concentration camps." Within a few months of Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066; soon after, the War Relocation Authority (WRA) was established and by the end of March, the first of 10,000 Japanese evacuees arrived in Manzanar, an internment camp in the Owens Valley desert at the foot of the Sierras. Families were given one to two weeks' notice and were allowed to pack only what they could carry. Businesses were shuttered and farms and equipment were sold at bargain prices. Upon arrival at Manzanar, each person was assigned to a barrack, given a cot, blankets and a canvas bag to be filled with straw in order to create their own mattresses.
Dorothea Lange was hired by the WRA to photograph the mass evacuation; she worked into the first months of the internment until she was fired by WRA staff for her "sympathetic" approach. Many of her photographs were seized by the government and largely unseen by the public for a half century. More than a year later, Manzanar Project Director Ralph Merritt hired Ansel Adams to document life at the camp. Lange and Adams were also joined by WRA photographers Russell Lee, Clem Albers and Francis Stewart. Two Japanese internees, Toyo Miyatake and Jack Iwata, secretly photographed life within the camp with a smuggled camera.
Gathered together in this volume, these images express the dignity and determination of the Japanese Americans in the face of injustice and humiliation. Today the tragic circumstances surrounding displaced and detained people around the world only strengthen the impact of these photos taken 75 years ago.
Featured image is reproduced from 'Displaced: Manzanar 1942–1945.'
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
The Christian Science Monitor
Melanie Stetson Freeman
On page after page, the faces looking out at us are hopeful and resilient, despite the humiliation and cruelty they endured.
Juxtapoz
Evan Pricco
…Incredibly poignant photographic and historical collection… an eloquent look into one of our darker and shockingly contradictory periods in our history as the US began to liberate Europe, but detained and created their own camps at home.
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Featured image—a 1942 Dorothea Lange photograph of the sign that Oakland-based grocer Tatsuo Masuda had made the day after Pearl Harbor was attacked—is reproduced from Displaced: Manzanar 1942–1945, T. Adler's new book documenting the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. "In the end," Pico Iyer writes, "what makes these pictures unforgettable is that even amidst the bleakest of American realities, our Japanese neighbors were working around the clock to honor the American Dream… The only way we can do justice to this terrible past is by ensuring that it never happens again." continue to blog
Dorothea Lange's 1942 photograph of Mae Yanagi and her pregnant mother, Kinuye, waiting for a bus to Tanforan Assembly Center in Hayward, California, is reproduced from Displaced: Manzanar 1942–1945, T. Adler's remarkable new collection of photographs documenting the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. Featuring work by War Relocation Authority photographers like Ansel Adams, Clem Albers, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee and Francis Stewart and camp prisoners like Jack Iwata and Toyo Miyatake, this volume is equally heartbreaking and inspiring. It's also excruciatingly timely, given the current debates on immigration, detention and racial prejudice in light of the Fourteenth Amendment. We congratulate T. Adler Books for publishing this important document—with essays by Pico Iyer and Nancy Matsumoto, plus excerpt by Ansel Adams. continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 9.25 x 8.75 in. / 176 pgs / 160 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $45.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $60 GBP £40.00 ISBN: 9781942884293 PUBLISHER: T. Adler Books AVAILABLE: 10/23/2018 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: WORLD
Displaced: Manzanar 1942–1945 The Incarceration of Japanese Americans
Published by T. Adler Books. Edited by Evan Backes. Foreword by Pico Iyer. Introduction by Nancy Matsumoto.
"This sorry episode has been illuminated in books and documentaries. But I've never felt its emotional texture—the unexpected mix of dereliction and upstanding hopefulness—so vividly as in this set of photographs taken by Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange and five others, among them an artist incarcerated at Manzanar." –Pico Iyer
In the weeks following the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, American suspicion and distrust of its Japanese American population became widespread. The US government soon ordered all Japanese Americans (two thirds of them American citizens) living on the West Coast to report to assembly centers for eventual transfer to internment camps, openly referred to by the New York Times as "concentration camps." Within a few months of Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066; soon after, the War Relocation Authority (WRA) was established and by the end of March, the first of 10,000 Japanese evacuees arrived in Manzanar, an internment camp in the Owens Valley desert at the foot of the Sierras. Families were given one to two weeks' notice and were allowed to pack only what they could carry. Businesses were shuttered and farms and equipment were sold at bargain prices. Upon arrival at Manzanar, each person was assigned to a barrack, given a cot, blankets and a canvas bag to be filled with straw in order to create their own mattresses.
Dorothea Lange was hired by the WRA to photograph the mass evacuation; she worked into the first months of the internment until she was fired by WRA staff for her "sympathetic" approach. Many of her photographs were seized by the government and largely unseen by the public for a half century. More than a year later, Manzanar Project Director Ralph Merritt hired Ansel Adams to document life at the camp. Lange and Adams were also joined by WRA photographers Russell Lee, Clem Albers and Francis Stewart. Two Japanese internees, Toyo Miyatake and Jack Iwata, secretly photographed life within the camp with a smuggled camera.
Gathered together in this volume, these images express the dignity and determination of the Japanese Americans in the face of injustice and humiliation. Today the tragic circumstances surrounding displaced and detained people around the world only strengthen the impact of these photos taken 75 years ago.
