Interior View of Japanese-American Citizens League Headquarters, Centerville, California

negative April 7, 1942; print about 1960s

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Dimensions

20.2 × 30.5 cm

Status

In Museum Collection

Collect24 Art ID

C24-680419

> The assembly and internment of 100,000 people of Japanese descent, two-thirds of them born in the United States, began in the spring of 1942 after President Roosevelt issued executive Order 9066 "to prescribe military areas in such places and of such extent as he [the Secretary of War] or the appropriate Military Commanders may determine, from which any or all persons may be excluded, and with such respect to which, the right of any person to enter, remain in, or leave shall be subject to whatever restrictions the Secretary of War or the Military Commander may impose in his discretion." The West Coast—California, Oregon, and Washington—was designated Military Area No. 1, a place from which Japanese Americans (resident aliens and native born, families and orphans) were to be excluded. This area was also of course, where the majority of them lived. Voluntary relocation was briefly attempted, then assembly centers and internment camps were quickly established to move people out of state or confine them to concentration camps within state lines. > > Dorothea Lange was hired by the War Relocation Authority to photograph this process, a new migration that her second husband, the …