46 Photos Of Life At A Japanese Internment Camp, Taken By Ansel Adams

Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Ansel Adams, photographer, LC-A351-3-M-28While America celebrates Victory over Japan Day on September 2, let's not forget the suffering of about 110,000 Japanese Americans who were forced to live in internment camps.

Even at the time this policy was opposed by many Americans, including renowned photographer Ansel Adams, who in the summer of 1943 made his first visit to Manzanar War Relocation Camp in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Invited by the warden, Adams sought to document the living conditions of the camp's inhabitants.

His photos were published in a book titled "Born Free And Equal: The Story of Loyal Japanese-Americans" in 1944, with an accompanying exhibition at MoMA.

In 1965, when he donated the images to the Library of Congress, Adams shared some thoughts on the project:

"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," he said.