Born Free and Equal: The Story of Loyal Japanese Americans

Born Free and Equal: The Story of Loyal Japanese Americans By Ansel Adams

Based on the original book published by U.S. Camera with text and photographs by Ansel Adams from the Library of Congress Collection. New introduction by former internee Archie Miyatake. Photographs by Toyo Miyatake, Archie Miyatake, George Shiba, and Eichi Uemura. Essays by Sue Kunitomi Embrey and William H. Michael. Edited by Wynne Benti.

On February 19, 1942, a U.S. presidential order forcibly removed more than 110,000 persons from their homes to one of ten "war relocation centers" across the country. All were of Japanese ancestry, but two-thirds were American citizens. Ralph Merritt, then director of Manzanar War Relocation Center, asked friend Ansel Adams to photograph the center, set against the remote mountains of California's Sierra Nevada.

The resulting effort, Born Free and Equal: The Story of Loyal Japanese Americans, written and photographed by Adams, was released in 1944 to the American public as a book and exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Reeling from the impact of the bombing of Pearl Harbor and unable to make the distinction between American citizens of Japanese ancestry and the Japanese enemy of war, Adams' message was essentially lost on the American public. In 1965, Adams donated his entire collection of Manzanar photographs to the Library of Congress.

Archie Miyatake, interned at Manzanar with his family and father, Los Angeles photographer Toyo Miyatake, wrote the introduction to this new edition. His father smuggled into camp a contraband camera lens and ground glass, making a camera from scraps of wood. Toyo said to his son: "As a photographer I have a responsibility to record life here at this camp so this kind of thing never happens again."

With 76 duotone photographs.

Hardcover: 128 pp