Japanese American Wartime Incarceration and Postwar Reintegration Photograph Archive, 1942–1960s

Japanese Internment

Photograph

Japanese and Japanese American photograph archive with wartime confinement images, c.1942 to the 1960s, documents Japanese subjects across barrack housing, customs and immigration processing, international travel, integrated social life, and informal group outings. The dated portion of the group is anchored by two photographs signed en verso “August 1942,” the same year Executive Order 9066 authorized military exclusion from the West Coast and the War Relocation Authority began administering the inland incarceration camps. Several photographs show later travel and social scenes. The photographs show the transition between wartime confinement imagery and later scenes of movement, border crossing, and social reintegration of Japanese American individuals.

Photo archive of 15 silver gelatin photographs, ranging from 2.5 x 2.5 to 5 x 3.5 inches, United States and France, August 1942 to c. 1960s. The photographs show barrack like wooden buildings, drainage ditches, and internment camp infrastructure; one image shows a man standing before a long wooden building with laundry outside, while another shows a seated man on a wooden platform before a plain structure with screened or boarded windows. Two young Asian women stand on the porch of a similar building marked “B - A,” a notation indicating a camp or block address. Other photographs show Asian men and women in travel settings, including a man beneath a “Customs immigration” sign with partial “depart” lettering, a group waiting outdoors near an airport or observation deck, and Japanese travelers in France street shopping. Later social images show a Japanese man at a formal dinner with white women, a large outdoor outing with mostly white participants and one Japanese man present, a group portrait on a bridge, men seated on a boat, and a group of suited men standing in a wooded area near a striped barrier.

The August 1942 inscriptions place part of the group within the first months of Japanese American mass removal and confinement, when families were being transferred from temporary assembly centers to more permanent War Relocation Authority camps. The barrack images accord with the improvised housing, exposed walkways, drainage cuts, and block organization associated with that system. The travel photographs widen the record beyond confinement, showing Japanese or Japanese American subjects passing through customs, airports, French streets, and mixed social spaces in the years after wartime removal. Light surface wear, some curling, verso stamps, album adhesive residue, and occasional creasing; two versos signed “August 1942.” Overall good condition. A vernacular record of Japanese and Japanese American presence across wartime confinement, border crossing, travel, and postwar social life.

Item #23546

Price: $1,450.00