Mac Loc: Pittsburgh, Philadelphia now Hernando Co. Fl.

MtnMan Loc: ID

Thanks. Fabulous images.

I don't condem what was done and agree with the comment that calling them concentration camps, inviting comparison to what the Nazis did, is inappropriate. I don't condem it because I didn't live then so don't understand the motivation behind it.

It's too easy to be rightous when you aren't accountable for action or inaction.

We might be facing similar issues with Muslims once we get a government that understands who our enemy is. Political correctness causes deaths of many. Appeasement let the Nazis grow to eventual death of 80 million people. At what point do some have to suffer a little loss of freedom to save the lives of many?

Darkroom317 Loc: Mishawaka, IN

Even though I had seen some of this before my main exposure to this body of work was when one of Adams former assistants showed it to me. Adams felt that this was some of the most important work he had ever done. Dorothea Lange also filmed the camps but was quickly stopped by the military because they did not like the narrative she was allowing to get out.

I've rarely heard of them referred to as concentration camps but more often detention camps.

Mac Loc: Pittsburgh, Philadelphia now Hernando Co. Fl.

I didn't post this as a political statement, and I never thought anyone would try to hijack it to turn it in to a political discussion. I'm sorry you felt the need to do just that.

Mac Loc: Pittsburgh, Philadelphia now Hernando Co. Fl.

I have heard the term concentration camps applied to them but not very often. They are certainly not concentration camps in the mode of the German concentration camps. I suppose how you define them depends in a large part on which side of the fence you are standing.

MtnMan Loc: ID

Then you posted the wrong link. One with a correct title or images without Political comment or at least with photography comment would have avoided the need to respond to the comments your link takes us to. The link title and comments made it look like you were making a political statement.

Sorry.

Blenheim Orange Loc: Michigan

A "concentration camp" is a place where large numbers of people, especially political prisoners or members of persecuted minorities, are deliberately imprisoned in a relatively small area with inadequate facilities. The use of the term in describing this is accurate whether or not it makes us uncomfortable.

The US government has officially acknowledged this as an error and has apologized.

If you disagree with that, and think that it is justifiable to do something like this again, it is you who is injecting politics into the discussion.

Mike

MtnMan Loc: ID

The term is inappropriate because the people were treated reasonably well. Nothing at all like German cocentration camps...or Japaneses POW camps for that matter. Any comparision to a concentration camp is grandstanding to make your political point. If they didn't want to politisize they would call them by their actual name: internment camps.

Unless you lived in that time IMHO your opinions don't count.

Sure, the liberals still want to apologize for slavery.

Frankly if they want to apologize to some group native Americans get my vote. The US Army murdered thousands of them. But I suspect you didn't do that, either, so any apology you would make fot that is a political statement.

No, I don't think it appropriate. But it is certainly the case that there are those wanting to take away our freedoms in the name of security...just as happened then. And there are those who will over-react in the name of freedom snd jeapordize our security with cries of things like profiling. Those who aren't accountable.

Blenheim Orange Loc: Michigan

That is false, historically inaccurate.

FDR signed the executive order for the round ups and imprisonment, and he called the facilities "concentration camps" himself.

Here is the opinion of someone who most definitely is not a "liberal."

Ronald Reagan
August 10, 1988

The Members of Congress and distinguished guests, my fellow Americans, we gather here today to right a grave wrong. More than 40 years ago, shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry living in the United States were forcibly removed from their homes and placed in makeshift internment camps. This action was taken without trial, without jury. It was based solely on race, for these 120,000 were Americans of Japanese descent.

Yes, the Nation was then at war, struggling for its survival and it's not for us today to pass judgment upon those who may have made mistakes while engaged in that great struggle. Yet we must recognize that the internment of Japanese-Americans was just that: a mistake. For throughout the war, Japanese-Americans in the tens of thousands remained utterly loyal to the United States. Indeed, scores of Japanese-Americans volunteered for our Armed Forces, many stepping forward in the internment camps themselves. The 442d Regimental Combat Team, made up entirely of Japanese-Americans, served with immense distinction to defend this nation, their nation. Yet back at home, the soldier's families were being denied the very freedom for which so many of the soldiers themselves were laying down their lives.

Congressman Norman Mineta, with us today, was 10 years old when his family was interned. In the Congressman's words: ''My own family was sent first to Santa Anita Racetrack. We showered in the horse paddocks. Some families lived in converted stables, others in hastily thrown together barracks. We were then moved to Heart Mountain, Wyoming, where our entire family lived in one small room of a rude tar paper barrack.'' Like so many tens of thousands of others, the members of the Mineta family lived in those conditions not for a matter of weeks or months but for 3 long years.

The legislation that I am about to sign provides for a restitution payment to each of the 60,000 surviving Japanese-Americans of the 120,000 who were relocated or detained. Yet no payment can make up for those lost years. So, what is most important in this bill has less to do with property than with honor. For here we admit a wrong; here we reaffirm our commitment as a nation to equal justice under the law.

I'd like to note that the bill I'm about to sign also provides funds for members of the Aleut community who were evacuated from the Aleutian and Pribilof Islands after a Japanese attack in 1942. This action was taken for the Aleuts' own protection, but property was lost or damaged that has never been replaced.

And now in closing, I wonder whether you'd permit me one personal reminiscence, one prompted by an old newspaper report sent to me by Rose Ochi, a former internee. The clipping comes from the Pacific Citizen and is dated December 1945.

''Arriving by plane from Washington,'' the article begins, ''General Joseph W. Stilwell pinned the Distinguished Service Cross on Mary Masuda in a simple ceremony on the porch of her small frame shack near Talbert, Orange County. She was one of the first Americans of Japanese ancestry to return from relocation centers to California's farmlands.'' ''Vinegar Joe'' Stilwell was there that day to honor Kazuo Masuda, Mary's brother. You see, while Mary and her parents were in an internment camp, Kazuo served as staff sergeant to the 442d Regimental Combat Team. In one action, Kazuo ordered his men back and advanced through heavy fire, hauling a mortar. For 12 hours, he engaged in a singlehanded barrage of Nazi positions. Several weeks later at Cassino, Kazuo staged another lone advance. This time it cost him his life.

The newspaper clipping notes that her two surviving brothers were with Mary and her parents on the little porch that morning. These two brothers, like the heroic Kazuo, had served in the United States Army. After General Stilwell made the award, the motion picture actress Louise Allbritton, a Texas girl, told how a Texas battalion had been saved by the 442d. Other show business personalities paid tribute--Robert Young, Will Rogers, Jr. And one young actor said: ''Blood that has soaked into the sands of a beach is all of one color. America stands unique in the world: the only country not founded on race but on a way, an ideal. Not in spite of but because of our polyglot background, we have had all the strength in the world. That is the American way.'' The name of that young actor--I hope I pronounce this right--was Ronald Reagan. And, yes, the ideal of liberty and justice for all--that is still the American way.

Thank you, and God bless you. And now let me sign H.R. 442, so fittingly named in honor of the 442d.

Thank you all again, and God bless you all. I think this is a fine day.

Mike

MtnMan Loc: ID

Sorry, but Ronald Reagan calls them internment camps. I like his speech. Restitution to the livivg, albeit too little to late, is appropriate. Apologies for political purposes are not.

If FDR called them concentration camps (ref.?) I suspect it was before the world knew the meaning of that word.

I see that this matter has been argued for many years with those who wish to attack the US government justifying the words cocentration camp. We aren't going to add anything to that debate.

But if the words hadn't been used in pointing to Ansel Adams work there wouldn't be a political discussion here.

I'll be unwatching now.

Blenheim Orange Loc: Michigan

The common usage of the English term "concentration camp" is from the Second Boer War (1899–1902), when such camps were operated by the British in South Africa. But such camps had been run by many governments in many places before that.

People who are ignorant of the history of such internment camps (a synonym for concentration camp) as well as the history of the term think of it only in relationship to the extermination camps the Germans ran during WWII.

Mike

WessoJPEG Loc: Cincinnati, Ohio

:thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:

WessoJPEG Loc: Cincinnati, Ohio

I really enjoyed the Photos, thanks for posting them.

Mary Kate Loc: NYC

To bad he did not shoot pictures of German or Italian being held captive. I think your 80 million number might br a bit high on the German side. At any rate Stalin dwarfed Hitler for the number of people that he killed under Soviet control.

waymond Loc: Pflugerville, Texas

Good pics. Unless there was a lot of cropping, noticed that Adams apparently didn't think much of/about the rule of thirds.