Images of Internment

By Paul M. Sparrow, director

Manzanar Camp, Dorothea Lange, 1942

Throughout American history our presidents have struggled to find the right balance between the highest ideals of our founding charters and the cold realities of national security. This is especially true in times of war. President John Adams passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus, and Woodrow Wilson suppressed free speech and trampled on the First Amendment.

Seventy-five years ago, at the beginning of World War II, one of our greatest champions of human rights approved the incarceration of approximately 80,000 American citizens, and another 40,000 legal aliens , in the name of national security. President Franklin Roosevelt’s signing of Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, provided the legal basis for the removal and confinement of people of Japanese descent living on the West Coast.

“Evacuees” in Los Angeles load their baggage…