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Why the US photographed its own WWII concentration camps

Vox | October 11, 2025



Dorothea Lange’s photos of the incarceration of Japanese Americans went largely unseen for decades.

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US President Franklin D. Roosevelt passed Executive Order 9066 in February 1942 — two months after Japan’s bombing of the US Navy base at Pearl Harbor. It empowered the US army to designate strategic “military areas” from which any and all people deemed a threat could be forcibly removed. This began a process of placing 120,000 Japanese Americans in concentration camps during World War II.

To control the narrative around the removal, the government created a new department, the War Relocation Authority, and hired photographers to document the process. One of those photographers was Dorothea Lange, who had become famous during the 1930s for her Great Depression photographs for the Farm Security Administration.

Her images featured Japanese-American people in the weeks, days, and hours leading up to their incarceration in the camps, and captured expressions of dignity, resolve, and fear.

Most of Lange’s candid photos of the removal process weren’t approved for publication by the War Relocation Authority and were “impounded” for the duration of the war. They weren’t seen again widely until 1972, when her former assistant pulled them from the National Archives for a museum exhibit about the incarceration of Japanese Americans, called Executive Order 9066.

The photos became part of a redress movement for Japanese Americans in the 1970s and 1980s, which ultimately resulted in the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, a bill that approved reparations for survivors of the camps.

Darkroom is a history and photography series that anchors each episode around a single image. Analyzing what the photo shows (or doesn’t show) provides context that helps unravel a wider story. Watch previous episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJ8cMiYb3G5ce8J4P5j5qOEtYR94Z3DQs

Further reading:
Dorothea Lange’s WRA photos at the University of California:
https://calisphere.org/collections/24123/?q=&sort=a&rq=dorothea%20lange

Dorothea Lange’s WRA photos at the US National Archives:
https://catalog.archives.gov/search?q=%22lange%22&f.ancestorNaIds=536000&rows=100

Satsuki Ina’s award-winning documentary, “From a Silk Cocoon”:
https://www.fromasilkcocoon.com/

I interviewed Elena Tajima Creef for this story as well, check out her book “Imaging Japanese America”:
https://nyupress.org/9780814716229/imaging-japanese-america/

The Densho Encyclopedia, a rich resource for researching this topic:
https://encyclopedia.densho.org/

Densho’s terminology guide for talking about the incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII:
https://densho.org/terminology/

More information about language and semantics from NPR, specifically about the choice to refer to the camps as “concentration camps” instead of “internment camps:” https://www.npr.org/sections/publiceditor/2012/02/10/146691773/euphemisms-concentration-camps-and-the-japanese-internment

Linda Gordon and Gary Okihiro’s book about Lange’s WRA photos, “Impounded”:
https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393330908

Ansel Adams’s WRA-approved 1944 book of photos from the Manzanar camp, “Born Free and Equal”:
https://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/manz/book.html

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Comments

This post currently has 42 comments.

  5. @maksim_rin

    October 11, 2025 at 6:16 am

    I always admire, how so-called western civilization's governments and societies eventually acknowledge and apologize for the unpleasant things they did and at the same time, the eastern countries and people, who most of the time consider themselves more moral and fateful never talk or think about the crimes they did.
    Yeah, I'm talking about you Russia, Japan, China…

  8. @HappyComfort

    October 11, 2025 at 6:16 am

    So sad that this has happened to various groups of people throughout the history of mankind! They never seem to learn this lesson from history even though having many examples over thousands of years. 🤦‍♀️

  11. @claytonchar9232

    October 11, 2025 at 6:16 am

    It was a sad day in American history when our federal government rounded up people of Japanese descent living in the U.S. and placed them in internment camps. This was an illegal act on the part of our government and violated the U.S. Constitution.

    Although our federal government has tried to make amends, it will never be forgotten and forgiven.

    This must never happen again. Those who stood by and watched this happen were misinformed and misguided.

  15. @jacksonramsey4848

    October 11, 2025 at 6:16 am

    Everyone acts like we should feel sorry for the Japanese who were sent to internment camps I feel sorry for the 2,403 Americans who were killed by the Japanese empire on dec 7 1941, along with their families who would never be the same

  21. @yolandabrinkman2653

    October 11, 2025 at 6:16 am

    There were german jews interned in Great Britain during WWII. We've always known about it. Just like the japanese in America. My mother and her family were interned in france in 1937. All this was known in as far back, at least as the early 60s.

    On a personal level, I object to the name in your title. Having known survivors of the German concentration camps, you dishonour them and belittle their ordeals with your use of word "concentration". camps.

  25. @gopherstate777

    October 11, 2025 at 6:16 am

    Saying that the US ran concentration camps is incredibly ignorant. We were at war and in war the US played to win. They should be grateful they did not live in Japan.

  28. @KM-gi2qo

    October 11, 2025 at 6:16 am

    This part of US history needs to be taught. I remember learning about this period in high school and college history, and there would always be a debate over whether these concentration camps were "bad" because there were accounts of people being allowed to form clubs or were fed. It was hard for many to understand that imprisoning people based on their race and without any criminal charges is morally wrong and violated the rights of citizens. Today I still meet people who know nothing about the history – in the Bay Area, a developer will be building over the former Tanforan racetrack where many Japanese Americans were held in horse stalls.

  30. @lucyk2371

    October 11, 2025 at 6:16 am

    I hate that this happened. I suppose that they didn't know what to do. They had intelligence that Japanese living in America fed Japanese information that told them the best time and place to attack, so how else could they control this? I'm not saying that it was right at all. Similar things happened all over the world to european populations as well

  38. @doomgiven0358

    October 11, 2025 at 6:16 am

    The united states of America did not systematically exterminate japanese or japanese american citizens. These were not concentration camps as they are known in the modern nomenclature. These were prison camps.

  39. @chnalvr

    October 11, 2025 at 6:16 am

    First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt independently took it upon herself to visit Japanese American prison camps to expose the camps, stand in solidarity with those wrongly incarcerated there and to send a message using her platform that this wrongful incarceration violated the civil rights and ignored the U.S. Constitution. No one in those camps had been formally arrested, charged with a crime or given a trial in front of a jury of their peers.

  42. @ryanside7095

    October 11, 2025 at 6:16 am

    What’s the difference between an internment camp and a concentration camp? I’ve seen people in the comments say it’s better to call these concentration camps but they seem like the same thing. Is it because concentration camp has a more negative connotation or is there a different reason?

Comments are closed.

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