Mrs. Teruko Kiyomura, bookkeeper, seated at a desk, operating an adding machine while reading a...

After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, fear of a Japanese invasion and subversive acts by Japanese-Americans prompted the designation of the West Coast as a military zone from which "any or all persons may be excluded." Japanese-Americans were singled out for evacuation. More than 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry were removed from their homes in California, southern Arizona, and western Washington and Oregon and sent to ten relocation camps. Ansel Adams' series of photographs document life at Manzanar War Relocation Center, Inyo county, California.