Following the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Proclamation 2525 — Alien Enemies, Japanese, which directed that the conduct to be observed on the part of the United States toward all natives, citizens, denizens or subjects of the Empire of Japan.
Two months later, on February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, authorizing the forced removal of all persons deemed a threat to national security. Within a month, Public Proclamation Nº4 was issued, and over the next six months, approximately 122,000 men, women and children were evacuated to and confined in what were referred to as guarded “war relocation centers” in six Western states. Nearly 70,000 Japanese Americans, who were recognized citizens of the United States, lost all rights and liberties.
Located in the Owens Valley just at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains in California, the Manzanar War Relocation Center was the first of the 10 concentration camps to be established and began accepting detainees in March, 1942. By mid-April, up to 1,000 Japanese Americans were arriving daily, and by July, the population of the camp had neared 10,000. About 90 percent of the incarcerated were from the Los Angeles area. Manzanar closed when the final confined Japanese American citizen left at 11:00 a.m. on November 21, 1945.
In the fall of 1943, Ansel Adams, well-known for his famous Western landscape photographs, including Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada, documented the Manzanar War Relocation Center. The resulting work, a departure from his photographs depicting beauty in the landscape, concentrated on portraits of the detained, their activities of family life in the barracks and at work in the camp. In 1944, Adams published his photographs and text in a 112-page book, Born Free and Equal, which had received positive reviews and made the San Francisco Chronicle's bestseller list for March and April of 1945.
On June 25, 1946, President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9742, which ordered the liquidation of the War Relocation Authority and allowed Japanese Americans to return to their homes. Many of them found their belongings stolen or that their property was sold.
Whispers from the Apple Orchard offers impressions of stillness and quiet contemplation at the Manzanar War Relocation Center from World War II in the Eastern Sierra Nevada.
5 text sheets on Canson Rag Photographique
3 archival pigment prints on Mylar
Summary statement, map and colophon on Canson Rag Photographique
Chiyogami silkscreened paper covered book binders board with four-flap archival folder