Whispers and Epiphanies | Paul Turounet

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 by the Army's Western Defense Command on March 29, 1942 and Japanese American residents were given as little as 48 hours notice to leave their homes, sell or store property, and report to assembly centers. 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.

Whispers from the Apple Orchard and Epiphanies in Ancient Sands is a two volume set of expanded edition artist books with photographs, archive portraits by Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange as well as fragmented text adapted from personal narratives that set an atmosphere and emotional tone of trauma and personal identity being taken.
WHISPERS FROM THE APPLE ORCHARD
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.
Whispers from the Apple Orchard - Expanded Edition Full Cover, 2026

14-3/8 x 36 inches (opened)
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.
16 archival pigment prints on Canson Prestige II
5 text sheets on Canson Rag Photographique
3 archival pigment prints by Ansel Adams on Mylar
Summary statement, map of Manzanar WRC layout, colophon and index sheet on Canson Rag Photographique
Chiyogami silkscreened paper covered book binders board with four-flap archival folder

14-3/8 x 11-3/8 x 1-1/8 inches
WHISPERS FROM THE APPLE ORCHARD

BROADSIDES

EXPANDED EDITION
Click on Images to Enlarge
EPIPHANIES IN ANCIENT SANDS
For the Japanese American community of the San Francisco Bay Area – one of the largest and most established on the West Coast – families were given only days to dispose of homes, businesses, and possessions before being forced onto buses for the Tanforan Assembly Center. Converted from a horse racing track in San Bruno, California, the site held nearly 8,000 Japanese Americans between April and October 1942 as a temporary detention center while permanent camps were being built inland. Many families were housed in horse stalls that had only recently sheltered animals, with linoleum-covered floors still stained by manure and inadequate ventilation, and others were placed in hastily constructed barracks.

Starting in September 1942, most of the incarcerated citizens at Tanforan were transported by train to the Central Utah Relocation Center – more popularly known as Topaz – located at a dusty site in the Great Basin of central Utah. Packed by the War Relocation Authority into crowded railcars, families and individuals spent about two nights and a day to reach Topaz, which was still under construction. Between 1942 and 1945, the Topaz War Relocation Center held more than 8,000 people, exposing its prisoners to extreme heat, dust storms, and bitter cold, while families tried to build stable lives in overcrowded tar-paper barracks with little privacy and limited resources.
Epiphanies in Ancient Sands - Expanded Edition Full Cover, 2026

14-3/8 x 36 inches (opened)
Famous for her Depression-era photographs documenting poverty and displacement, Dorothea Lange was hired by the War Relocation Authority (WRA) to record the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans citizens in the San Francisco Bay Area and Central Valley as well as the Manzanar War Relocation Center. Between February and July 1942, Lange made more than 800 hundred photographs that challenged the WRA narrative - relocation for national security reasons - with images revealing the coercion, humiliation, and emotional trauma of personal identity being taken. As a result, the government imposed restrictions on what was photographed as well as withholding them for publication for the duration of the war, including censoring them with the word, "impounded," on numerous prints.
16 archival pigment prints on Canson Prestige II
5 text sheets on Canson Rag Photographique
3 archival pigment prints by Dorothea Lange on Mylar
Summary statement, map of Topaz WRC layout, colophon and index sheet on Canson Rag Photographique
Chiyogami silkscreened paper covered book binders board with four-flap archival folder

14-3/8 x 11-3/8 x 1-1/8 inches
Epiphanies in Ancient Sands

BROADSIDES

EXPANDED EDITION
Click on Images to Enlarge

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