Via David
Rarely seen color photographs capture how
more than 120,000 Japanese immigrants and Japanese-Americans were forced
into internment camps across the American West after President Franklin
Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 more than 75 years ago.
Public
Law 503 was passed by Congress on March 21, 1942 which resulted in the
relocation of Japanese immigrants and Japanese-Americans to one of 10
internment camps located in the American West.
Adults,
including the elderly, and children were transported by bus and train
with few belongings as they were forced to confinement camps leaving
their homes and businesses behind with less than 48 hours of notice that
they would be forced out.
They were
sent, ostensibly to avoid sabotage and spying, to camps in California,
Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona and other states as far away as
Arkansas as war hysteria gripped the nation and citizens feared another
attack after the Japanese attack on Pear Harbor.
Internees,
as they were called, were prohibited from having cameras inside the
camps. But that rule was not strictly forced at Heart Mountain, located
in Wyoming, where amateur photographer Bill Manbo and his family were
forced to reside in 1942.