Tom Kobayashi stands in the south fields of the Manzanar Relocation Center, at the foot of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, in California's Owens Valley, in 1943. Famed photographer Ansel Adams traveled to Manzanar in 1943 to document the Relocation Center and the Japanese Americans interned there. #

This store owned by a man of Japanese ancestry is closed following evacuation orders in Oakland, California, in April of 1942. After the attack on Pearl Harbor the owner had placed the "I Am An American" sign in the store front window. #

Two plainclothes men, left, watch as Japanese aliens are removed from their homes on Terminal Island, a vital Naval and Shipbuilding center in Los Angeles, California, on February 3, 1942. Some 400 male Japanese aliens -- Terminal Island residents -- were rounded up early on February 2 by 180 federal, city and county officers. #

On a brick wall beside an air raid shelter poster, exclusion orders were posted at First and Front Streets in San Francisco, California, directing the removal of persons of Japanese ancestry from the first part of San Francisco to be affected by the evacuation. The order was issued April 1, 1942, by Lieutenant General J.L. DeWitt, and directed evacuation from this section by noon on April 7, 1942. #

Japanese heads of family and persons living alone form a line outside Civil Control Station located in the Japanese American Citizens League Auditorium in San Francisco, California, to appear for "processing" in response to Civilian Exclusion Order Number 20, on April 25, 1942 #

How the evacuation of Japanese from Seattle would affect a second grade class in a local school is shown in these two views in Seattle, Washington, on March 27, 1942. At the top is a crowded classroom with many Japanese pupils and at the bottom is the same class without the Japanese students. #

A farmhouse in a rural section of Mountain View, California, where farmers of Japanese ancestry raised market garden crops. Evacuees from this and other military areas were later moved to War Relocation Authority centers. #

A farewell letter posted in a window of T.Z. Shiota, an importer in San Francisco's Chinatown, in April of 1942, prior to evacuation of residents of Japanese ancestry. The final paragraph reads: "At this hour of evacuation when the innocents suffer with the bad, we bid you, dear friends of ours, with the words of beloved Shakespeare, 'PARTING IS SUCH SWEET SORROW'." #

View of a business district on Post Street in a San Francisco neighborhood occupied by residents of Japanese ancestry, before evacuation, in 1942. View this same intersection as it appears today in this Google Maps Street View. #

A soldier and his mother in a strawberry field near Florin, California, on May 11, 1942. The soldier, age 23, had volunteered for the Army on July 10, 1941, and was stationed at Camp Leonard Wood, Missouri. He was furloughed to help his mother and family prepare for their evacuation. He is the youngest of six children, two of them volunteers in United States Army. The mother, age 53, came from Japan 37 years ago. Her husband died 21 years ago, leaving her to raise six children. She worked in a strawberry basket factory until last year when her children leased three acres of strawberries "so she wouldn't have to work for somebody else". #

Persons of Japanese ancestry from San Pedro, California, arrive at the Santa Anita Assembly center in Arcadia, California, in 1942. Evacuees lived at this center at the Santa Anita race track before being moved inland to other relocation centers. #

A crowd of onlookers in Seattle jam an overhead walk to witness the mass evacuation of Japanese from Bainbridge Island, Washington, on March 30, 1942. Somewhat bewildered, but not protesting, some 225 Japanese men, women and children were taken by ferry, bus and train to California internment camps. The evacuation was carried out by the U.S. Army. #

This bus, bringing evacuees of Japanese ancestry to the Colorado River War Relocation Authority center, has become sand-bound near its destination, near Poston, Arizona in 1942. #

Evacuees of Japanese ancestry were not permitted to use their automobiles at War Relocation Authority centers. Cars brought to this camp, the Manzanar Relocation Center in California, have been impounded for the duration. Photo taken on April 2, 1942. #

The Santa Anita Park race track is converted into an internment camp for evacuated Japanese Americans who will occupy the barracks erected in background in Arcadia, California. Photo taken on April 3, 1942. #

Salinas, California, 1942. Evacuees of Japanese ancestry identify their luggage at this Assembly center, prior to their transfer to a War Relocation Authority center. #

Japanese Americans removed from their Los Angeles homes line up at Manzanar Relocation Center, in California, on March 23, 1942, for their first meal after arrival at the camp. Rice, Beans, Prunes, and bread were included in the menu. #

Portraits of evacuees housed in the Manzanar Relocation Center in California, taken by Ansel Adams in 1943. Clockwise, from top left: Mrs. Kay Kageyama, Toyo Miyatake (Photographer), Miss Tetsuko Murakami, Mori Nakashima, Joyce Yuki Nakamura (eldest daughter), Corporal Jimmy Shohara, Aiko Hamaguchi (Nurse), Yoshio Muramoto, (electrician). At its peak, more than 10,000 Japanese Americans were held in Manzanar. #

These 48 Japanese Americans from the Granada Relocation Center near Lamar, Colorado, reported for preinduction physical examinations at the Denver Induction Station, on February 22, 1944. #

A funeral is held for James Wakasa at the Topaz Relocation Center in, Utah, on April 19, 1943. A military policeman shot and killed James Wakasa near Topaz's barbed wire fence on April 11, 1943. Fellow evacuees protested the shooting and demanded the right to hold a public funeral on the spot where Wakasa was shot. The soldier who shot Wakasa was court-martialed, and later found "not guilty". #

After the orders to relocate and detain persons of Japanese ancestry were rescinded, evacuees began returning home, and camps began to close. Here, Shuichi Yamamoto, the last evacuee to leave the Granada Relocation Center, in Amache, Colorado, says "Goodbye" to Project Director James G. Lindley, as the War Relocation Authority camp is officially closed October 15, 1945. Mr. Yamamoto, 65 years of age, was returning to his former home in Marysville, California. #

Roaring into Sacramento on Monday morning, July 30, 1945, a special train of seven cars brought some 450 Japanese American residents of California back to their homes after staying over three years at the Rohwer Center of the War Relocation Authority, in McGehee, Arkansas. #

A Japanese family returning home from a relocation center camp in Hunt, Idaho, found their home and garage vandalized with anti-Japanese graffiti and broken windows in Seattle, Washington, on May 10, 1945. #

Evacuees from Arizona's Poston War Relocation Center stand in line before the departure station where they received ration books and bus tickets home in September of 1945. #