11th grade us history - hemet learns...

11th Grade US History

for the week of April 20, 2020

April 20, 2020 11th Grade US History 1

STANFORD HISTORY EDUCATION GROUP sheg.stanford.edu

Manzanar Photographs LessonsCentral Historical Question

What can Ansel Adams’s photographs tell us about living conditions at Manzanar?

Materials:

• Adams and Manzanar

PowerPoint handouts• Photographs A-E

• Guiding Questions

Note: This lesson features photographs from Ansel Adams's Photographs of Japanese-American Internment at Manzanar. Visit the Library of Congress exhibition for more resources.

Instructions:

1. Introduction. View “Adams and Manzanar” PowerPoint handout to review the background on Ansel Adams and the Manzanar War Relocation Center and with Japanese-American incarceration during World War II.

a. Slides 2 & 3: Manzanar. The Manzanar War Relocation Center was one of ten facilities where Japanese Americans were incarcerated by the United States government during World War II. Manzanar was built in a remote desert location on the eastern edge of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California. It opened in 1942 and its population grew to over 10,000 imprisoned people. The US government closed Manzanar in November of 1945, about three months after the Japanese surrendered in World War II.(You can use Slide 3 to see where Manzanar was located.)

b. Slide 4: Ansel Adams. Ansel Adams was an influential photographer and environmental conservationist from San Francisco. Adams’s interest in photography started on a trip to Yosemite National Park when he was a teenager, and he went on to take some of the most iconic landscape photographs of the American West in history. [You may want to see examples of some of his iconic landscapes. You can find examples at: https://www.archives.gov/research/ansel-adams]

c. Slide 5: Adams at Manzanar. Adams was friends with Manzanar’s director, Ralph Merrit, who invited him to photograph the facility in 1943. Adams took hundreds of photographs of the facilities and the people imprisoned there.

11th grade US History Distance Learning Enrichment ActivitiesWeek of April 20, 2020

Ansel Adams at ManzanarOpen in 1942, the Manzanar War Relocation Center was one of 10 facilities where Japanese Americans were incarcerated by the United States government during World War II. In 1943, the influential photographer Ansel Adams was invited to photograph the facility. In this lesson, students examine five photographs from Ansel Adams's Photographs of Japanese-American Internment at Manzanar to consider the relative strengths and limitations of historical photographs and to answer the central historical question: What can Adams's photographs tell us about the living conditions at Manzanar?


http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/manz/daily.html

https://sheg.stanford.edu/history-lessons/japanese-american-incarceration

https://sheg.stanford.edu/history-lessons/japanese-american-incarceration

https://www.archives.gov/research/ansel-adams


d. Slide 6: Central Historical Question. This week we are going to look at fivephotographs that Adams took at Manzanar and consider what they can tell us about living conditions at Manzanar. We’ll also compare Adams’ images with those from other photographers and consider how different the perspectives contribute to our understanding of life at Manzanar.

2. Inquiry.

a. Examine photographs A-E and answer Guiding Questions 1 and 2.

Think about Questions 1 and 2. When thinking about Question 1 pay attention to the details of each photograph. Realize that Document D was taken from a guard tower. The camp director did not allow Adams to photograph the guard towers or the barbed wire fencing. Some believe that this photograph was Adams’s attempt to subtly communicate that there were guard towers. The elevated perspective of the photo implies the existence of a tall perimeter structure, which Adams might have expected viewers to understand was a guard tower.

We might be tempted to draw conclusions that are too broad based only on the content of the photos.

Question 2 asks you to infer Adams’s views from the content of his photographs. This is an important historical skill, but sometimes we draw conclusions about a photographer’s views or ideas that are too strong or go too far. We should practice using tempered academic language, like “The photograph suggests that Adams may have . . . ” or “His choice might indicate that he believed . . .”

b. Answer Guiding Questions 3-6 We should infer that the title of the book and the quote from President Abraham Lincoln suggest that Adams’s intended his photographs to challenge Japanese-American incarceration. Adams hoped his photographs would highlight the injustices of incarceration by showing inmates as resilient and dignified in the face of discrimination. When he donated his Manzanar collection to the Library of Congress in 1965, Adams wrote, “The purpose of my work was to show how these



people, suffering under a great injustice, and loss of property, businesses and professions, had overcome the sense of defeat and dispair [sic] by building for themselves a vital community in an arid (but magnificent) environment...”1 How does this either challenge or support your initial understanding of Adams’s photographs. This may surprise some of us who saw the photos as supportive of Japanese-American incarceration.

We should also see that the fact that the book was approved by the War Relocation Authority affects the reliability of the photos as evidence of what life was like for inmates. Adams was not allowed to photograph some parts of the camp, including the guard towers and perimeter fencing, so Adams may have chosen to shoot the camp in a particular way because he anticipated censorship from the War Relocation Authority, whose officials may not have allowed Adams to directly challenge Japanese-American incarceration or openly portray the hardships and injustices of camp life.

c. Answer Question 7.

Question 7 provides examples of questions that a historian might consider when thinking about historical photographs and then asks us to use the questions to reason about the strengths and limitations of Adams’s photos as historical evidence. We should understand that Adams was taking photos of Manzanar and its inmates, so they do provide evidence of what living conditions were like at Manzanar. However, we should also note the potential limitations of the photographs.

3. Final Reflection. Consider the use of photographs as evidence of the past. What can we learn from photographs from the past? Why do the views of the photographer matter? How much can we infer about the intent of the photographer from the content of a historical photograph? Can we trust photographs that were “approved” by a person or organization that has a vested interest in portraying living conditions in a particular way? (We may want to draw conclusions that are too strong and condemn the photographs completely. We should see that although government restrictions on Adams may have affected the content of the photographs, that doesn’t necessarily mean the images are completely unreliable.)

4. Extension/Adaptation. Other influential photographers captured images of Manzanar, including Dorothea Lange, Toyo Miyatake, Clem Albers, and Francis Stewart. You can extend or adapt this lesson by comparing Adams’s photographs with the work of others. Consider the

1 See http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/manz/



editorial choices that each photographer made and how the photos from different perspectives, taken together, provide evidence of what living conditions were like for inmates at Manzanar. You can also revisit questions about how much we can learn about a photographer’s perspective from the content of their photographs.

You can find links to collections from Adams, Albers, Miyatake, and Stewart here: https://www.nps.gov/manz/learn/photosmultimedia/photogallery.htm

Here is a collection with more photos by Miyatake: http://www.toyomiyatake.com/manzanar.html

And here are photos of removal by Lange and Albers: https://www.loc.gov/item/2002696085/

This brief NPR article provides some ideas about how the perspectives of Miyatake, Lange, and Adams may have differed: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2016/02/17/466453528/photos-three-very-different-views-of-japanese-internment

Sources

Document A Adams, Ansel, photographer. “Roy Takeno reading paper in front of office.” Manzanar, CA, 1943. From the Library of Congress: Ansel Adams's Photographs of Japanese-American Internment at Manzanar. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/manz/item/2002696030/resource/ppprs.00004/

Document B Adams, Ansel, photographer. “Richard Kobayashi, farmer with cabbages, Manzanar Relocation Center, California.” Manzanar, CA, 1943. From the Library of Congress: Ansel Adams's Photographs of Japanese-American Internment at Manzanar. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/manz/item/2001704633/resource/ppprs.00054/

Document C Adams, Ansel, photographer. “Baseball game, Manzanar Relocation Center, Calif.” Manzanar, CA, 1943. From the Library of Congress: Ansel Adams's Photographs of Japanese-American Internment at Manzanar. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/manz/item/2002695992/resource/ppprs.00202/

Document D Adams, Ansel, photographer. “Manzanar Relocation Center from tower.” Manzanar, CA, 1943. From the Library of Congress: Ansel Adams's Photographs of Japanese-American Internment at Manzanar. http://loc.gov/pictures/resource/ppprs.00199/

Document E


https://www.nps.gov/manz/learn/photosmultimedia/photogallery.htm

http://www.toyomiyatake.com/manzanar.html

https://www.loc.gov/item/2002696085/

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2016/02/17/466453528/photos-three-very-different-views-of-japanese-internment

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2016/02/17/466453528/photos-three-very-different-views-of-japanese-internment

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/manz/item/2002696030/resource/ppprs.00004/



http://loc.gov/pictures/resource/ppprs.00199/


Adams, Ansel, photographer. “Nurse Aiko Hamaguchi, mother Frances Yokoyama, baby Fukomoto, Manzanar Relocation Center, California.” Manzanar, CA, 1943. From the Library of Congress: Ansel Adams's Photographs of Japanese-American Internment at Manzanar. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2002697854/

Excerpts from Born Free and Equal in guiding questions: Adams, Ansel. Born free and equal: The story of loyal Japanese Americans. New York: US Camera, 1944. Retrieved from: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/manz/book.html


http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2002697854/

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/manz/book.html

Ansel Adams and Manzanar


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Manzanar

Entrance to Manzanar, 1943


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WRA Sites of Incarceration April 20, 2020 11th Grade US History 9

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Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams, c. 1950


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Adams’ Photos of Manzanar

Adams’ photo of the Miyatake family at Manzanar, 1943


Central Historical QuestionWhat can Ansel Adams’

photographs tell us about living conditions at Manzanar?


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Document AApril 20, 2020 11th Grade US History 13

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Document BApril 20, 2020 11th Grade US History 14

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Document CApril 20, 2020 11th Grade US History 15

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Document DApril 20, 2020 11th Grade US History 16

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Document EApril 20, 2020 11th Grade US History 17


Document A

This photograph shows newspaper editor Roy Takeno in front of the office of the Manzanar Free Press, a newspaper run by Japanese Americans imprisoned at the camp. Despite the name Free Press, articles were monitored by government administrators and the staff were generally not allowed to write articles critical of their treatment.

Title: Roy Takeno reading paper in front of office Location: Manzanar War Relocation Center Date: 1943



Document B

Richard Kobayashi is shown holding two cabbages grown at Manzanar. Many of those imprisoned at Manzanar were expert farmers, and the War Relocation Authority paid them a modest wage to grow crops in nearby fields and orchards, which were irrigated by snowmelt from the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Title: Richard Kobayashi, farmer with cabbages, Manzanar Relocation Center, California Date: 1943 Photographer: Ansel Adams



Document C

This is a photograph of a baseball game at Manzanar in 1943. Inmates formed over 100 baseball teams, including 14 women’s teams, and it was common for large crowds to watch games.

Title: Baseball game, Manzanar Relocation Center, Calif. Date: 1943 Photographer: Ansel Adams



Document D

This photograph shows Manzanar with the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the distance. The buildings on the left are barracks where prisoners were housed. A barrack included four 20’ x 25’ rooms, and each room housed eight people. Rooms included a single hanging lightbulb, an oil stove, blankets, and straw mattresses. Shared bathroom and dining facilities offered little privacy.

Title: Manzanar Relocation Center from tower Date: 1943 Photographer: Ansel Adams



Document E

In this photograph, a nurse is showing a newborn baby through an observation window in Manzanar’s medical facilities.

Title: Nurse Aiko Hamaguchi, mother Frances Yokoyama, baby Fukomoto, Manzanar Relocation Center, California Date: 1943 Photographer: Ansel Adams



Guiding Questions

1. What does each photograph suggest about what conditions were like for inmates

at Manzanar? Cite specific details from each photograph to support your claims. Document A Document B Document C Document D Document E



2. Based on the content of the photographs, what do you think Adams wanted his audience to think about the incarceration of Japanese Americans? Cite evidence from each of the documents to support your points.

3. Ansel Adams published his photographs of Manzanar in a book called Born Free and Equal: The Story of Loyal Japanese-Americans. What might the title suggest about Adams’s views about Japanese-American incarceration?

4. The opening of the book included the following:

“The publishing of this book is authorized by the War Relocation Authority, United States Department of the Interior. The photographs and facts of the text have been checked and approved by the Project Director of Manzanar Relocation Center.”

How does this affect your understanding of Adams’s photographs as evidence of living conditions at Manzanar?



5. In the opening pages, Adams also included the following passage from a letter Abraham Lincoln wrote to a friend in 1855:

“… As a nation we began by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’ We now practically read it ‘all men are created equal, except Negroes.’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, except Negroes and foreigners and Catholics.’ When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some other country where they make no pretense of loving liberty …. where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.”

Why might Adams have chosen this quote for the beginning of his book?

6. How does Adams’s decision to include Lincoln’s quote affect how you view the photographs as evidence of living conditions at Manzanar?

Know-Nothings: a political party that opposed Catholic immigration in the 1850s emigrating: moving despotism: oppressive use of absolute power base alloy: a substance made by mixing two unlike things hypocrisy: pretending to have morals, but acting without morals



7. When evaluating whether a historical photograph is useful as evidence, historians consider various questions, including:

• When and where was the photograph was taken?

• Who took the photograph? What was their perspective on the events or people being photographed and how might that have influenced what they chose to shoot?

• Why was the photograph taken? Does the photographer have an incentive to portray a scene in a particular way?

• Under what circumstances was the photograph taken? How might these circumstances have limited or enabled what the photographer was able to capture?

Considering the questions above, why might Adams’s photographs be useful evidence about living conditions at Manzanar? Considering the questions above, what about the photographs might cause you to question whether they are useful evidence about living conditions at Manzanar?


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