This important work of nonfiction features powerful images of the Japanese American incarceration captured by three photographersDorothea Lange, Toyo Miyatake, and Ansel Adamsalong with firsthand accounts of this grave moment in history. Three months after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the incarceration of all Japanese and Japanese Americans living on the West Coast of the United States. Families, teachers, farm workersall were ordered to leave behind their homes, their businesses, and everything they owned. Japanese and Japanese Americans were forced to live under hostile conditions in incarceration camps, their futures uncertain. Three photographers set out to document life at Manzanar, an incarceration camp in the California desert: Dorothea Lange was a photographer from San Francisco best known for her haunting Depression-era images. Dorothea was hired by the US government to record the conditions of the camps. Deeply critical of the policy, she wanted her photos to shed light on the harsh reality of incarceration. Toyo Miyatake was a Japanese-born, Los Angelesbased photographer who lent his artistic eye to portraying dancers, athletes, and events in the Japanese community. Imprisoned at Manzanar, he devised a way to smuggle in photographic equipment, determined to show what was really going on inside the barbed-wire confines of the camp. Ansel Adams was an acclaimed landscape photographer and environmentalist. Hired by the director of Manzanar, Ansel hoped his carefully curated pictures would demonstrate to the rest of the United States the resilience of those in the camps. In Seen and Unseen, Elizabeth Partridge and Lauren Tamaki weave together these photographers' images, firsthand accounts, and stunning original art to examine the history, heartbreak, and injustice of the Japanese American incarceration. AWARENESS OF AMERICAN HISTORY: This impactful book engages with an underrepresented topic in American history, and highlights important and timely themes like primary sources, censorship, and visual literacy. SUBSTANTIAL BACKMATTER: Featuring eighteen pages of backmatter, including an Author's and Illustrator's Note, footnotes, photo credits, biographies of each photographer, and more.

 

 

There are 132 pages in this book. This book was published in 2022 by Chronicle Books .

Elizabeth Partridge (www. elizabethpartridge. com) is a National Book Award finalist and author of several nonfiction books for children, including Restless Spirit: The Life and Work of Dorothea Lange ; This Land Was Made for You and Me: The Life and Songs of Woody Guthrie ; and Marching for Freedom: Walk Together, Children, and Don't You Grow Weary . She lives in the San Francisco Bay area. Caroline Paul is the author of the New York Times bestselling The Gutsy Girl: Escapades for Your Life of Epic Adventure as well as the adult titles Lost Cat: A True Story of Love, Desperation, and GPS Technology; East Wind, Rain; and Fighting Fire. She lives in San Francisco, California. Lauren Tamaki has illustrated articles for the New York Times, Lena Dunham's Lenny Letters, and the Brooklyn edition of the Wildsam Field Guides. You Are Mighty is her first children's book. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.