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Scope and Content
The War Relocation Authority (WRA) records represent the official documentation of the United States agency created to assume jurisdiction over the Japanese and Japanese Americans evacuated from California, Oregon, and Washington by the Western Defense Command, the Fourth Army, and the Wartime Civilian Control Administration (WCCA) during January/February of 1942. During its existence from March 1942 to 1946, the WRA controlled the administration of the relocation centers, administered an extensive resettlement program, and oversaw the details of the registration and segregation programs. Included in their records are administrative files, official publications, reports and surveys, legal papers, correspondence, and photographs and scrapbooks. All of the records except the photographs have been cataloged as BANC MSS 67/14 c.
It is important to note that the photograph collection, as the official documentation of the WRA, reflects the point of view that the WRA wanted to present to the citizens of the United States during World War II. A number of photographs exist in 5 x 7 format and as enlargements that one assumes were made for public exhibition. The photographs, presumably created for public exhibition, and the captions accompanying them written by WRA staff, present an idealistic view of the relocation centers which clashes greatly with the harsh realities detailed by many survivors and historians in the decades following the internment.
The collection contains approximately 7000 photographs and 317 Kodachrome slides which have been arranged into 18 series (described below). Series 1-6 and 8-11 document day-to-day life and activities in $individual relocation centers in California, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and Arkansas as captured by WRA photographers. The remaining series cover pre-evacuation activities in California only; relocation of evacuees in various states; assembly centers in California; and resettlement activities, primarily in California cities. Most of the photographs are well captioned with information on the photographer, place, date, people, and activities featured in the photographs. Series 18 consists of Kodachrome slides for the WRA lecture "The Wrong Ancestors", and slides of the Granada and Central Utah relocation centers.
Among the WRA photographers is Dorothea Lange. There are 691 photographs by Lange in the collection, 209 of the Manzanar Relocation Center (Series 8), and 482 of pre-evacuation activities in California cities (Series 14). Other WRA photographers include Francis Stewart, Hikaru Iwasaki, Joe McClelland, Tom Parker, Charles E. Mace, Gretchen Van Tassel, and others.
The bulk of the photographs are 5 x 7 inch black and white prints that are housed in 88 volumes. One additional box contains oversize enlargements. In the container listing these enlargements are referred to as being in volume "AX1". Seven additional boxes (stored off-site) contain oversize enlargements duplicating photographs in the volumes.
There is currently no concordance for these oversize duplicates.
To learn more about these issues, please see the
