The Library of Congress has a collection of Ansel Adams' photos of the Manzanar War Relocation Detention Center in California.
In the photos below, you can see the sign at the entrance to the detention center, a view of the center from the street, and a line of people waiting for lunch.
While they were interned, the people who lived here did what people do everywhere, wherever they live, wherever they have a community. They played games, like bridge and American football and volleyball.
The operated a press to report on their own local news within the center. They visited a museum exhibit of photographs of their own internment.
Older children attended high school classes, classes on science, classes on dressmaking.
Younger children in the internment center attended their own school, and Sunday school. They learned informally from the interned adults. They took calisthenics classes. Children without parents, without families, were taken care of by a nurse in an orphanage within the detention center.
At least a third of the photos Adams took inside Manzanar were individual portraits. About three hundred of his photos are held by the Library of Congress. What I've shared here is only a very small sample of the collection.
