Lange, Dorothea, et al. Behind Barbed Wire: The Imprisonment of Japanese Americans During World War II by Daniel E. Davis.

Dutton, 1982. [Photographs by Dorothea Lange; Francis Stewart; Charles E. Mace; Hikaru Iwasaki, et al.] Ex-library, hard cover, dust jacket protector attached to book, card pocket, spine label, otherwise VG+.

Dorothea Lange (1895–1965) was a seminal American documentary photographer and photojournalist whose poignant images defined the human cost of the Great Depression and reshaped modern visual storytelling. Born Dorothea Nutzhorn in Hoboken, New Jersey, she survived childhood polio—which left her with a permanent limp—and later studied photography at Columbia University under Clarence H. White before opening a successful portrait studio in San Francisco in 1919. With the onset of the Great Depression, Lange left the studio to photograph homeless and displaced people on the streets, catching the attention of economist Paul Schuster Taylor (whom she married in 1935) and Roy Stryker of the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Between 1935 and 1939, Lange traveled extensively documenting migratory farmworkers, tenant farmers, and sharecroppers across the rural South and West, creating enduring icons of American resilience such as Migrant Mother (1936). During World War II, she was hired by the War Relocation Authority to record the forced internment of Japanese Americans—producing powerful, critical photographs that were impounded by the military until decades later—and later co-founded Aperture magazine in 1952. Awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1941, Lange's groundbreaking legacy was commemorated shortly after her death with a major posthumous retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in 1966.

Behind Barbed Wire: The Imprisonment of Japanese Americans During World War II (published in 1982 by E.P. Dutton) is a foundational 166-page historical text written by author Daniel S. Davis. Aimed at young adult and general audiences, this Boston Globe–Horn Book Award-winning volume delivers a meticulous account of one of the most severe violations of constitutional rights in United States history, documenting the forced relocation and mass incarceration of over 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry following the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Core Themes and Content

• The Path to Executive Order 9066: Davis traces the rapid breakdown of civil liberties following the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. The book examines how wartime panic, political pressure, and deeply ingrained West Coast anti-Japanese racism culminated in President Franklin D. Roosevelt signing Executive Order 9066, which authorized the military to bypass due process and strip Japanese Americans—the vast majority of whom were U.S. citizens—of their homes, businesses, and freedom.

• Life in the Assembly Centers and Camps: The narrative vividly details the immediate logistical realities of the relocation, describing the initial movement to temporary "assembly centers" (often converted racetracks and fairgrounds) and their subsequent transfer to ten permanent, desolate relocation centers administered by the War Relocation Authority (WRA). Davis depicts the bleak daily life behind the barbed wire—communal mess halls, tarpaper barracks, extreme weather, and the psychological toll of being viewed as subversives.

• The Paradox of Loyalty and War Service: A crucial focus of the book is the profound internal conflict faced by internees regarding patriotism and identity. Davis explores how, despite being imprisoned by their own government, thousands of young Japanese American men answered the call to serve in the armed forces, highlighting the legendary heroism of the segregated 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.

• Post-War Reintegration and Visual Evidence: The text follows the gradual closing of the camps toward the end of the war, detailing the immense challenges former internees faced while attempting to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives and assimilate back into a hostile society. To anchor this history, the book incorporates evocative, archival photographic documentation from national archives, including the historic documentary photography of Dorothea Lange.

By examining the institutional failure of constitutional safeguards during periods of national hysteria, Behind Barbed Wireserves as a sobering cautionary tale about the fragility of democracy and a vital record of a dark chapter in the American experience.