"Thank you for what you have done for us. . . "
Former Manzanar internee

Born Free and Equal
Written and photographed by Ansel Adams in 1943 at Manzanar War Relocation Center in Inyo County, California. Introduction by Archie Miyatake. Essay by Sue Kunitomi Embrey Chair Emeritus, Manzanar National Historic Site Advisory Commission. Edited by Wynne Benti

It was 1943. In Yosemite National Park, the magnificent Ahwahnee Hotel closed its doors to tourists, transformed into a temporary Naval convalescent hospital. Wartime shortages forced the rationing of gasoline, sugar, and film. Living in Yosemite Valley, Ansel Adams, sought ways to help with the war effort.Too old to enlist, he volunteered for for a number of assignments in which his photographic skills were put to the country's use. Among his contributions, he both escorted and photographed Army troops at Yosemite training for mountain warfare in Europe; he taught photography to the Signal Corps at Fort Ord, and traveled to the Presidio in San Francisco to print classified photographs of Japanese military installations on the Aleutian Islands. Despite his volunteer efforts, he was frustrated that he could not do more to help the war effort.

Born Free and Equal
Ansel Adams

Climbing Mt. Whitney
Peter Croft, Glen Dawson

Close Ups of the High Sierra
Norman Clyde

Death Valley to Yosemite: Frontier Mining Camps and Ghost Towns
L. Burr Belden & Mary DeDecker

Desert Summits
Andy Zdon

Favorite Dog Hikes In and Around Las Vegas
Wynne Benti & Megan Lawlor

Favorite Dog Hikes In and Around Los Angeles
Wynne Benti

Grand Canyon Treks
Harvey Butchart

High and Wild: Essays and Photographs on Wilderness Adventure
Galen Rowell

Mojave Desert Trails
Florine Lawlor

Out From Las Vegas
Florine Lawlor

The Secret Sierra: The Alpine World Above the Trees
David Gilligan

Robert Clunie: Plein Air Painter
of the Sierra
Richard Coons

That summer, friend Ralph Merritt asked Adams if he would be interested in creating a photographic record of a little-known government facility in the Owens Valley, on the east side of the Sierra Nevada. "I cannot pay you a cent," Merritt told him, "but I can put you up and feed you." Merritt was director of the Manzanar War Relocation Center a collection of hundreds of tar-paper barracks hastily built to house more than 10,000 people, behind barbed wire and gun towers. All were of Japanese Ancestry, but most were American citizens, forcibly removed from their homes to ten relocation centers across the country by presidential order. The resulting effort was the book Born Free and Equal: The Story of Loyal Japanese Americans published by U.S. Camera in 1944 under the direction of the War Relocation Authority.

While at Manzanar, Adams met Toyo Miyatake, the official camp photographer, interned with his wife and children. A student of the great photographer, Edward Weston, Miyatake had established his own respected professional photography studio in Los Angeles before the war. In the introduction to this book, Miyatake's son, Archie, who was then 16-years old, recalls the visit made so long ago.

In 1965, Adams donated his Manzanar photographs to the Library of Congress. He wrote in a letter to Dr. Edgar Brietenbach: "...I think this Manzanar Collection is an important historical document and I trust it can be put to good use..." With the goal of realizing that "good use," Spotted Dog Press presents Born Free and Equal to new generations of Americans who may come to a better understanding of a distant incident in our recent history that should not be forgotten.

Born Free and Equal: The Story of Loyal Japanese Americans
Based on the original book published by U.S. Camera with text and photographs by Ansel Adams from the Library of Congress Collection. New introduction by former internee Archie Miyatake. Photographs by Toyo Miyatake, Archie Miyatake, George Shiba, and Eichi Uemura. Essays by Sue Kunitomi Embrey and William H. Michael. Edited by Wynne Benti. 128 pages, 75 duotone photographs, 8.5" x 11" portrait size $45/U.S. ISBN 1-893343-05-7