Moving Photographs of Japanese American Internees, Then and Now

In early 1945, the federal government started to open the internment camps where it had held 120,000 Japanese Americans for much of World War II. Seven decades later, photographer Paul Kitagaki Jr. has been tracking down the internees pictured in wartime images by photographers like Dorothea Lange (who photographed Kitagaki's own family—see below).

So far, he's identified more than 50 survivors, often reshooting them in the locations where they were originally photographed.

Dorothea Lange

Paul Kitagaki Jr.