COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Aiko Hamaguchi, a nurse from Los Angeles, is one of many images from "Ansel Adams: A Portrait of Manzanar". The exhibit is on display at the Bainbridge Island Historical Museum through Dec. 7.

By Kevin Fujii, The Seattle Times

Better known for his landscape work, Ansel Adams broke from his norm to photograph the human landscape of Manzanar, a World War II relocation center in Inyo County, Calif., for Japanese-Americans and legal Japanese residents.

A current Bainbridge Island Historical Museum exhibit of the seldom-seen photographs by Adams offers a look inside the 1940's California internment camp called, "Ansel Adams: A Portrait of Manzanar". A few of those photos are seen here along with images from the Smithsonian and the Associated Press. To hear the voices behind Seattle Times arts writer Michael Upchurch's story, read it here.

News of the exhibit brought about a teenage memory. My older brother, Craig Fujii, an AP photographer at the time, showed our dad and grandmother a photo book on Manzanar. I knew our father was a child when he, his younger sister and his parents were sent to Manzanar from Southern California. I also remember my dad's youngest sister was born there.

But what made history real and personal was a photograph in this book. Grandma flipped through the pages and pointed at a young man in a white fedora and said, "That's Grandpa."

More of Adams' pictures of Manzanar can be seen in this Library of Congress collection.

From the Library of Congress' website: "When offering the collection to the Library in 1965, Adams said in a letter, "The purpose of my work was to show how these people, suffering under a great injustice, and loss of property, businesses and professions, had overcome the sense of defeat and dispair [sic] by building for themselves a vital community in an arid (but magnificent) environment....All in all, I think this Manzanar Collection is an important historical document, and I trust it can be put to good use."

COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Roy Takeno reads a newspaper in front of paper's office at the Manzanar Relocation Center in California. It is one of several scenes photographed in 1943 by Ansel Adams.

ALAN BERNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES

Bainbridge Island resident Lilly Kitamoto Kodama was interned at Manzanar and Minidoka during World War II. She was not personally photographed by Ansel Adams. But Kodama is familiar with many of the people in the historical museum's exhibit.

COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Ansel Adams photographed Richard Kobayashi, a farmer with cabbages, at the Manzanar Relocation Center in Inyo County, Calif.

COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Ansel Adams photographed Tom Kobayashi in the landscape of Manzanar.

COURTESY OF THE SMITHSONIAN

This black-and-white file photo provided by the Smithsonian, taken March 30, 1942, shows Fumiko Hayashida holding her daughter Natalie on Bainbridge Island. Hayashida, 100, is the oldest surviving Japanese-American taken from Bainbridge Island to Manzanar Relocation Center. On Sept. 28, 2006, she testified on Capitol Hill in Washington before the House Resources Committee hearing on Rep. Jay Inslee's Bainbridge Island National Monument Act of 2006, H.R.5817 - seeking to adjust the boundary of the Minidoka Internment National Monument to include the Nidoto Nai Yoni Memorial in Bainbridge Island. Read more about Hayashida in this Kitsap Sun story.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

In this March 24, 1942, file photo, internees wait in line for their assigned homes in Manzanar, Calif. Many were forced from their homes in Los Angeles by the U.S. Army. Approximately 120,000 Japanese-Americans were detained during World War II by President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

The young man in the highlighted box is my grandfather, Frank Fujii. He was born in Monterey, Calif.