In 1942, Executive Order 9066 required all people of Japanese Ancestry to move to incarceration camps. The hardships from the forced relocation endured well after their return from the camps. After being uprooted from their homes, Japanese Americans had to rebuild. Many moved to the Crenshaw District of Los Angeles where the built a thriving community with Japanese owned businesses and organizations that provided social services, educated Asian youth, and fought for their civil rights.
Today, the Crenshaw district of South Los Angeles is known as a predominantly Black neighborhood, while Japanese Americans are most commonly associated with Little Tokyo, Sawtelle, Torrance and Gardena. But after World War II, Crenshaw had the largest concentration of Japanese Americans in the continental United States.
Eighty years ago, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed an executive order that sent thousands of Japanese Americans to internment camps. Actor George Takei was among them.
Eighty years ago, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed an executive order that sent thousands of Japanese-Americans to internment camps. Actor George Takei was among them.
Corky Lee Remembered for Documenting Asian America
COVID-19 claims legendary photographer who chronicled Asian American experience.
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Corky Lee with his photo of Muhammad Ali in 2008 at a career retrospective held at the Chinese American Museum (CAM) and El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument. (MARIO GERSHOM REYES/Rafu Shimpo)
By ELLEN ENDO, Rafu Shimpo
Corky Lee, a New York-based photojournalist whose work spanned five decades and covered subjects from the Asian American Movement in the 1970s to the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, has passed away at the age of 73 due to complications from COVID-19.
A self-taught photographer, Lee is remembered for his ability to capture many of America’s most defining moments, and his work appeared in