Chinatown storefronts on the eve of Japanese American removal

1942

Dorothea Lange photographed this pair of shops on Grant Avenue for the War Relocation Authority, contrasting the store at right, run by a proprietor of Japanese ancestry, with its neighbour. Lange's caption notes the shop was doing heavy trade as removal approached, after earlier losing custom to a boycott of Japanese goods; its owner faced confinement in a relocation centre.