vited Adams to come to the camp to make a photographic record of it (Armor and Wright xvii). Adams wrote text for the photographs at Manzanar in 1944, and this text was published separately in 1984 along with additional comments by Adams as to why he accepted the assignment and what it meant to him. He stated,
Moved by the human story unfolding in the encirclement of desert and mountains, and by the wish to identify my photography. . . with the tragic momentum of the times, I came to Manzanar with my cameras in the fall of 1943. . . I believe that the arid splendor of the desert, ringed with towering mountains, has strengthened the spirit of the people of Manzanar. . . From the harsh soil they have extracted fine crops; they have made gardens glow in the firebreaks and between the barracks. Out of the jostling, dusty confusion of the first bleak days in raw barracks they have modulated to a democratic internal society and a praiseworthy personal adjustment
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