Following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government incarcerated approximately 120,000 people of Japanese descent, the majority of whom were U.S.-born.
The tags are in the form of the government-issued identification tags worn by families of Japanese descent during forced relocation from their U.S. West Coast homes to concentration camps during World War II. Drawings on these tags were adapted from photographs (public domain) taken by Dorothea Lange and other U.S. War Relocation Authority photographers documenting the transition to and life in 10 camps scattered in remote sites across eight states. As the light appears above a single tag, a voice reading the photo caption as written by the photographer plays out loud. Photo captions also are hand-written on the backs of tags, which viewers are encouraged to flip over.