It was called the “Free” Press. Even though none of them were.
April 11, 1942: The first issue of the Manzanar Free Press is published inside a U.S. concentration camp.
Just days after Japanese Americans began arriving at the Manzanar War Relocation Center, a small team of incarcerees rolled out the first issue of the Manzanar Free Press.
The U.S. government had removed thousands of people from their homes and locked them behind barbed wire. But it still wanted them informed, or at least managed.
So it allowed them a newspaper.
The paper was produced by incarcerated Japanese Americans — writers, students, artists — many of whom had no formal journalism training. They reported on births, deaths, daily meals, camp rules, and government notices. They translated key information for Issei elders who could not read English.
In a place built to isolate and silence them, they found a way to keep the community connected.
And yes, they were careful. The paper was monitored. Edited. Scrubbed.
Criticism was subtle, sometimes buried between the lines. Sometimes missing altogether. But the very act of publishing, of printing something, was a quiet form of resistance.
Photographer Dorothea Lange, hired by the U.S. government to document life in the camps, captured images of the Free Press staff at work: Fingers on typewriters. Ink-stained hands on printing machines. Faces bent over page layouts. Her lens caught what the headlines couldn’t say — dignity under surveillance.
The irony was printed right at the top of the page: Manzanar Free Press.
Not free to leave. Not free to speak freely. But still determined to be heard. They weren’t allowed to speak their minds. But they pressed on, nonethelss.
What they created was more than a newspaper.
It was a quiet record of life behind barbed wire — and a quiet act of resistance. The Manzanar Free Press was never truly “free.” But maybe the boldest resistance… was calling it that anyway.
