​​The US government documented the forced removal of Japanese Americans in an attempt to garner support for the program.

Dorothea Lange's photos of Japanese Americans interred in US concentration camps were censored.

During the Great Depression, the US government used photography to document rural poverty.

Many of Dorothea Lange's most iconic photos were taken while she was working for a New Deal program.

Dorothea Lange's iconic 'Migrant Mother' photo was just one image of many she captured of the woman with her children.

The iconic national park posters were created by New Deal artists hired through FDR's Works Progress Administration in the 1930s.

The Pearl Harbor attack led to the mass internment of Japanese Americans

In the months after Pearl Harbor, the US forcibly removed and incarcerated about 120,000 Japanese Americans—two-thirds of them citizens. Driven by fear and racism, the policy is now recognized as a grave violation of civil rights.

The woman in Dorothea Lange's 'Migrant Mother' photo felt that she and her children had been exploited.

Dorothea Lange and her economist husband sought to document American poverty through collaborative works.

Riveting artwork from the battlefields during World War I

During World War I, the United States government commissioned eight artists to accompany American Expeditionary Forces to Europe to sketch and document what they saw. Drawing tanks, soldiers, shattered villages, and even German prisoners of war, the artists preserved much of the war as a matter of historical record and to rally support back home.

Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams collaborated on a project documenting Mormon communities in Utah, but the artists were unhappy with how Life magazine framed the work.

Check out the most iconic images captured by Dorothea Lange, the American photographer known as one of the 20th-century's greatest social documentarians.

Dorothea Lange contracted polio when she was 7, something she said informed her approach to photograph.

Rockwell's 'Four Freedoms' raised millions for the US war effort

Rockwell initially pitched the "Four Freedoms" project to the US Ordnance Department, but was rejected. Rockwell's editor at the Saturday Evening Post, however, loved the idea and published the images across four consecutive issues. After they became a sensation, the Saturday Evening Post partnered with the US Department of the Treasury to send the paintings on a 16-date national tour, which raised $133M in war bonds and stamps. Meanwhile, the Office of War Information printed four million sets of the posters with "Buy War Bonds" emblazoned on them.

'Migrant Mother' (1936) captured the tragic reality of the Great Depression

Taken by Dorothea Lange, the image shows a mother in tattered clothes looking distressed while her children cling to her. At the time, the family was surviving on frozen vegetables from nearby fields and birds killed by the children.

Disney chipped away at its debt by creating propaganda during World War II

Disney began producing training videos for the Navy and propaganda films for US involvement in World War II, including the shorts "Der Fuehrer's Face," "The Spirit of '43," and "Donald Gets Drafted." The effort provided a much-needed cash injection, allowing Disney to continue producing films.

See what it was like to live in the United States during World War II

In America, life was transformed by total war: sixteen million service members left civilian life, while massive industrial production demanded labor. Women, minorities, and teens filled factories, fueling boomtown growth and breaking social barriers. Simultaneously, rationing, recycling drives, Victory Gardens, ration stamps, blackout drills, and war bond campaigns permeated daily routines.

What happened to Americans who were in Japan during Pearl Harbor?

When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941, roughly 10,000 American civilians were stranded in Japanese-occupied territory. Tense diplomatic negotiations eventually secured two prisoner exchanges conducted via ship across 20,000 nautical miles to return nearly 3,000 Allied civilians, while Japanese Americans in North and South America were sent in the opposite direction, many to a country they had never called home.

Comic books were used as a form of government propaganda in World War II.

Comic books were a major part of American propaganda efforts during WWII

See how US comic books, alongside international counterparts, served as powerful wartime propaganda tools from 1941 to 1945—boosting morale, promoting war bonds, and demonizing Axis powers through the use of iconic heroes and patriotic messaging.

The legacy of Agent Orange: a photo gallery

An herbicide sprayed over the Vietnamese jungles during the war had a far greater impact than its supposed role as a defoliant, a chemical used to remove greenery. Agent Orange’s deleterious nature quickly impacted exposed people – and their children. This photo gallery, which includes graphic images, follows a photographer as they report on those affected by the chemical.

With the help of one photographer who took photos of children at work, child labor in the US was eventually restricted by law in the mid-1900s.

The story behind the iconic flag-raising photo on Iwo Jima (1945)

The iconic image captured by AP photographer Joe Rosenthal went viral, as far as it could in the 1940s, showing six marines raising a flag atop Iwo Jima's Mount Suribachi. The shot was used for public relations by the military, but it would later be shrouded by controversy when it was revealed it was the second flag raising that day, inviting accusations it was staged.

Eleanor Roosevelt sheltered student activists at the White House after they were subpoenaed by HUAC

In 1939, when Congress subpoenaed leaders of the American Youth Congress on suspicion of communist ties, Eleanor Roosevelt attended the hearings herself and then invited all 10 students to stay at the White House, as they had nowhere to sleep.

Ansel Adams' 20th-century photographs of national parks captured the majesty of a growing National Park System.

Roosevelt resigned from a prominent women's organization after it barred a Black singer from performing

When the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow Marian Anderson to perform at their Washington hall in 1939 because she was Black, Roosevelt publicly cut ties with the group. She worked to arrange an alternative outdoor concert for Anderson at the Lincoln Memorial, which drew a crowd of 75,000.

A list of reasons against dropping the bomb on Japan

One of the perennial moral debates, the dropping of nuclear bombs on Japanese cities prompted strong, polarizing reactions at the time. This article breaks down one side of the argument: that the bomb was designed for defense, using it was illegal and racist, and that there were alternatives.

A 1912 congressional bill attempted to prohibit fake photos in the US

In the 1800s, photographs were held up as indisputable resources of truth. But the photography industry devised ways to alter photos, resulting in the rise of fraudulent photos—from shots with celebrities to the turn-of-the-century version of fake nudes—prompting government intervention.

Hollywood helped fund American military activity by boosting bond sales

To help fund its WWI military activity, the US introduced Liberty Bonds—government-issued debt marketed directly to the public. Starting at $50, the campaign targeted working Americans and offered Thrift Stamps to make bond-buying more accessible. Hollywood led the charge, with stars like Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford boosting bond sales.

Interviews from the Manhattan Project

This is an archive of interviews with people who worked on and were impacted by the Manhattan Project, the World War II-era effort that resulted in the atomic bomb. Listen to the "father of the atomic bomb," Julius Robert Oppenheimer, describe his daily routine during the project, which he reports officially started Dec. 6, 1941. This archive also includes interviews with survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.

The US Pacific strategy sought control of key islands to close in on Japan

The US adopted a two-pronged "island hopping" campaign across the Central and Southwest Pacific from 1943–44, deliberately targeting strategically crucial but less-defended islands. This allowed forces to bypass heavily fortified Japanese strongholds and build airfields for bombers aimed at Japan, drastically accelerating the path toward Tokyo while conserving manpower and resources.

2 months after Pearl Harbor, American libraries launched a drive to collect 10 million books for soldiers

The 1942 Victory Book Campaign—sponsored by the American Library Association, the Red Cross, and the USO—asked the public to donate books to both train and entertain troops. The national campaign exceeded its goal, collecting more than 10.2 million books.

John Hersey’s ‘Hiroshima’ focused on the stories of atomic bomb victims

The nonfiction book is considered one of the earliest pieces of New Journalism and an arresting case against nuclear warfare. Describing the pain, wounds and trauma of six ordinary citizens, “Hiroshima” played a powerful role in American perception of the war by focusing on its human toll.

US troops committed widespread atrocities during the Mexican-American War

American volunteer regiments frequently looted towns, raped civilians, and executed prisoners—especially in occupied northern Mexico. Historians have documented how racial hatred and impunity fueled war crimes that were rarely punished by military leadership.