Ned Hardy

Children pledging allegiance to the American flag at San Francisco’s Raphael Weill Elementary School in 1942. Those whose families were of Japanese ancestry were sent to internment camps.

These kids, hand over heart, mouths open mid verse, earnest as only children can be, are performing one of the most American rituals imaginable. The Pledge of Allegiance. A declaration of loyalty and belonging. And for some of them, this moment sits just days, maybe weeks, before the United States government would decide that their loyalty was irrelevant. That their Americanness was conditional. That the blood running through their veins disqualified them from the very flag they are saluting.