Manzanar - WikiHQ

Manzanar is the site of one of ten American concentration camps, where more than 120,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated during World War II, from March 1942 to November 1945. Although it had over 10,000 inmates at its peak, Manzanar was one of the smaller internment camps. It is located in California's Owens Valley, on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada mountains, between the towns of Lone Pine to the south and Independence to the north, approximately north of Los Angeles. Manzanar means "apple orchard" in Spanish. The Manzanar National Historic Site, which preserves and interprets the legacy of Japanese American incarceration in the United States, was identified by the United States National Park Service as the best-preserved of the ten former camp sites.

The first Japanese Americans arrived at Manzanar in March 1942, just one month after President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, to build the camp their families would be staying in. Manzanar was in operation as an internment camp from 1942 until 1945. Since the last of those incarcerated left in 1945, former detainees and others have worked to protect Manzanar and to establish it as a National Historic Site to ensure that the history of the site, along with the stories of those who were incarcerated there, is recorded for current and future generations. The primary focus is the Japanese American incarceration era, as specified in the legislation that created the Manzanar National Historic Site. The site also interprets the former town of Manzanar, the ranch days, the settlement by the Owens Valley Paiute, and the role that water played in shaping the history of the Owens Valley.

thumb|View of original entrance to Manzanar internment camp, November 2024

Background

thumb|right|[[Aqueduct (water supply)#Open channels|Unlined section of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, just south of Manzanar near U.S. Route 395, 2007]]

Manzanar was first inhabited by Indigenous Americans nearly 10,000 years ago. who ranged across the Owens Valley from Long Valley on the north to Owens Lake on the south, and from the crest of the Sierra Nevada on the west to the Inyo Mountains on the east. When European American settlers first arrived in the Owens Valley in the mid-19th century, they found a number of large Paiute villages in the Manzanar area. John Shepherd, one of the first of the new settlers, homesteaded of land north of Georges Creek in 1864. With the help of Owens Valley Paiute field workers and laborers, he expanded his ranch to .

In 1905, George Chaffey, an agricultural developer from Southern California, purchased Shepherd's ranch and subdivided it, along with other adjacent ranches. He founded the town of Manzanar in 1910, along the main line of the Southern Pacific. By August 1911, the town's population was approaching 200. The company built an irrigation system over an area of and planted about 20,000 fruit trees.

As early as March 1905, the City of Los Angeles began acquiring water rights in the Owens Valley. In 1913, it completed construction of its Los Angeles Aqueduct, In dry years, Los Angeles pumped ground water and drained all surface water, diverting all of it into its aqueduct and leaving Owens Valley ranchers without water. Without water for irrigation, the holdout ranchers were forced off their ranches and out of their communities; that included the town of Manzanar, which was abandoned by 1929.]]

thumb|right|Wooden sign at entrance to the Manzanar War Relocation Center

After the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States Government swiftly moved to begin solving the "Japanese Problem" on the West Coast of the United States. In the evening hours of that same day, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested selected "enemy aliens", including more than 5,500 Issei men. Many citizens in California were alarmed about potential activities by people of Japanese descent even if the families have been in America for generations.

On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which authorized the Secretary of War to designate military commanders to prescribe military areas and to exclude "any or all persons" from such areas. The order also authorized the construction of what were later called "relocation centers" by the War Relocation Authority (WRA), to house those who were to be excluded. This order resulted in the forced relocation of more than 120,000 Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were native-born American citizens; the rest had been prevented from becoming citizens by federal law. Over 110,000 were incarcerated in ten concentration camps located far inland and away from the coast. and began accepting detainees in March 1942. Initially, it was a temporary "reception center", known as the Owens Valley Reception Center from March 21, 1942, to May 31, 1942. At that time, it was operated by the US Army's Wartime Civilian Control Administration (WCCA).

The first director of the camp was Calvin E. Triggs, a longtime veteran of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a signature program of the Second New Deal. Many of his fellow employees had worked in that agency. Manzanar, according to one insider, was "manned just about 100% by the WPA." Drawing on experiences derived from New Deal era road building, Triggs, funded primarily through the WPA, supervised the installation of such features as guard towers and spotlights.

The Owens Valley Reception Center was transferred to the WRA on June 1, 1942, and officially became the "Manzanar War Relocation Center". About 90 percent of the incarcerated were from the Los Angeles area,

Camp conditions and facilities

Climate and location

thumb|right|Barrack row looking west to the desert and mountains beyond (July 2, 1942)

The Manzanar facility was located between Lone Pine and Independence. The temporary buildings were inadequate to shield people from the weather. The Owens Valley lies at an elevation of about .

Summers on the desert floor of the Owens Valley are generally hot, with temperatures often exceeding .

"In the summer, the heat was unbearable," said former Manzanar inmate Ralph Lazo. "In the winter, the sparsely rationed oil didn't adequately heat the tar paper-covered pine barracks with knotholes in the floor. The wind would blow so hard, it would toss rocks around."

Camp layout and facilities

thumb|right|Typical barrack apartments with cloth partitions between units (June 30, 1942)

The camp site was situated on at Manzanar, leased from the City of Los Angeles, Eight guard towers equipped with machine guns were located at intervals around the perimeter fence, which was topped by barbed wire. The grid layout used in the camp was standard, and a similar layout was used in all of the relocation centers. tarpaper barracks, with each family (up to eight people) living in a single "apartment" in the barracks.

Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, a Manzanar survivor, described the living conditions in her book: "After dinner we were taken to Block 16, a cluster of fifteen barracks that had just been finished a day or so earlier—although finished was hardly a word for it. The shacks were built of pine planking covered with tarpaper. They sat on concrete footings, with about two feet of open space between the floorboards and the ground. Gaps showed between the planks, and as the weeks passed and the green wood dried out, the gaps widened. Knotholes gaped in the uncovered floor." In the book, she goes on to explain the size and layout of the barracks. They were divided into six units that were sixteen long by twenty feet wide, and a single light bulb hung from the ceiling. They had an oil stove for heat as well as two army blankets each, some mattress covers and steel army cots. Lack of privacy was a major problem, especially since the camp had communal men's and women's latrines. Children incarcerated there were from multiple orphanages in the Los Angeles area as well as locations in Washington, Oregon, and Alaska. Infants born to unmarried mothers in other WRA camps were also sent to Children's Village over the next three years.

The 61 remaining children in Maryknoll, Shonien and the Salvation Army Home were slated for removal. On June 23, 1942, they were bused, under armed guard, with several adult caretakers, from Los Angeles to Manzanar. Each camp was intended to be self-sufficient, and Manzanar was no exception. beauty salons and barber shops, shoe repair, libraries, and more.

Food

thumb|right|Waiting for lunch outside a mess hall at noon on July 7, 1942

The barracks at Manzanar had no cooking areas, and all meals were served at block mess halls. Food at Manzanar was based on military requirements. Meals usually consisted of hot rice and vegetables, since meat was scarce due to rationing.

The food varied in quality, but was mostly substandard compared to the food the internees ate prior to incarceration. Togo Tanaka described how people "got sick from eating ill-prepared food." Frank Kikuchi, an internee at Manzanar, stated that some of the newspapers lied to the American public by telling them that the "Japs [in the camps] are getting steaks, chops, eggs, or eating high off the hog." Jobs included clothing and furniture manufacturing, farming and tending orchards, military manufacturing such as camouflage netting and experimental rubber, teaching, civil service jobs such as police, fire fighters, and nursing, and general service jobs operating stores, beauty parlors, and a bank.

Shortly after being interned, Togo Tanaka and Joe Masaoka were hired by anthropologist Robert Redfield as documentary historians for the camp. In addition to his work at the Manzanar Free Press, he filed hundreds of reports to the WRA that often criticized those in charge at the camp and the living conditions in the camp. It was published with both Japanese and English sections, with the Japanese section added on July 14, 1942.

The paper was originally published as four pages biweekly which were hand-typed and mimeographed. Beginning on July 22, 1942, Chiye Mori, poet and journalist, was listed as an editor.

Despite the name of the newspaper, the War Relocation Authority (WRA) controlled the content of the paper and used it to publish announcements from the camp administration, news from other camps, orders, rules and guidelines from the WRA, and upcoming camp events, in addition to the regular content. Some content was not allowed to be published. The standard content included articles about life in the camps, sports scores and coverage, coverage of the war, and so on. Lou Frizzell served as the musical director, and under his mentorship Mary Nomura became known as the "songbird of Manzanar" for her performances at dances and other camp events. Theatre performances—for internees, camp administration and WRA staff, and even for some members of the surrounding communities—included original productions by internees as well as traditional Japanese works of kabuki and noh. Teams were divided into leagues, regular seasons were established, and championship games held, drawing huge crowds of spectators. Teams included both amateur and semi-professional players. The most serious incident occurred at Manzanar on December 5–6, 1942 (with some of the actions on both sides carrying over into the following days),

Some of the tension that precipitated the riot was related to work availability and the pay of those jobs, with Nisei and members of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) getting preferential treatment. After several months of tension between those who supported the JACL and a group of Kibei (Japanese Americans educated in Japan), rumors spread that sugar and meat shortages were the result of black marketing by camp administrators. To make matters worse, JACL leader Fred Tayama was beaten by six masked men on the evening of December 5. Harry Ueno, the leader of the Kitchen Workers Union, and two others suspected of involvement, were arrested. The other two suspects were questioned and released, but Ueno was removed from Manzanar. Between two and four thousand people gathered at the meeting where they listened to speeches and chose five people to present their grievances to the camp director. The crowd decided to follow the five representatives, which caused the camp director to tell the military police to muster in order to be available to control the crowd. The five representatives demanded that Ueno be released, but the camp director did not immediately agree. At that moment, the military police fired into the crowd, killing a 17-year-old boy instantly.

100th Infantry Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team

The vanguard of Japanese American (JA) combat units was the legendary 100th Infantry Battalion (Separate) made up of soldiers in the Hawaii National Guard that was formed in June 1942. The training record of the 100th Battalion at Camp McCoy WI from June to December 1942 convinced the War Department to authorize the formation of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team (RCT) on February 1, 1943. On August 21, 1943, the 100th Battalion was deployed to Oran in North Africa. This unit became the War Department's test on whether JA soldiers could be trusted in combat when it landed in Italy in September 1943 as part of the 34th Infantry Division. The unparalleled bravery of the 100th Battalion in the first weeks of combat forever answered this question of trust, paving the way for the 442nd RCT to join them in June 1944.

Because of the 100th Battalion's sterling training record and the Varsity Victory Volunteers, a group of University of Hawaii ROTC students who received positive publicity for their volunteer civilian labor for the U.S. Army, along with many organizations and leaders in Hawaii and on the mainland lobbying the government to allow Japanese Americans to serve in the armed forces, President Roosevelt authorized the formation of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team (RCT) on February 1, 1943. When the announcement about the new unit was made, 10,000 young men in Hawaii signed up from which 2,686 were selected, and along with 1,182 from the mainland, they were sent to Camp Shelby in Mississippi for basic training in April 1943. Along with the cadre of those already in the Army, roughly 2/3 of the 442nd RCT were from Hawaii and 1/3 from the mainland.

Of the nearly 160,000 people of Japanese descent living in Hawaii in 1940, fewer than 2,000 were incarcerated compared to the mass incarceration of those on the West Coast; thus, less than 2% of the soldiers from the islands had families in the camps.

Closure

The WRA closed Manzanar when the final internee left at 11:00 a.m. on November 21, 1945. It was the sixth camp to be closed. The WRA gave each person $25 ($ today), one-way train or bus fare, and meals to those who had less than $600 ($ today).

Between 135 and 146 Japanese Americans died at Manzanar. Fifteen were buried there, but only five graves remain, as most were reburied elsewhere by their families. The Manzanar cemetery site is marked by a monument that was built by stonemason Ryozo Kado in 1943. An inscription in Kyūjitai semi-cursive script on the front (east side) of the monument reads (lit. 'Soul Consoling Tower'; Shinjitai: 慰霊塔; Hiragana: いれいとう, transliteration: ireitō).

The site also retained numerous building foundations, portions of the water and sewer systems, the outline of the road grid, some landscaping, and much more.

Preservation and remembrance

During the war, the War Relocation Authority hired photographers Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange to document through pictures the Japanese-Americans impacted by the forced relocation, including Manzanar. Togo Tanaka and Joe Masaoka were hired by anthropologist Robert Redfield as documentary historians for the camp on behalf of the WRA. It was the first official annual Manzanar Pilgrimage, though two ministers—the Reverend Sentoku Mayeda and the Reverend Shoichi Wakahiro—had been making annual pilgrimages to Manzanar since the camp closed in 1945.

In 1997, the Manzanar At Dusk program became a part of the Pilgrimage. The program attracts local area residents, as well as descendants of Manzanar's ranch days and the town of Manzanar. Through small-group discussions, the event gives participants the opportunity to hear directly from those who had been there and to talk about the relevance of what had happened at Manzanar to their own lives.

Since the September 11 attacks, American Muslims have participated in the Pilgrimage to promote and increase awareness of civil rights protections in the wake of widespread suspicions harbored against them post-9/11. A group of 150 Muslims visited in 2017, in part to compare treatment of Japanese-Americans during World War II with how Muslims are treated following the 9/11 attacks. Over 2,000 people visited the site on April 27, 2019, for the 50th anniversary of the first pilgrimage, including a number of Muslim speakers, and a group of Muslims held afternoon prayers at the monument.

Designations

The Manzanar Committee's efforts resulted in the State of California naming Manzanar as California Historical Landmark #850 in 1972, with an historical marker being placed at the sentry post on April 14, 1973. Manzanar, which had been historically owned by the City of Los Angeles, was registered as a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument in 1976. Embrey and the committee, along with California representative Mel Levine, led the effort to have Manzanar designated a National Historic Site, and on March 3, 1992, President George H. W. Bush signed House Resolution 543 into law. This act of Congress established the Manzanar National Historic Site "to provide for the protection and interpretation of the historical, cultural, and natural resources associated with the relocation of Japanese Americans during World War II." Five years later, the National Park Service acquired of land at Manzanar from the City of Los Angeles. The California State historical marker was hacked and stained, with the first "C" of "concentration camp" ground off. A man describing himself as a World War II veteran stated that he had driven 200 miles to urinate on the marker.

Monument facilities and setting

thumb|right|Monument at Manzanar cemetery, 2002

The site features a visitor center with a gift shop, housed in the historically restored Manzanar High School Auditorium with a reconstructed stage proscenium.

An "interpretive center" helps visitors gain an understanding of some of the internees' experiences. a self-guided tour road, and wayside exhibits. Staff offer guided tours and other educational programs, including a Junior Ranger educational program for children between four and fifteen years of age.

Reconstruction

Under most circumstances, the National Park Service discourages the reconstruction of structures and artifacts that are no longer extant, but allows for exceptions when "there is no alternative that would accomplish the park's interpretive mission, there is sufficient data to enable an accurate reconstruction," and "the reconstruction occurs on the original location." On the basis that these criteria were met, and after extensive discussion with the Japanese-American community, the NPS decided to proceed with a reconstruction of some elements of the original site alongside preservation of those remnants that survive. The Manzanar National Historic Site also unveiled its virtual museum on May 17, 2010.

National Park Service staff have continued to uncover artifacts from throughout Manzanar's history, the result of archaeological digs that have also excavated several of the gardens designed and built there, including the noted Merritt Park (also known as Pleasure Park). Recently completed is a classroom exhibit that is housed in the Block 9 barracks and an historic replica of the Block 9 women's latrine (opened in October 2016).

Reception of and discussion regarding Manzanar

The Manzanar site had 1,275,195 people visit from 2000 through December 2016. The National Park Service's interpretation of events and experiences has been described as both "[willing] to memorialize a shameful, unconstitutional policy" and "providing a shortcut around the unjust suffering and often insurmountable adversity imposed by the internment". They have also pointed out that the majority of accounts of the relocation published within the first few decades following the closure of the camps have been from the perspective of the WRA and the JACL.

Terminology

Since the end of World War II, there has been debate over the terminology used to refer to Manzanar and the other camps in which Americans of Japanese ancestry and their immigrant parents were incarcerated by the United States Government during the war. Manzanar has been referred to as a "War Relocation Authority center", "internment camp",

Prior to the opening of an exhibit about the American camps at Ellis Island, the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and the National Park Service, which manages Ellis Island, expressed concern regarding the use of the term "concentration camp" in the exhibit. At a meeting held at the offices of the AJC in New York City, leaders representing Japanese Americans and Jewish Americans reached an understanding about the use of the term,

In popular culture

Films and television

A made-for-television movie, Farewell to Manzanar, aired on NBC in 1976. In 2011, the Japanese American National Museum (JANM) announced that they had negotiated the rights to the movie, and that they would make it available for purchase on DVD.

The 1990 feature film Come See the Paradise detailed the forced removal and incarceration at Manzanar of a Japanese American family from Los Angeles.

In the 1984 film The Karate Kid, Mr. Miyagi opens up to his student Daniel about the dual loss of his wife and son in childbirth at the Manzanar internment camp; the actor who played Mr. Miyagi, Pat Morita, was interned for two years at Manzanar with his parents.

In Die Hard, Hans Gruber says that Joseph Takagi was interred in Manzanar from 1942 to 1943.

In the Cold Case episode "Family 8108," (s5e11) the team reopens the 1945 murder of Ray Takahashi, a Japanese-American father killed in Philadelphia shortly after his family was released from the Manzanar internment camp. A lot of scenes are set in Manzanar.

The short film, A Song for Manzanar, depicts the true story of a detainee and her struggle to remain hopeful for her son and stay in contact with her family in Hiroshima.

In "Baku", the 2018 season three episode of The Man in the High Castle TV series, Frank Frink is executed for his resistance against the Japanese occupation by Kenpeitai inspector Kido on the site of the former camp.

Music

Folk/country musician Tom Russell wrote "Manzanar", a song about the Japanese American incarceration, that was released on his album Box of Visions (1993). Laurie Lewis covered the song on her album Seeing Things (1998), adding the koto to her performance. The Asian American jazz fusion band Hiroshima has a song entitled "Manzanar", inspired by the incarceration, on its album The Bridge (2003). Hiroshima's song "Living in America", on its album titled East (1990), contains the phrase "I still remember Manzanar". Fort Minor's song "Kenji", from the album The Rising Tied (2005), tells the true story of Mike Shinoda's family including their experiences during their internment at Manzanar. The band Channel 3 recorded a song titled "Manzanar" about the incarceration. The band Cock Robin included a song titled "Manzanar" on their album First Love / Last Rites (1990).

American composer Steve Heitzeg's work "Green Hope After Black Rain (Symphony for the Survivors of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Manzanar Concentration Camp)" is a memorial to the victims of the 1945 atomic bombings of the two Japanese cities as well as the Manzanar camp. It includes percussion elements made from Hiroshima and Nagasaki trees as well as stones from Manzanar. It was premiered in 2022 by the Saint Paul Civic Symphony in Minnesota.

Literature

The 1994 novel Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson contains scenes and details relating to Japanese Americans from the state of Washington and their incarceration experiences at Manzanar. A 1999 film of the same name was based on the book. Paper Wishes, a book published in 2016 by Lois Sepahban is a book about a girl named Manami who goes to Manzanar with her family and loses her dog Yujiin, on the way.

References

Works cited

See also

External links

Manzanar Assembly Center letter and telegrams, 1942–1943 , The Bancroft Library
Manzanar Committee – official web site
Manzanar National Historic Site, National Park Service
A More Perfect Union: Japanese Americans & the U.S. Constitution (Smithsonian Institution)
Manzanar Cultural Landscape Report, Manzanar National Historic Site
Manzanar Geography of the Manzanar War Relocation Center
Claire B. Sprague Collection available at Holt-Atherton Special Collections.