Manzanar

Manzanar National Historic Site

11. 5.16

Visiting Manzanar is a very heavy experience.  The National Park Service has done an amazing job of preserving this horrific history and setting up exhibits that allow visitors to learn about what Japanese Americans went through before, during, and after internment.  It also encourages people to learn from our past and the mistakes we have made, so that we can prevent anything so awful from happening again.
 - Ellie (with a little help from Mom)


We listened to the audio book "Farewell to Manzanar," while driving there, finishing the book after our tour.  It was amazing to be in the places Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston wrote about. Talk about a book coming to life.  The rest of the text in this post is taken from Brie's journal.  You'll see Jeanne's experiences woven into Brie's description of Manzanar.

Here is a link to a wonderful 5 minute interview with Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeJrTHPIxYA

From Brie's journal:

Manzanar was the first internment camp where Japanese Americans were kept.  They had been unconstitutionally rounded up by the United States and were kept there until WWII was over.  After the war, they were forced out of the camp to...I don't know... cope with the fact that their houses were gone, their cars had been reposessed, and the belongings they had stored had been stolen.  I don't know why some didn't want to leave (said sarcastically).

Many Japanese people thought that they were being taken so that they would be safe from attacks of angry white people... at least, that's what they'd been told. One man said, "I thought we were being protected, until I realized the soldiers' guns weren't facing out.  They were facing in."

Their new homes were tar paper shacks.  Dust blew through cracks in the wooden planks, and everyone was covered in the dust.  Jeanne said she and her brother laughed at each other's white eyebrows.  When people arrived, they were given a sack to fill with straw.  That...was their mattress.  We sat on one... It was SO uncomfortable.

(There was an audio story about a family who was filling their sacks together, a feeling of confusion and sadness in the air.  The older brother joked, "Now we'll be like Baby Jesus, 'asleep on the hay'!"  Everyone laughed, and the mood was lightened. Thank God for humor and good attitudes in the midst of struggle.)

Everyone was given a cubicle to live in.  I think it was 4 cubicles in one barrack.  The room we were in was teeny.  That room was an example of what their shacks were.  There were 14 barracks in each block, and a mess hall. 

They had to wait in long lines for their meals.  The food was bad.  First, they were given peaches on rice.  The Japanese never ate sweet foods with rice.  To them, that meal was inedible.  Eventually, people would hear, "There's a great chef on Block 20!" (and other blocks of course).  Some folks would walk a ways to find the good chef, and those good chefs loved their long lines!

   

Oh the latrines!  There was no privacy.  Inside, there was nothing around the toilets.  They were all just in the open, right next to each other.  Jeanne remembered that an older lady had brought in cardboard to be a makeshift wall for her seat.  Jeanne and her mother were wondering what to do.  This was a humiliating situation for them. The older lady offered her cardboard to Jeanne's mother.  She was so grateful.  Sometimes the latrines wouldn't work, and they'd spew.  Then you'd have to walk a long time to find one that worked.  Between the strange food and the unsanitary conditions, many people became sick.  But the worst thing was that it was hard to maintain any dignity. 

Manzanar was not ready for its new occupants.  The camp actually had not been completed before the internees arrived.  So the military hadn't meant for the Japanese people to live like that.  But, they let them live like that for I think two years before putting in linoleum flooring and dry wall and making things better.  People made their own beautiful furniture out of crates and created beautiful art like flowers made of paper or seashells.

Eventually, Manzanar became quite a town, with their own school and sports teams.  People took judo lessons, sang in a choir, or took baton twirling lessons. The beautiful Sierra Nevadas rise up behind the camp.  Jeanne's papa would look at them to "fill his soul." Some men who had been professional gardeners made beautiful gardens.  The biggest was originally called Pleasure Park.  Jeanne said that at the park, with its lovely wooden bridges, streams of water, and people picnicking, "You could face away from the barracks, look past a tiny rapids toward the darkening mountains, and for a while not be a prisoner at all.  You could hang suspended in some odd, almost lovely land you could not escape from yet almost didn't want to leave."

Not much is left from this historic place.  There are signs marking where barracks, mess halls, the orphanage, and other places used to stand.  When Jeanne visited with her family, there was nothing at all, except for concrete slabs where the latrines and barracks used to be... and a stepping stone.

Now there is a visitor center, signs, two barracks (one representing what they looked like when internees first arrived; one representing what they were like about two years later), a mess hall, bridges, a graveyard with a tall, white memorial... and a lot to learn.

One of the things we learned about was how many of these Nisei (First generation American citizens, born in the U.S.  Their parents were "Issei," who had immigrated from Japan and could not become citizens.) fought in World War II.  Jadan and I were just talking about how ridiculous it is that those Americans supported the country that had imprisoned them...and that country was their own.  And yet, when these heroes returned home to the U.S., many were treated with disgust.  Oh my word!  I'm getting an anger cloud.

Little is left of Manzanar, and at times I think it is desolately alone, like the dry desert it's in.  But it is no longer forgotten.  Every year a festival is held there, and people gather together to remember.

The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 was passed, issuing a formal apology to the internees and granting each surviving internee about $20,000 in reparations. Ronald Reagan (although he had opposed the legislation) said that the country had done wrong and money would be given to those who had been in the camps.  George Bush sent the reparation checks from 1990-1993 along with sincere apology letters to them.  Many were and still are bitter about the internment... which is not surprising... and about the money and letters, but Miho Sumi Shiroishi "felt as though the shame of all these years had been lifted, and I was able to talk about the experience with much more ease.  This letter of apology has meant a great deal to me, more than anyone can imagine."

In the visitor center and on memorials in Manzanar "May it never happen again" is a much-used sentence.  We need to remember the amazing people who went through such pain.  It could have been you or me. It was based on race.  They had strength, and they made a beautiful place within their prison.

May it never happen again.



This link will take you to an AMAZING virtual museum exhibit.  Totally worth taking time to explore and learn:

https://www.nps.gov/museum/exhibits/manz/index.html