Manzanar Stands on Highway 395 as an Important Lesson to This Day

Manzanar National Historic Site sits along the 395 as an important reminder of one of the United States’ greatest failures.

During World War II, Manaznar was one of several internment camps for Japanese-Americans where roughly 120,000 people, about 2/3 of which were American citizens, were forcibly relocated and incarcerated. Over 100,000 people were forced to abandon their homes, their properties, and their businesses to be isolated in the wilderness. This was due to a prevailing belief that immigrants who left their home nation, or rather their children and grandchildren in many cases, could still be loyal to it against the U.S. in the war.

This attitude was not helped by popular media personalities, like cartoonist Theodor “Dr. Seuss” Giesel, a forward-thinking man who would draw comics supporting that Black workers be hired in “white” factories, but then portrayed the Japanese- Americans as spies and saboteurs waiting for the command to strike. He would depict white Americans as needing to be cured of the mental disease of racial prejudice, then draw the Japanese with the racist stereotype of being slant-eyed, bucktoothed goblins.

Manzanar remains an important lesson to Americans. We took the same terrible first steps that Nazi Germany did, turning against our fellow citizens and declaring them “outsiders” needing to be removed for our safety and prosperity. While the U.S. wasn’t motivated by the same violent insanity that ultimately led to the Holocaust, we still harmed a substantial number of innocent people through fear and bigotry.

It is easy to find Manzanar — you drive the 395 between Independence and Lone Pine. It is a dusty ghost town in the middle of nowhere, along the highway, where 10,000 people lived in roughly a square-mile facility, surrounded by barbed wire and eight guard towers. There were 36 blocks, each divided into 14 residential barracks, with a mess hall opposite a recreation hall, and other assorted facilities like laundries and toilets. Ninety percent of Manzanar’s inmates came from the Los Angeles area.

In their rush to detain people as quickly as possible, Manzanar was unfinished when it opened. Two blocks were incomplete, producing crowding in the barracks, where a dozen people would share a 20-by- 25-foot room. Over a dozen mess halls lacked plumbing and kitchen gear, resulting in half-hour waits for 300 people in a line. Sewers were incomplete, water was contaminated, and improvements fell to the inmates, who would partition larger rooms into smaller ones, and planted gardens and landscaped their prison to improve morale and keep the dust down.

The famous white obelisk in the cemetery at Manzanar. The cemetery still holds the remains of the first person to die at the camp, but most of the remains have been transferred to other final resting places. PHOTO BY ANDREW L. BERGMAN, THE DAILY INDEPENDENT

Manzanar National Historic Site serves as a reminder of a dark chapter that it may never be repeated. PHOTO BY ANDREW L. BERGMAN, THE DAILY INDEPENDENT

The camp was closed in 1945; the inmates were given $25 and a bus ticket to any destination. Some had to be forcibly removed since they lost everything they owned before internment and had put down roots in their forced community. Aside from the cemetery, sentry shacks, and high school auditorium, the rest of Manzanar was torn down in an attempt to bury and forget the camp. In 1969, a non-profit group known as the Manzanar Committee started the annual Manzanar Pilgrimage to keep the memory alive, eventually leading to its restoration and designation as a National Historic Site in 1992.

The Manzanar park is open from sunrise to sunset. The camp is located at 4,000 feet above sea level, with extreme heat in the summer and very low temperatures in winter. High winds are also common. There are few amenities available; guests should bring their own water and toiletries and should dispose of their own trash. There are no admission or entry fees.

Guests may ask any questions they have of the available ranger in the visitors center. Inside there are many exhibits covering the history of the internment camp, from the racism experienced by Japanese-Americans to daily meals within the barbed wire. An amazing miniature model of the camp is on display, as well as a large wall with the names of everyone who was imprisoned at Manzanar. A replica barrack was constructed allowing guests to see what the living spaces were like, with a special attention to how children survived in the camp. A short film called “Remembering Manzanar” can be seen at the visitor center or online at Youtube.

There is also a three-mile auto tour around the camp. Two of the barracks have been reconstructed, and there are Japanese gardens and orchards to visit. Behind the camp is the cemetery, which maintains the famous monument: a white obelisk bearing the Kanji characters “I REI TO” (“soul-consoling tower”) on the front. Most of the remains in the cemetery have been removed, but a few are still buried at the location, in particular Matsunosuke Murakami, the first person to die at Manzanar.

Manzanar is not a destination for fun. It is a lesson in bigotry and callousness that must be remembered and learned from so that it is never repeated. American Muslims joined the Manzanar Pilgrimage after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, suffering similar discrimination in the wake of another foreign attack on the United States. Together they reminded a furious, wounded nation that injustice cannot be permitted as an answer for injustice.