|
- Code Number:
- CSCV01P12_06.0147
- Title:
- Manzanar War Relocation Center
- As unbeleivable as it may sound, inside the borders of the United States, a systematic rounding up of one group of ethnic americans took place. In the early part of World War II, 110,000 persons of Japanese ancestry were interned in relocation centers by the shameful Executive Order No. 9066, issued on February 19, 1942. Later this was augmented by Executive Order 9102. While some questioned the constitutionality of wholesale deportations, California Governor Culbert Olson demanded action. So did the ambitious state attorney general, who would someday become Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Earl Warren. Said DeWitt: "A Jap is a Jap." This racist order empowered Dewitt and federal agents to round up 70,000 U.S. citizens of Japanese descent and 42,000 Japanese resident aliens with little more than the clothes on their back --farmers and fishermen, old women, children, a kaleidoscope of the "subversive." They were shipped off to 10 bleak concentration camps in remote areas like Manzanar, west of Death Valley.
Manzanar, the first of these concentration camps, was bounded by barbed wire and guard towers, imprisoning 10,000 persons, the majority being american citizens. Manzanar was laid out in an efficient and austere manner. The barracks measured 120 x 20 feet and were divided into six one-room apartments, ranging in size from 320 to 480 square feet. Each block of 15 barracks shared bath, latrine, and mess buildings. The stark beauty of the the Eastern Sierra Mountains contrasted sharply with the stupidity of this unbelievable situation.
Dust storms were common at Manzanar. In this arid climate, the barracks offered little shelter from the summer heat or winter storms. At the Army "reception center," nine miles beyond Lone Pine, internees piled out. In the unfinished, tar-papered dormitories where they were to live until the end of the war, they made their beds on mattress's filled with straw.
"I was 10 years old and wearing my Cub Scout uniform when we were packed onto a train in San Jose," recalls former California Congressman Norman Mineta. "People had to just padlock and walk away from their businesses -- they lost millions. After six months in a barracks at the Santa Anita Racetrack, we were sent to Heart Mountain, Wyoming. We arrived in the middle of a blinding snowstorm, five of us children in our California clothes. When we got to our tar-paper barracks, we found sand coming in through the walls, around the windows, up through the floor."
"The camp was surrounded by barbed wire. Guards with machine guns were posted at watchtowers, with orders to shoot anyone who tried to escape. Our own government put a yoke of disloyalty around our shoulders. But throughout our ordeal, we cooperated with the government because we felt that in the long run, we could prove our citizenship."
May the injustices and humiliation suffered here as a result of hysteria, racism and economic exploitation never emerge again. Not in the United States, or anywhere else in the world. We must forever be vigilant, lest the vitriolic hatred of extremism rear its ugly head. It has happened before, and it can happen again. We must never forget especially now when we again are befallen with hysteria from people that fear and blame anything they can find as a scapegoat.
Congress established the Manzanar National Historic Site, containing 550 acres, on March 3, 1992. It is being administered by the National Park Service, under the U.S. Department of Interior. On the last Saturday of April each year, there is an annual pilgramage to the site of Manzanar which honors those who were imprisoned there and the nine other concentration camps. It is organized by the Manzanar Committee, c/o Sue Kunitomi Embrey, 1566 Curran Street, Los Angeles, California 90026-2036 (213) 662-5102.
- Keywords:
-
Manzanar War Relocation Center, Concentration Camp, California, Southern California, Architecture, Travel, Scenics, Structure, American, USA
- Image by:
- Wernher Krutein
|
