We decided to take a little detour on our drive from Death Valley to Joshua Tree to visit Manzanar. This was one of the ten camps where Japanese American citizens and resident Japanese aliens were incarcerated during WWII — starting in 1942, following Roosevelt’s signing of Executive Order 9066 (authorizing the creation of military areas to house Japanese people who were living in areas seen as a threat to the war effort) and not ending until 1945. We had previously been to one of the other camps (Minidoka), but we wanted to remind ourselves of what we, as a country, have been (and are) capable of out of fear. As with our previous visit, it was a cold dose of reality. It is easy to look at camps like Minidoka and then think about the camps along the Southern border today. In both cases, fear was amplified by the government and drastic overreaction was undertaken. I think everyone would benefit from visiting places like this. It’s not a dramatization; it’s real life. And it is both horrifying and depressing to see how much innocent people lost and how they were treated. It’s somewhat ironic to me that the town adjacent to the camp is Independence. I should note though, that unlike Minidoka, the buildings here are recreations. At the end of the war, the government sold off all the buildings for scrap lumber and sold the land for cents on the dollar.
This is part of a series called 40th Anniversary Roadtrip
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The government said that they were protecting the Japanese and providing them housing. So why the guard towers and barbed wire? When you can’t leave — despite your constitutional rights — it’s incarceration.
Unfortunately, we hear a lot of these sentiments today, focused on people of color, different religions, or national origins. Despite being citizens, hateful speech and rhetoric can whip people up and have them do some pretty horrible things.
This was the layout for the camp. This is what housing 10,000 people looks like. Today we do it in old strip malls, although I understand a major tent city is in the works.
… including in the latrine. What I can’t figure out is why they had all the windows. BTW, I should note that this was also a challenge in another way. Everyone here was treated exactly the same — wealthy business owners and field workers. After all, they were all Japanese.
One of the things that was striking was that despite the misery, many of the barracks blocks competed with each other to build the best gardens and ponds. At some level, this was about creating something of beauty that could bring some calmness in your life. It also was a silent means of protest.