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WWII - Manzanar Beginnings - 1942
MANZANAR RINGO-EN |
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Manzanar War Authority Relocation Center - Manzanar, CA - 1943 |
03/24
All
Manzanar photographs are from the National Archives Registry
unless otherwise noted.
Copies of these pictures can be obtained
directly from the
National Archives.
These images are some of my favorite. There nearly 500 Manzanar
internment images in the National Archives files. I encourage
you to visit the archives and peruse the many photographs. Once
you click on the icon above and are taken to the archives, type
in "Manzanar" and then press "Display Results"
and the images will be displayed in sets of nine.
You might observe, as I did, that the internees appear rather
unnaturally joyous in these pictures. I don't think that having
been dislocated from their homes and businesses, forced to live
in a harsh desert environment and confined to barracks with no
insulation would have made them this happy. But as Jeanne Wakatsuki
points out in her book, Farewell to Manzanar, Japanese
Americans told each other very quietly to "Shikata ga
nai" ("It must be done", or, as my Japanese
friend says, "Suck it up [and get on with life]." Perhaps
this is what encouraged them to put a smile on their face.
Text excerpts followed
by a "JWH" are from Jeanne
Wakatsuki Houston & James D. Houston's book "Farewell
to Manzanar"
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Concentration Camp / Internment Camp / Relocation Center? |
Describing Manzanar and the others as "concentration camps"
conjures horrible images of the ovens of Dachau under the Nazis,
or the Soviet Gulag in Siberia. As bad as they were, the American
concentration camps never approached the horrifying conditions
of the camps in Europe. There were no gas chambers or medical
"experiments" at Manzanar or the other American camps.
There were no attempts to work prisoners to death.
In fact, the food and the medical care at Manzanar were better
than adequate, in large measure because the Nisei were
given the opportunity to provide for themselves.
There was one other difference separating the American concentration
camps from the European camps. In most instances, families were
kept together. The Nisei prized the institution of the
family. It may be this difference, more than all others that
allowed them to survive and prosper under very difficult circumstances. |
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Manzanar
By Tom Russell
(Sung by Tom Paxton)
He said, My name is Nakashimau
I am a proud American.
I came here in '27,
From my homeland of Japan.
And I picked your grapes and oranges,
Saved some money, bought a store.
Until 1942,
Pearl Harbor, and the War.
Came the relocation orders,
They took our house, the store, the car,
And they drove us through the desert,
To a place called Manzanar.
A Spanish word for apple orchards,
Though we saw no apple trees.
Just the rows of prison barracks,
With the barbed wire boundaries.
Chorus:
And we dream of apple blossoms
Waving free beneath the stars,
Till we wake up in the desert,
The prisoners of Manzanar,
Manzanar.
Fifty years have all but vanished,
And now I am an old man.
But I don't regret the day
That I came here from Japan.
But on moonless winter nights,
I often wish upon a star,
That I'd forget the shame and sorrow,
That I felt at Manzanar.
Chorus
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Barracks Construction - 1942
A contingent of military police at the Manzanar Assembly Center. This “assembly center” was later converted into a permanent “relocation center.” |
The Barracks - Tar
Paper and Boards |
The
barracks at Manzanar were constructed of quarter-inch boards
over a wooden frame, the outsides of which were covered with
tar paper nailed to the roof and walls with batten boards. Heat
was provided by oil-burning furnaces. This was the cheapest,
quickest way to provide living quarters slightly better than
tents. At Manzanar, the cost of this construction was $3,507,018,
or $376 per inmate.
According to army regulations, this type of housing was suitable
only for combat-trained soldiers, and then only on a temporary
basis. The army called this "theater of operations"
housing. But at Manzanar and the other camps, these barracks
were used as long-term housing for men, women, and children --
who stayed in them for up to three and a half years.
In many ways, Questions and answers for Evacuees glossed
over, in soothing bureaucratic language, the ramifications of
the Nisei's evacuation and the circumstances they would
encounter in the camps. The booklet was fairly accurate, however,
when it warned the Nisei to be prepared for temperatures
varying from "freezing in winter to 115 degrees in...the
summer." Manzanar provided both of those extremes, plus
wind that whipped the snow across the desert in the winter, and
dust in the spring, summer, and fall. Among all the camps, the
extremes of temperatures endured by the Nisei ranged from 130
degrees in Poston, Arizona, to minus thirty degrees in Heart
Mountain, Wyoming. |
(excerpts from Farewell to Manzanar)
The Barracks
"Each barracks was divided into six units, sixteen by twenty
feet, about the size of a living room, with one bare bulb hanging
from the ceiling and an oil stove for heat. We were assigned
two of these for the twelve people in our family group; and our
official family 'number' was enlarged by three digits - 16 plus
the number of this barracks. We were issued steel army cots,
two brown army blankets each, and some mattress covers, which
my brothers stuffed with straw.
The people who had it hardest during the first few months were
young couples, many of whom had married just before the evacuation
began, in order not to be separated and sent to different camps.
Our two rooms were crowded, but at least it was all in the family.
My oldest sister and her husband were shoved into one o those
sixteen-by-twenty-foot compartments with six people they had
never seen before - two other couples, one recently married like
themselves, the other with two teenage boys. Partitioning off
a room like that wasn't easy. It was bitter cold when we arrived,
and the wind did not abate. All they had to use for room dividers
were those army blankets, two of which were barely enough to
keep one person warm. They argued over whose blanket should be
sacrificed and later argued about noise at night - the parents
wanted their boys asleep by 9:00 p.m. - and they continued arguing
over matters like that for six months, until my sister and her
husband left to harvest sugar beets in Idaho. It was grueling
work up there, and wages were pitiful, but when the call came
through camp for workers to alleviate the wartime labor shortage,
it sounded better than their life at Manzanar. They knew they'd
have, if nothing else, a room, perhaps a cabin of their own."
(JWH)
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THE
NISEI
Who were the people brought to Manzanar at gunpoint?
They shared only one common characteristic: "a Japanese
ancestor in any degree."
Two-thirds were first-generation American citizens. They lived
in American cities, attended American schools, and thought of
themselves as Americans. That belief was sorely tested when,
by order of President Roosevelt -- an order carried out by General
John L. DeWitt, West Coast Commander, and his subordinates --
they were removed from their homes, schools, and businesses,
and brought to Manzanar and nine other camps like it. The first-generation
Japanese Americans were called, in Japanese, Nisei.
A few were second-generation Americans, called Sansei.
Neither they nor their parents had ever known any other life
than their life in the United States.
Almost a third of the prisoners were Japanese citizens, resident
aliens by definition of the U.S. immigration law. They were called Issei. All of this group had lived in the United States
at least eighteen years, since American borders were closed to
Japanese immigrants in 1924. All had been specifically barred
from applying for American citizenship. The right to become an
American citizen was not allowed to the Japanese until 1952,
when quotas were introduced.
Because the Issei would have become American citizens,
given the opportunity, the Issei and the Sansei are sometimes described generically as Nikkei.
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The
Nisei's Fate
The numbers alone tell an important part of the internment story.
Only 1,875 Nisei from Hawaii, each individually identified
as a possible threat to the security of the United States, were
interned. The rest of the 120,000 prisoners were from the mainland.
Manzanar was the first of ten camps to open. The following list
identifies all the camps, their first and last days of operation,
and the maximum number of prisoners held at any time in each
- and offers a stark picture of the Nisei's fate:
Gila
River, Arizona
Granada, Colorado
Heart Mountain, Wyoming
Jerome, Arkansas
Manzanar, California
Minidoka, California
Poston, Arizona
Rohwer, Arkansas
Topaz, Utah
Tule Lake, California |
Aug.
'42 - Nov. '45
Sept. '42 - Oct. '45
Sept. '42 - Nov. '45
Nov. '42 - June '44
June '41 - Nov. '45
Sept. '42 - Oct. '45
June '42 - Nov. '45
Oct. '42 - Nov. '45
Oct. '42 - Oct. '45
June'42 - Mar. '46
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13,400
7,600
11,100
8,600
10,200
9,990
18,000
8,500
8,300
18,800 |
Total
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114,490 |
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Completed Barracks
(excerpts from Farewell to Manzanar)
" In
Spanish, Manzanar means 'apple orchard.' Great stretches of Owens
Valley were once green with orchards
and alfalfa fields. It has been a desert ever since its water
started flowing south into Los Angeles, sometime during the
twenties. But a few rows of untended pear and apple trees were
still growing there when the camp opened, where a shallow water
table had kept them alive. In the spring of 1943 we moved to
Block 28, right up next to one of the old pear orchards. That's
where we stayed until the end of the war, and those trees stand
in my memory for the turning of our life in camp, from the outrageous
to the tolerable." (JWH)
"It seems so comical, looking back; we were a band of Charlie
Chaplin's marooned in the California desert. But at the time,
it was pure chaos. That's the only way to describe it. The evacuation
had been so hurriedly planned, the camps so hastily thrown together,
nothing was completed when we got there, and almost nothing worked.
The kitchens were too small and badly ventilated. Food would
spoil from being left out too long. That summer [1941], when
the heat got fierce, it would spoil faster. The refrigeration
kept breaking down. The cooks, in many cases, had never cooked
before
The first chef in our block had been a gardener all his life
and suddenly found himself preparing three meals a day for 250
people.
'The Manzanar runs' became a condition of life, and you only
hoped that when you rushed to the latrine, one would be in working
order." (JWH)
"Inside it [the latrine] was like all the other latrines.
Each block was built to the same design, just as each of the
ten camps, from California to Arkansas, was built to a common
master plan. It was an open room, over a concrete slab. The sink
was a long metal trough against one wall, with a row of spigots
for hot and cold water. Down the center of the room twelve toilet
bowls were arranged in six pairs, back to back, with no partitions.
My mother was a very modest person, and this was going to be
agony for her, sitting down in public, among strangers.
Like so many of the women there, Mama never did get used to the
latrines. It was a humiliation she just learned to endure: shikata
ga nai, this cannot b helped. She would quickly subordinate
her own desires to those of the family or the community, because
she knew cooperation was the only way to survive. At the same
time she placed a high premium on personal privacy, respected
it in others and insisted upon it for herself. Almost everyone
at Manzanar had inherited this pair of traits from the generations
before them who had learned to live in a small, crowded country
like Japan. Because of the first they were able to take a desolate
stretch of wasteland and gradually make it livable. But the entire
situation there, especially in the beginning - the packed sleeping
quarters, the communal mess halls, the open toilets - all this
was an open insult to that other, private self, a slap in the
face you were powerless to challenge" (JWH)
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(excerpts from Farewell to Manzanar)
The
name Manzanar meant nothing to us when we left Boyle Heights.
We didn't know where it was or what it was. We went because the
government ordered us to. And, in the case of my older brothers
and sisters, we went with a certain amount of relief. They had
all heard stories of Japanese homes being attached, of beatings
in the streets of California towns. They were as frightened of
the Caucasians as Caucasians were of us. Moving, under what appeared
to be government protection, to an area less directly threatened
by the war seemed not such a bad idea at all. For some it actually
sounded like a fine adventure." (JWH)
"I
had never been outside Los Angeles County, never traveled more
than ten miles from the coast, had never even ridden on a bus.
I was full of excitement, the way any kid would be, and wanted
to look out the window. But for the first few hours the shades
were drawn. Around me other people played cards, read magazines,
dozed, waiting. I settled back, waiting too, and finally fell
asleep. The bus felt very secure to me. Almost half its passengers
were immediate relatives. Mama and my older brothers had succeeded
in keeping most of us together, on the same bus, headed for the
same camp. I didn't realize until much later what a job that
was. The strategy had been, first,to have everyone living in
the same district when the evacuation began, and then to get
all of us included under the same family number, even though
names had been changed by marriage. Many families weren't as
luck as ours ad suffered months of anguish while trying to arrange
transfers from one camp to another." (JWH)
"We
woke up early, shivering and coated with dust that had blown
up through the knotholes and in through the slits around the
doorway. During the night Mama had unpacked all our clothes and
heaped them on our beds for warmth. Now our cubicle looked as
if a great laundry bag had exploded and then been sprayed with
fine dust. A skin of sand covered the floor. " (JWH)
"My
days spent in classrooms are largely a blur now, as one merges
into another. What I see clearly is the face of my fourth-grade
teacher - a pleasant face, but completely invulnerable, it seemed
to me at the time, with sharp, commanding eyes. She came from
Kentucky. She wore wedgies, loose slacks, and sweaters that were
too short in the sleeves. A tall, heavyset spinster, about forty
years old, she always wore a scarf on her head, tied beneath
the chin, even during class, and she spoke with a slow, careful
Appalachian accent. She was probably the best teacher I've ever
had - strict, fair-minded, dedicated to her job. Because of her,
when we finally returned to the outside world I was, academically
at least, more than prepared to keep up with my peers" (JWH)
A
young woman came in, a friend of Chizu's, who lived across the
way. She had studied in Japan for several years. About the time
I went to bed she and Papa began to sing songs in Japanese, warming
their hands on either side of the stove, facing each other in
its glow. After a while Papa sang the first line of the Japanese
national anthem, Kimi ga yo. Woody, Chizu, and Mama knew
the tune, so they hummed along while Papa and the other woman
sang the words. It can be a hearty or a plaintive tune, depending
on your mood. From Papa, that night, it was a deep-throated lament.
Almost invisible in the stove's small glow, tears began running
down his face.
It is not a martial song, or a victory song, the way many national
anthems are. It is really a poem, whose words go back to the
ninth century:
Kimi
ga you wa chiyoni
yachiyoni sa-za-re i-shi no i-wa-o to
na-ri-te ko-ke no musu made.
May thy peaceful reign last long.
May it last for thousands of years,
Until this tiny stone will grow
Into a massive rock, and the moss
Will cover it deep and thick"
(JWH)
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Destination - Manzanar War Relocation Authority Center
(excerpts from Farewell to Manzanar)
For
all the pain it caused, the loyalty oath finally did speed up
the relocation program. One result was a gradual easing of the
congestion in the barracks.
In Block 28 we doubled our living space - four rooms for the
twelve of us. Ray and Woody walled them with sheetrock. We had
ceilings this time, and linoleum floors of solid maroon. You
had three colors to choose from - maroon, black, and forest green
- and there was plenty of it around by this time. Some families
would vie with on another for the most elegant floor designs,
obtaining a roll of each color from the supply shed, cutting
it into diamonds, squares, or triangles, shining it with heating
oil, then leaving their doors open so that passers-by could admire
the handiwork." (JWH)
[Papa]
painted watercolors. Until this time I had not known he could
paint. He loved to sketch the mountains. If anything made that
country habitable it was the mountains themselves, purple when
the sun dropped and so sharply etched in the morning light the
granite dazzled almost more than the bright snow lacing it. The
nearest peaks rose ten thousand feet higher than the valley floor,
with Whitney, the highest, just off to the south. They were important
for all of us, but especially for the Issei. Whitney reminded
Papa of Fujiyama, that is, it gave him the same kind of spiritual
sustenance. The tremendous beauty of those peaks was inspirational,
as so many natural forms are to the Japanese (the rocks outside
our doorway could be those mountains in miniature). They also
represented those forces in nature, those powerful and inevitable
forces that cannot be resisted, reminding a man that sometimes
he must simply endure that which cannot be changed." (JWH)
As
the months at Manzanar turned to years, it became a world unto
itself, with its own logic and familiar ways. In time, staying
there seemed far simpler than moving once again to another, unknown
place. It was as if the war were forgotten, our reason for being
there forgotten.
The fact that America had accused us, or excluded us, or imprisoned
us, or whatever it might be called, did not change the kind of
world we wanted. Most of us were born in this country; we had
no other models. Those parks and gardens lent it an oriental
character, but in most ways it was a totally equipped American
small town, complete with schools, churches, Boy Scouts, beauty
parlors, neighborhood gossip, fire and police departments, glee
clubs, softball leagues, Abbott and Costello movies, tennis courts,
and traveling shows. (I still remember an Indian who turned up
one Saturday billing himself as a Sioux chief, wearing bear claws
and head feathers. In the firebreak he sang songs and danced
his tribal dances while hundreds of us watched.)" (JWH) |
My
sister Lillian was in high school and singing with a hillbilly
band called 'The Sierra Stars' - jeans, cowboy hats, two guitars,
and a tub bass. And my oldest brother, Bill, led a dance band
called 'The Jive Bombers' - brass and rhythm, with cardboard
fold-out music stands lettered J.B. Dances were held every weekend
in one of the recreational halls. Bill played trumpet and took
vocals on Glenn Miller arrangements of such tunes as In the
Mood, String of Pearls, and Don't Fence Me
In. He didn't sing Don't Fence Me In out of protest, as
if trying quietly to mock the authorities. It just happened to
be a hit song one year, and they all wanted to be an up-to-date
American swing band. They would blast it out into recreation
barracks full of bobby-soxed, jitter-bugging couples:
Oh, give me land, lots of land
Under starry skies above,
Don't fence me in.
Let me ride through the wide
Open country that I love....
Pictures of the band, in their bow ties and jackets, appeared
in the high school yearbook for 1943-1944, along with pictures
of just about everything else in camp that year. It was called Our
World." (JWH) |
JoAnne Keiko
Masuoka Serran of Union City, California writes. |
Ray,
My parents were interned at Manzanar. Edward Fumio Masuoka and
Ruth Fujiko Murata Masuoka. They met in San Francisco after being released from camp. Both are
deceased now. Unfortunately, they spoke very little about their life at Manzanar. After reading
an excerpt of "Farewell to Manzanar" it perked my interest and now I wish I knew more about their
life in camp. What little they did tell me was not the same as what I read in the excerpt. I realize
that I read a small portion of the story; however, I will read as many stories as I can about camp
life.
JoAnne Keiko Masuoka Serran (Sansei) - October 2002. |
Japanese Americans
on the train to Manzanar just north of Lone Pine.
(Richard Osamu Wada, child; Kimiyo Wada, grandmother)
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Stone wall work
built at Manzanar in 1942 by Ligaya Wada's grandfather.
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Stone wall work
built at Manzanar in 1942 by Ligaya Wada's grandfather.
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Dear
Ray,
I just wanted to thank you for sharing your website to everyone.
The two pictures [just to the right of the NARA photo, above]
were taken by my father's [the young boy in the picture above]
good friend when he visited Manzanar last summer (2001). I forwarded
the pictures to my Uncle (my father's older brother) and he stated
that my grandfather was a foreman of a garden crew which made
the stoneware pictured. My Uncle was never aware of this stoneware
until about 20 or so years ago when there was an article in the
Oakland Tribune about Manzanar. I was so touched to know that
MY grandfather left his name behind with history.
My
father's (the young boy in the above picture) name is Richard Osamu Wada.
My grandmother's (pictured above) name is Kimiyo Wada. Her maiden
name was Uyenoyama (which means mountain). She was married to
Bunyomon Wada at the time of the internment.
That's when I started surfing the internet to learn more about
Manzanar. If it wasn't for your website, I would have never found
the picture of my father (when he was two years old) and my grandmother
[pictured above left]. Thanks to your information I was able
to order a handful of the pictures and give them as gifts to
my mother, uncle,sister and brother.
I received the pictures the other day (Sept. 2002) and I was
in tears when I was looking at them. I wish my father and grandmother
were still alive to see the beautiful picture of them. My father
came from a poor family, so they didn't have a camera while he
was growing up. So it's been especially touching, since I know
now what my father looked like as a toddler.
I hope I'm not the only one you have touched so deeply. Thank
you so much again for sharing your beautiful website. If it wasn't
for your website, I don't think I would have ever known this
picture existed. May God bless your soul. I will forever be grateful.
Ligaya Wada
Wada
Family (1975) |
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Ligaya
Wada |
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Ligaya and her sister |
L
to R: Richard Wada (Ligaya's father), Florence Lida, George Wada,
Grandma, Roy Wada, and Mary Yoshioka.
[photos courtesy of Ligaya and George Wada]
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