Manzanar - the names of those imprisioned here
Manzanar Japanese Internment Camp – a national disgrace.
In what could be called the final phase of what journalist and historian Carey McWilliams described in 1944 as the California-Japanese War of 1900-1941, one hundred and twenty thousand Americans of Japanese descent, both citizens born here and people of foreign birth who were denied citizenship due to their ancestry, were given only days to leave their homes, their farms, and their businesses, and choose the precious few processions that they could carry with them before being rounded up on to buses and ultimately sent to ten prison camps like this one. No one was spared, including the old and infirm (Manzanar had a hospital and a cemetery), and babies and children (Manzanar had a nursery, a school, and an orphanage). American citizens were born, lived, and died behind barbed wire, for no reason but hatred by others.
As chronicled by California State Librarian Emeritus Kevin Starr in his book Embattled Dreams (the sixth of a monumental nine-volume history of California), “for nearly forty years, white California had been harassing Japanese immigrants and denigrated their culture”. With decades of anti-Japanese discrimination in California ranging from segregation in public schools, to racist laws and restrictive covenants preventing homeownership, to sidewalk beatings, to the federal Immigration Act of 1924 that banned all Japanese from immigration to the United States forever, it perhaps was no surprise that FDR would sign Executive Order 9066, setting into motion the forced internment of Japanese Americans in this and the nine other prison camps.
When I was growing up and going to school, this forced internment was given little notice in our history books, and when it was, it was usually in a dismissive tone explaining the action as an “unfortunate necessity”. Thankfully, the history books are at least a little bit more accurate today, and Manzanar has been saved to preserve the memory of our tragedy.
Manzanar - the names of those imprisioned here
Manzanar Japanese Internment Camp – a national disgrace.
In what could be called the final phase of what journalist and historian Carey McWilliams described in 1944 as the California-Japanese War of 1900-1941, one hundred and twenty thousand Americans of Japanese descent, both citizens born here and people of foreign birth who were denied citizenship due to their ancestry, were given only days to leave their homes, their farms, and their businesses, and choose the precious few processions that they could carry with them before being rounded up on to buses and ultimately sent to ten prison camps like this one. No one was spared, including the old and infirm (Manzanar had a hospital and a cemetery), and babies and children (Manzanar had a nursery, a school, and an orphanage). American citizens were born, lived, and died behind barbed wire, for no reason but hatred by others.
As chronicled by California State Librarian Emeritus Kevin Starr in his book Embattled Dreams (the sixth of a monumental nine-volume history of California), “for nearly forty years, white California had been harassing Japanese immigrants and denigrated their culture”. With decades of anti-Japanese discrimination in California ranging from segregation in public schools, to racist laws and restrictive covenants preventing homeownership, to sidewalk beatings, to the federal Immigration Act of 1924 that banned all Japanese from immigration to the United States forever, it perhaps was no surprise that FDR would sign Executive Order 9066, setting into motion the forced internment of Japanese Americans in this and the nine other prison camps.
When I was growing up and going to school, this forced internment was given little notice in our history books, and when it was, it was usually in a dismissive tone explaining the action as an “unfortunate necessity”. Thankfully, the history books are at least a little bit more accurate today, and Manzanar has been saved to preserve the memory of our tragedy.