Dark Era Remembered
by Sam Stanton
|
Pictures by Paul Kitagaki Jr. , story by Sam Stanton (Sacramento Bee Staff Writer). Thanks to Sam Stanton & the SacBee for allowing me to add this to my website. |
 |
|
Sacramento resident R.M. Cowell
had an answer to "this Japanese question" that engulfed
the nation in the opening days of World War II. It should be handled "the same as our automobile tires," Cowell wrote in a February 1942 letter to The Bee. "If you have apparently good tires but are not sure of one of them, you will put it where it will be the safest for you - on the spare. I think we have many thousands of acres of spare land in the interior of our country away from seaports and manufacturing centers where these aliens will be useful and satisfied." And that's what the government did, eventually moving about 120,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese nationals to 10 "War Relocation Centers" in isolated areas of the United States because of fears of sabotage. |
|
| In years since, the move has been
denounced by historians and American leaders as illegal and shameful;
and Saturday, surviving residents of one of the camps will gather
in the Owens Valley in east-central California to remember their
wartime hardships and celebrate the opening of a new National
Park Service museum dedicated to the memory of that era. The Manzanar National Historic Site Interpretive Center features 8,000 square feet of exhibits devoted to a history of the camp, as well as two movie theaters featuring a film history narrated by former internees, guards and camp workers. "It's important that we have a living history so people don't forget," said Sue Kunitomi Embrey, an 81-year-old Los Angeles woman who spent a year and a half living at the Manzanar internment camp during the war. "It's especially important now with what's happening in Iraq and with a lot of the Middle Easterners being scrutinized by the FBI or being held at Guantánamo Bay with no charges and no way to get an attorney," Embrey said. |
||
| "That's what happened to our parents.
They were held for months and years without any reason except
that they were enemy aliens." Embrey is part of a group that has worked for years organizing annual treks to the site to see that Manzanar is not forgotten; she will be one of the featured speakers at Saturday's grand opening. Manzanar opened in 1942 along an isolated section of U.S. Highway 395 south of Bishop, and eventually comprised 800 buildings, including schools, mess halls and wood-framed barracks. At its peak in September 1942, the camp housed 10,046 internees. By spring 1945, as World War II wound to a close, its population had dropped below 5,300, according to the National Park Service. Most of the camp's original buildings and features were sold and carted away long ago. |
|
|
| The museum is in an original building,
an auditorium built by internees in 1944. Guard shacks built
by camp residents also remain, as do barracks, a cemetery and
some roads. Officials hope the museum will spark newfound interest in the area, which was established as a national historic site in 1992 and received $5.1 million in federal funding four years ago to establish the museum. Last year, about 57,000 people visited Manzanar, said Superintendent Frank Hays. With the advent of the museum, officials hope more than 250,000 people will visit annually. About 1,000 people are expected for Saturday's ceremonies, including Masahiro Nakajo, a 76-year-old resident of Sacramento's Pocket area and a retired mechanic and landscaper. On March 28, 1942, Nakajo and his parents were sent to the camp from their Los Angeles home; he plans to attend the opening with his wife and other family members, including grandchildren. Like many former internees, Nakajo for years did not speak of his experiences in the camp, until prodded by grandchildren to recount what life had been like and what sacrifices they had made. "My father said, 'It looks like we're going to get ready to evacuate,' " Nakajo recalled. " 'The government's going to take us somewhere.' " Each family member was allowed to bring one bag of possessions, and they had to decide quickly what those would be. "All I heard was that it's the desert and there's a lot of rattlesnakes out there," he said. "So I knew I'd better have high-top boots. "And I knew it would be cold." The government's decision to send people of Japanese descent to the camps was renounced years ago, and lawmakers eventually approved payments of $20,000 to each surviving internee. But at the time, in the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, there were widespread fears that Japanese citizens living in the United States and American citizens of Japanese heritage might pose security risks, especially on the West Coast. |
||
|
In news accounts stunningly similar to reports
today on the possibility of terrorist attacks, officials warned
that water systems, defense plants and other infrastructure were
threatened by "Fifth Column" agents of Japanese Americans
bent on sabotage. The FBI made sweeps of Japanese neighborhoods, arresting suspects and seizing radios, weapons and ammunition. One raid in February 1942 in Sacramento and the surrounding area netted 112 arrests, according to a Bee account, including suspects "considered to be dangerous to the welfare of the United States." Eventually, officials created a restricted zone along the coast where Japanese, Italian and German nationals were required to stay within five miles of their homes and to abide by a 9 p.m. curfew. |
|
| Soon after, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered
the internment of Japanese and Japanese Americans living in areas
where there were concerns about sabotage; approximately 120,000
people were dispersed to 10 camps around the country. Nakajo remembers Manzanar as a place of extreme boredom and isolation. He held a series of jobs in the camp that paid $16 monthly, and he spent his earnings ordering luxuries such as corduroy pants from Sears and other catalogs. Occasionally, he would slip through the wire fencing that surrounded the camp to go trout fishing. He remembers being caught once trying to slip back in, and having the guards take his entire catch. But he expressed no bitterness about the experience. He was released in 1944, when he was allowed to go to work on a Riverside-area farm; in 1948, he joined the Army, eventually serving in combat in Korea along with his brother. Today, Nakajo plans to show his family around the camp and to try to explain what life was like. And then he's going fishing. * The Manzanar National Historic Site Interpretive Center opens Saturday, 24 April 2004, in the restored high school auditorium at the former internment camp on U.S. Highway 395 south of Bishop. * |
||
 Frank Hays, superintendent of the Manzanar National Historic Site, stands in a mock-up of a barracks inside the interpretive center. |
 An internee scratched the date of Feb. 23, 1943, in a cement basin around a water spigot near Block 19 at Manzanar internment camp. |
|
 |
20-Mule-Team History | |
|
|
More Manzanar Internment Camp Portraits & History | |
|
|
Manzanar High School Portraits & History | |
|
|
More Manzanar Portraits & History | |
|
Manzanar Journal by Willie Tamura |
 |
|
|
Manzanar Town, Owens Valley |
|
|
|
Owens Valley Aqueduct Portraits & History |
|
|
|
Mt. Whitney Pack Trains Historic Brochure |
|
|
|
The Bessie Brady Steamer |
|
 Sign Guest Book |
 The Pigmy Packer |
 View Guest Book |
|
|
|
|||
|
|
This page was last updated on
23 August 2007