Life at Manzanar
Japanese Americans behind barbed wire
Alex Q. Arbuckle
1943
We had about one week to dispose of what we owned, except what we could pack and carry for our departure by bus…for Manzanar. - William Hohri
Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor Dec. 7, 1941, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, empowering the Secretary of War to designate parts of the country as military zones and exclude people from them as he saw fit.The result: Approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans living on the west coast were rounded up and relocated, forced to abandon their homes, businesses and possessions. Two-thirds were natural born American citizens.They were “evacuated” to “relocation centers” (polite euphemisms for concentration camps), 10 of which were built across seven western states. The most notorious camp was Manzanar, built at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountain range 230 miles northeast of Los Angeles. At its peak, over 10,000 people were interned in the 500-acre camp, enclosed by barbed wire, guard towers and armed military police. Conditions at the camp were unforgiving. Daytime temperatures could reach 110 degrees, while nights could be freezing. Dust and wind were constant, and the crude barracks provided poor shelter. Within these barracks, each family was allotted a 20-by-25-foot cloth partition. Most of the internees resolved to make the best of their situation, by attempting to create some semblance of normalcy for their indefinite detention. Some built all the facilities and trappings necessary to maintain a community of 10,000.
In 1943, legendary photographer Ansel Adams was offered the chance to photograph Manzanar by his friend Ralph Merritt, who ran the camp. He welcomed the chance to document what he considered an outrage. (His family’s longtime employee and friend Harry Oye had been sent to a camp in Missouri.)While at Manzanar, Adams documented the resiliency and determination of the internees, capturing their daily lives, occupations and pastimes. The photos were released in a 1944 book which sought to cast those trapped at Manzanar as patriotic Americans waylaid by circumstances beyond their control.
There were no crimes committed, no trials, and no convictions: the Japanese Americans were political incarcerees. - Dr. James Hirabayashi
One of the hardest things to endure was the communal latrines, with no partitions; and showers with no stalls. - Rosie Kakuuchi
Nothing is more permanent about Manzanar than the dust which has lodged on its tar-papered barracks, except the indelible impression incised on the lives of thousands of its inhabitants. - Ansel Adams
The broad concepts of American citizenship, and of liberal, democratic life the world over, must be protected in the prosecution of the war, and sustained in the building of the peace to come. - Ansel Adams
Manzanar was finally closed and its inhabitants released in November 1945. One hundred and forty-six internees died while at the camp.In the 1960s, a movement began among Japanese Americans petitioning the government for redress. In 1988, Congress passed legislation apologizing for the "race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership" which caused the internments, and called for the disbursement of reparations to the victims.The survivors and heirs of survivors ultimately received $1.6 billion as redress for their unconstitutional internment.
