Manzanar, California Historic Site
Western U. S. Internment Center Documents WWII Japanese Internment
Building foundations, garden stones, photographs and quotations from internees, plus a documentary film chronicle life of interned Japanese in Owens Valley camp.
The Manzanar Interpretive Center on U. S. Highway 395, in California's Owens Valley eight miles north of the town of Lone Pine, is one of the most interesting and informative U. S. Forest Service attractions in the golden state.
Internment History
The center -- a large building in the midst of a square mile of sand and sagebrush -- chronicles the United States government’s relocation of the Japanese during World War II. Considered to be a threat to the nation’s security, people of Japanese ancestry – about 120,000 of them, many of whom were U. S. citizens – were forced to leave their homes and were relocated in ten internment camps.
Most of the camps were located in the Western United States (two in California, two in Arizona, one each in Utah, Colorado, Idaho and Wyoming, with the others in Arkansas). Although the dozens of barracks-type buildings were long ago removed from the site, the 814-acre Manzanar facility is said to be the best preserved of the camps.
Interpretive Center
Operated by the National Park Service, the Interpretive Center’s job is to chronicle life at the camp from March 21, 1942 when the first 81 “evacuees” arrived as volunteers to prepare the camp for the hundreds of internees who arrived the following month to the camp’s closing on November 21, 1945. The walls are the backdrop for photographs, quotes and narrative relating the poignant story of the peoples’ displacement. The camp’s internee population peaked at 10,046 in September of 1942.
A 20-minute documentary film provides an excellent introduction to the museum, and the collection of photographs with accompanying text in the words of the internees continues the story. Photos include those of the internees, transporting their possessions to trains (each person was allowed to take only as much as he or she could carry), of people waiting at distribution points for the trucks, buses and cars that would take them to the camps, and of the internees adjusting to camp life.
Camp Life
About two-thirds of the internees were U. S. citizens and many of them had been born in the United States. Troops were formed so that Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts could continue working on their badges, and internees generally retained U. S. customs and traditions (one photo is of school children in Colonial costumes), although they were precluded from leaving the camp by barbed wire. Among the limited number of artifacts at the Center are toys and games of the ‘40s, which the children could borrow. There are pictures, too, of the camp's first high school senior class, which graduated in 1943. Driving Tour
A self-guided driving tour of the facility passes foundations on which the barracks were placed, two stone sentry posts, the camp cemetery and remnants of internee gardens, with stones outlining the pathways, ponds and areas for planting.
A series of informative brochures are available at the center. For further information, go to nps.gov/manz/
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