The day we came to Manzanar on our trip, we wandered throughout. Various places, such as the barracks, were open, but the visitor’s center was closed. Nonetheless, there was a lot to be seen.
Manzanar is a barren place, lonely and remote even today, even though it is readily accessible off Hwy 395 along the Eastern Sierra in California. Imagine being sent here, pulled from your home and put into buildings without insulation, subject to wind and dust, heat and snow, without appropriate clothing. Your entire family is stuffed into a room and there is no privacy. The internment of the Japanese did this.
This picture shows – and perhaps exaggerates – the isolation of Manzanar. Today it is still lonely, but 80 years ago probably even more so.
In 2021 we headed out on what was to be a 3 week long road trip. The first part was up the Eastern Sierra along Hwy. 395, stopping and staying in Independence, CA. One of the most notable places to see along this route was Manzanar National Historic Site – a not very nice part of US history. It is a Japanese internment camp which was built for imprisoning Japanese Americans, natives of this country, and therefore citizens, as well as immigrants.
I took along a digital camera, and a folding camera, the Zeiss Ikon Ikonta 521/16. Only now am I scanning the film – it took quite some time to finishing up the roll! I used Kodak TriX 400 and got twelve 6×6 images out of the roll, which is 120 film. To process the film, I took it to a local lab and then scanned it myself using the Epson V600 and Negative Lab Pro in Lightroom.
However, the trip ended when we got breakthrough Covid. We headed back home, sadly, but better safe than sorry, eh?
This is a distance shot of one of the remaining mess halls / dining halls at Manzanar, the Japanese interment camp located in the Owens Valley of California. The Eastern Sierras butt up against with a sort of barren plain between the camp and the mountains. Over 110,000 Americans were forced here during WW2.
Not a lot remains here. Barracks were many, as were latrines, laundries, manufacturing, kitchens, and a cemetery. A hospital and schools and recreation areas kept this from being a dreadful place of extermination, but it did often exterminate self-worth and communities.
Manzanar was an interment camp for Americans of Japanese ancestry, native-born, citizens, Japanese-born. All of this because the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. This event drew America, at last, into World War II, in both Asia and Europe.
The Japanese are a minority within the US, and like many groups, faced discrimination. Other groups, though, because they were European – Caucasian – were not interred. Did the US inter people of German or Italian descent during WWII? No . . . and for sheerly pragmatic reasons . . . probaby 25% of the entire population of the country would have to be locked up, fed, and guarded.
A friend of mine, who is Japanese-American, said that the displays at Manzanar make it look like it was fun to be there rather than a prison. Granted, it was a concentration camp, but it was not like the camps run by Axis powers in WWII. Another friend, who spent her childhood at a camp in Arizona, said it was like going to summer camp. As a child, it could perhaps be seen as such, but as an adult? I wonder how many adults were “broken” by the experience.
Manzanar is in the Owens Valley along Highway 395 in California, on the eastern of the Sierra Nevada mountains. The land was once a fertile valley, but in the early 1900s, Los Angeles began buying up water rights. The result was the water that kept the valley green was sent to L.A., and Owens Lake and Owens River soon disappeared. As the water disappeared, so did farming and wildlife, and in its wake, a dryer, harsher land emerged. It is still beautiful, but it is also the result of politics and greed.
So, this was a perfect place to make an interment camp for people perceived as “the enemy.” It’s always good to have someone to blame and someone at whom to direct hatred. Governments and political forces do this all the time. We have evidence of it throughout history. The Japanese were the American boogey-men of the 1940s. However, the Japanese servicemen in the 442nd Infantry Regiment were the most decorated fighting unit, “enemies” fighting another enemy.
But I digress. Manzanar was one of many concentration camps to inter the Japanese. Today it is a National Historic Site, located between Lone Pine and Independence. It is dry and hot, cold and windy, depending on the time of year. I have driven through this area in summer, in 105+ F heat. We stayed in Independence, in a hotel with minimal modern conveniences, such as air conditioning. It was around 100F – and we were miserable. I can only imagine what it was like without it, in shacks slapped together in haste, insulated with nothing. Hell in winter. Hell in summer.
Life in some ways was normal – and in many ways it was not. Detailing life at Manzanar would take pages. Simply put, people lived and died and were born at Manzanar. Above is a memorial to those who died at Manzanar – people of all ages, from babies, teens, adults, and the elderly – for a variety of reasons. This obelisk is in the far rear of Manzanar, in the cemetery, set against the Sierras. It’s austere lines meet the sky and the harsh beauty of the land. It seems to say it all.
The Glass Aerie 