At its peak, Manzanar held 10,000 internees, housed in 576 one-story 20-by-100 foot barracks. Entire families were put in 20-by-20-foot or 20-by-24-foot rooms in these barracks. The camp, situated in the middle of a desert, also had a laundry, mess hall, showers, latrines, and a gymnasium. Around it was barbed wire and manned guard towers. For most of the war, it was not known by the internees whether they would ever be allowed to leave the camps. Believe it or not, the closest town to Manzanar is a town named "Independence".
The internment episode is usually cited as one of the worst things this nation's government ever did to its people. In 1988, Congress approved and President Reagan signed legislation apologizing for it and providing all of $20,000 per person for each individual interned at one of these camps. (This is often cited by interest groups who want reparations for slavery although, it should be pointed out, the payments were only made to people who were actually interned, not their descendants.)
After the war, the barracks were demolished and the wood was sold for scrap. The only structures remaining at Manzanar are the gymnasium, a police post, and a sentry post. There are also two camp cemeteries that you can visit, one for people and the other for their pets.
I came by the camp two years ago on my cross-country trip. Afterward, I went to the opening of the Japanese American Memorial to Patriotism During World War II in Washington DC. That memorial has two sections, one of which honors the Japanese-Americans held in internment camps, and the other which honors those who fought and died fighting for the US during World War II, usually in the European theater. It's odd to think of soldiers being praised for gallantry to the country while their relatives were being held in desert camps on the suspicion that they might be traitors. I met a woman from Seattle Washington at the ceremony who had been in that situation and whose husband had died in combat in Europe. I've written to her periodically since, sending her pictures and other things.
When I went through the camp this year, little seems to have changed. The signage has been improved -- stencilled signs have given way to engraved ones -- and the literature is better. They're working on restoring the gymnasium as the visitor center and I'm told that the historic site will open for real in 2003. I'm sure I'll be back there to check it out.
Interestingly, one of Bill Clinton's last acts as President was to create eight new national monuments. Included in these was the Minidoka internment camp in Idaho. Bush II and the Western Republicans complained bitterly about most of the new monuments. Property rights, blah, blah, blah. I hope they were diplomatically quiet about Minidoka given that Bush's new Secretary of the Department Transportation, Norman Mineta, had been interned there as a child.
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