My Everyday Photos

SW Trip part 12

Manzanar was the last stop on our twelve-day road trip through Arizona and southern California. After the grandeur of national parks and the splendor of thousands of Sandhill Cranes and other, more quiet moments in nature, it was a sobering day for all of us.

We all knew the story of war relocation camps that happened during World War II but to experience one in person and meet someone who had been there as a small child really brought it home to us. We also learned that the mother of a friend of ours had been at Manzanar. We were able to find out where she and her family of ten were housed and we went to the spot where their barracks was located. She was a teenager when this happened to her. Can you imagine sharing a small space with your parents and seven younger siblings? Living conditions were harsh. The barracks were covered in tar paper and frequent storms pushed dust through the cracks. In the summer the temperature was as high as 110 and in the winter it often snowed. There was no privacy anywhere. More than 10,000 people of Japanese descent were housed there.

Each block had fourteen barracks buildings divided into four ‘apartments’, a mess hall, a recreation hall, latrines for men and women and two buildings for laundry and ironing. The internees built gardens in most of the blocks, often near the mess hall to ease the time while waiting in lines for food. At the end of each barracks was one faucet. The internees built a 14,000 square foot auditorium that still stands and is used as the visitor’s center today. The interpretive displays at this center are some of the best I’ve seen. All of the other buildings were dismantled and auctioned off at the end of the war.

Several barracks’ facsimiles have been built in recent years. There is a driving route that takes visitors around the camp. All the blocks are numbered and some of the barracks’ sites are numbered also. Much of the camp has been overcome by sand blown in or brought in by flooding. Now it’s hard to tell where the buildings were unless you find one of those upright faucets that were located at the end of the barracks. Some blocks are being excavated. In these areas, you can see the concrete foundations of the latrines with the shower and toilet drains in rows. The concrete blocks that supported the barracks are there too. And some of the gardens have been excavated showing the intricate rock work and the now dry water features.

While we were there, it was the Day of Remembrance. There was a special presentation by a park ranger talking about how many people were incarcerated due to the lack of religious tolerance in this country at that time. It was a sobering moment for us considering how much intolerance we are witnessing in our country now.

For more information about Manzanar see here and here.

The original auditorium that is now the visitors’ center

Reflections of the Sierras

A fence around a basketball court

A barracks facsimile

Inside a barracks

A re-built guard tower

All the numbers represent barracks buildings in one block.

The camp was a mile one each side and housed over 10,000 internees.

There was a lending library of toys because so many children were unable to bring them when they left their homes behind.

Strings of paper cranes

A marker in one of the gardens

A former water feature in a garden

A faucet marks the spot where there used to be a barracks

Blocks that supported barracks

A hand-dug root cellar

Nails everywhere

Many of the trees had rings of rocks around them

Drain in the floor of a latrine building

Maybe a well?

Steps to the hospital or an administration building

Lots of wonderful rock work still stands

An offering at the cemetery

Paper cranes at the cemetery

Strings of cranes

Remnants

The view to the east

We searched for this faucet

This is about where MA’s mother would have been housed with her family