Story of Manzanar (National Park Service)
“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
Story of Manzanar (National Park Service)
Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941, led the United States into World War II and radically changed the lives of 120,000 men, women, and children of Japanese ancestry living in the United States.
The attack intensified racial prejudices and led to fear of potential sabotage and espionage by Japanese Americans among some in the government, military, news media, and the public.
In February 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 authorizing the Secretary of War to establish Military Areas and to remove from those areas anyone who might threaten the war effort.
Story of Manzanar (National Park Service)
Fred Korematsu tested the government relocation action in the courts, but found little sympathy there. In Korematsu vs. The United States, the Supreme Court justified the executive order as a wartime necessity. When the order was repealed, many found they could not return to their hometowns. Hostility against Japanese Americans remained high across the West Coast into the postwar years as many villages displayed signs demanding that the evacuees never return. As a result, the interns scattered across the country.
It was not until 1988 that the U.S. government attempted to apologize to those who had been interned.
Story of Manzanar (National Park Service)
Without due process, the government gave everyone of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast only days to decide what to do with their houses, farms, businesses, and other possessions. Most families sold their belongings at a significant loss. Some rented their properties to neighbors. Others left possessions with friends or religious groups. Some abandoned their property.
They did not know where they were going or for how long. Each family was assigned an identification number and loaded into cars, buses, trucks, and trains, taking only what they could carry.
Japanese Americans were transported under military guard to 17 temporary assembly centers located at racetracks, fairgrounds, and similar facilities in Washington, Oregon, California, and Arizona. Then they were moved to one of 10 hastily built relocation centers.
By November 1942, the relocation was complete.
Story of Manzanar (National Park Service)
Ten war relocation centers were built in remote deserts, plains, and swamps of seven states; Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming.
Manzanar, located in the Owens Valley of California between the Sierra Nevada on the west and the Inyo mountains on the east, was typical in many ways of the 10 camps.
About two-thirds of all Japanese Americans interned at Manzanar were American citizens by birth. The remainder were aliens, many of whom had lived in the US for decades, but who, by law, were denied citizenship.
The first Japanese Americans to arrive at Manzanar, in March 1942, were men and women who volunteered to help build the camp.
On June 1 the War Relocation Authority (WRA) took over operation of Manzanar from the U.S. Army.
Story of Manzanar (National Park Service)
The 500-acre housing section was surrounded by barbed wire and eight guard towers with searchlights and patrolled by military police. Outside the fence, military police housing, a reservoir, a sewage treatment plant, and agricultural fields occupied the remaining 5,500 acres.
By September 1942 more than 10,000 Japanese Americans were crowded into 504 barracks organized into 36 blocks. There was little or no privacy in the barracks—and not much outside.
The 200 to 400 people living in each block, consisting of 14 barracks each divided into four rooms, shared men’s and women’s toilets and showers, a laundry room, and a mess hall.
Any combination of eight individuals was allotted a 20-by-25-foot room. An oil stove, a single hanging light bulb, cots, blankets, and mattresses filled with straw were the only furnishings provided.
Story of Manzanar (National Park Service)
Coming from Los Angeles and other communities in California and Washington, Manzanar’s internees were unaccustomed to the harsh desert environment. Summer temperatures soared as high as 110ºF. In winter, temperatures frequently plunged below freezing.
Throughout the year strong winds swept through the valley, often blanketing the camp with dust and sand. Internees covered knotholes in the floors with tin can lids, but dust continued to blow in between the floorboards until linoleum was installed in late 1942.
“ . . . one of the hardest things to endure was the communal latrines, with no partitions; and showers with no stalls.” Rosie Kakuuchi
Story of Manzanar (National Park Service)
Internees attempted to make the best of a bad situation. The WRA formed an advisory council of internee-elected block managers. Internees established churches, temples, and boys and girls clubs. They developed sports, music, dance, and other recreational programs; built gardens and ponds; and published a newspaper, the Manzanar Free Press.
Most internees worked in the camp. They dug irrigation canals and ditches, tended acres of fruits and vegetables, and raised chickens, hogs, and cattle. They made clothes and furniture for themselves and camouflage netting and experimental rubber for the military. They served as mess hall workers, doctors, nurses, police officers, firefighters, and teachers.
Story of Manzanar (National Park Service)
Professionals were paid $19 per month, skilled workers received $16, and nonskilled workers got $12. Many pooled their resources and created a consumer cooperative that published the Manzanar Free Press and operated a general store, beauty parlor, barbershop, and bank.
As the war turned in America’s favor, restrictions were lifted, and Japanese Americans were allowed to leave the camps. Church groups, service organizations, and some camp administrators helped find sponsors and jobs in the Midwest and the East.
Story of Manzanar (National Park Service)
From all 10 camps, 4,300 people received permission to attend college, and about 10,000 were allowed to leave temporarily to harvest sugar beets in Idaho, Montana, Utah, and Wyoming.
A total of 11,070 Japanese Americans were processed through Manzanar. From a peak of 10,046 in September 1942, the population dwindled to 6,000 by 1944.
The last few hundred internees left in November 1945, three months after the war ended. Many of them had spent three-and-a-half years at Manzanar.
Story of Manzanar (National Park Service)
The removal of all Japanese Americans from the West Coast was based on widespread distrust of their loyalty after Pearl Harbor. Yet, no Japanese Americans were charged with espionage.
“Manzanar has its first gold star mother. We had dreaded the day when some family in Manzanar would receive the fateful telegram . . . ” Manzanar Free Press article on Pfc. Frank Arikawa’s death
About 5,000 Japanese Americans were serving in the U.S. Army when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941. The U.S. military soon called for another 5,000 volunteers from the mainland and Hawaii.
In January 1942, however, the Selective Service reclassified Japanese Americans as “enemy aliens” and stopped drafting them.
Story of Manzanar (National Park Service)
Emotions were intense during 1942 as the US entered the war and Japanese Americans were moved to the relocation centers. Various protests and disturbances occurred at some centers over political differences, wages, and rumors of informers and black marketing. At Manzanar two people were killed and 10 were wounded by military police during the “Manzanar Riot” in December 1942.
Tensions intensified in 1943 when the government required internees to answer a “loyalty questionnaire.” They were asked if they would serve in combat and if they would swear unqualified allegiance to the United States. Some older internees answered “no” because they were not allowed to become U.S. citizens. Others refused to serve while their families were behind barbed wire. Those who answered “yes” were considered “loyal” and became eligible for indefinite leave outside the West Coast military areas. Those who answered “no” were sent to a segregation center at Tule Lake, Calif.
Story of Manzanar (National Park Service)
In January 1944 the draft was reinstated for Japanese Americans. Most of those who were drafted or volunteered joined the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. Combined with the 100th Infantry Battalion of the Hawaiian Territorial Guard, the 442nd fought with distinction in North Africa, France, and Italy.
With 9,846 casualties, the 100th/442nd had the highest casualty rate and was the most highly decorated Army unit for its size and length of service.
Nearly 26,000 Japanese Americans served in the U.S. military during World War II.
Chronology of Manzanar (National Park Service)
1869 First known Japanese immigrants to U.S. settle near Sacramento.
1913 Alien Land Law prohibits Japanese aliens from owning land in California and imposes a three-year limit on leasing of land.
1924 Immigration Exclusion Act halts Japanese immigration to U.S.
1941 U.S. enters World War II after Pearl Harbor attack Dec. 7.
1942 Executive Order 9066 of Feb.19 authorizes relocation and/or internment of anyone who might threaten the U.S. war effort.
1943 U.S. Army forms 442nd Regimental Combat Team, a segregated unit for Japanese Americans that serves with 100th Infantry Battalion in Europe.
1944 Supreme Court upholds constitutionality of evacuation based solely on national ancestry while separately ruling that loyal citizens cannot be held against their will.
Chronology of Manzanar (National Park Service)
1945 World War II ends with Japan’s surrender Aug. 14. Manzanar War Relocation Center closes Nov. 21.
1952 Walter-McCarran Immigration and Naturalization Act allows Japanese aliens to become naturalized citizens.
1972 Manzanar designated a California Registered Historical Landmark.
1988 U.S. Civil Liberties Act grants a $20,000 payment and an apology to 82,000 former internees.
1992 Manzanar National Historic Site established March 3.
2001 Minidoka Internment National Monument designated Jan. 17 in Idaho. National Japanese American Memorial dedicated June 29 in Washington, D.C.
2004 Manzanar National Historic Site Interpretive Center opens April 24.
Ansel Adams at Manzanar (Library of Congress)
In 1943, Ansel Adams, America's most well-known photographer, documented the Manzanar War Relocation Center in California and the Japanese-Americans interned there during World War II. For the first time, digital scans of both Adams's original negatives and his photographic prints appear side by side . . .
Adams's Manzanar work is a departure from his signature style landscape photography. Although a majority of the more than 200 photographs are portraits, the images also include views of daily life, agricultural scenes, and sports and leisure activities. When offering the collection to the Library in 1965, Adams said in a letter,
"The purpose of my work was to show how these people, suffering under a great injustice, and loss of property, businesses and professions, had overcome the sense of defeat and dispair [sic] by building for themselves a vital community in an arid (but magnificent) environment....All in all, I think this Manzanar Collection is an important historical document, and I trust it can be put to good use."
Ansel Adams at Manzanar (Library of Congress)
The web site also includes digital images of the first edition of Born Free and Equal, Adams's publication based on his work at Manzanar.
Adams is renowned for his Western landscapes. Best remembered for his views of Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada, his photographs emphasize the natural beauty of the land. By contrast, Adams's photographs of people have been largely overlooked. Trained as a musician, in 1927 Adams made a photograph—Monolith, the Face of Half-Dome—that changed his career.
This dramatic photograph, along with seventeen others, was published that same year in Adams's first portfolio, Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras.
By 1940 Adams was an established fine art photographer. His work had been exhibited in one-person shows at major museums on both the East and West Coasts, he served on the board of the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art, and he was offered lucrative commercial assignments.
Ansel Adams at Manzanar (Library of Congress)
After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, fear of a Japanese invasion and subversive acts by Japanese-Americans prompted President Franklin D. Roosevelt to sign Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942. The act designated the West Coast as a military zone from which "any or all persons may be excluded."
Although not specified in the order, Japanese-Americans were singled out for evacuation. More than 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry were removed from their homes in California, southern Arizona, and western Washington and Oregon and sent to ten relocation camps.
Those forcibly removed from their homes, businesses, and possessions included Japanese immigrants legally forbidden from becoming citizens (Issei), the American-born (Nisei), and children of the American-born (Sansei).
Ansel Adams at Manzanar (Library of Congress)
This event struck a personal chord with Adams when Harry Oye, his parents' longtime employee who was an Issei in poor health, was summarily picked up by authorities and sent to a hospital halfway across the country in Missouri. Angered by this event, Adams welcomed an opportunity in 1943 to photograph Japanese-American internees at the Manzanar War Relocation Center, then run by his friend and fellow Sierra Club member, Ralph Merritt.
Adams had already completed a number of assignments for the military as a civilian, including teaching photography at Fort Ord and photographing Yosemite's Ahwahnee Hotel, which was used as a Navy hospital during the war. But he was anxious for a more meaningful project related to the war effort. Adams's documentation of Manzanar would become his most significant war-related project.
Ansel Adams at Manzanar (Library of Congress)
During the fall of 1943, Adams photographed at the Manzanar War Relocation Center, located in Inyo County, California, at the eastern edge of the Sierra Nevada mountains approximately 200 miles northeast of Los Angeles. This series was a departure from his usual landscape photography. Adams produced an essay on the Japanese-Americans interned in this beautiful, but remote and undeveloped region where the mountains served as both a metaphorical fortress and an inspiration for the internees.
Concentrating on the internees and their activities, Adams photographed family life in the barracks; people at work– internees as welders, farmers, and garment makers; and recreational activities, including baseball and volleyball games.
Ansel Adams at Manzanar (Library of Congress)
In 1944 a selection of these images along with text by Adams was published by U. S. Camera in a 112-page book, Born Free and Equal. In a letter to his friend Nancy Newhall, the wife of Beaumont Newhall, curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art, Adams wrote:
"Through the pictures the reader will be introduced to perhaps twenty individuals . . . loyal American citizens who are anxious to get back into the stream of life and contribute to our victory."
The book received positive reviews and made the San Francisco Chronicle's bestseller list for March and April of 1945.
In addition to his work at the camp, Adams photographed the mountains near Manzanar. Two of his most famous landscape photographs were made during his visit to Manzanar, Mount Williamson, the Sierra Nevada, from Manzanar, California, 1944 and Winter Sunrise, the Sierra Nevada, from Lone Pine, California, 1944. These dramatic photographs were not included as part of the Adams gift to the Library.
Ansel Adams at Manzanar (Library of Congress)
Adams was not the only photographer to work at Manzanar. One of the internees, Toyo Miyatake, had worked as a Los Angeles portrait photographer before he was moved to Manzanar. Although the internees were not allowed to have cameras, Miyatake fashioned one from parts he brought with him in his luggage. Both Adams's and Miyatake's photographs present a positive view of the Japanese Americans interned at Manzanar.
From National Park Service
And, significantly, Manzanar had its own in house photographer, Toyo Miyatake, although this was not immediately known to the authorities. Miyatake had been a successful commercial photographer in Los Angeles before the war. When the war broke out, Japanese Americans were banned from having cameras. Miyatake smuggled a lens into camp and constructed a makeshift camera. Eventually Director Merritt discovered that Miyatake was photographing the camp. He was allowed to continue, and in his more than three years in camp produced about 1500 images.
The Adams collection and the WRA photographs are in the public domain and available for use. We have included some of our favorites in the galleries here. Links to the complete collections and information about the artists are also included.
From National Park Service
Photographer Toyo Miyatake, by Ansel Adams
The photographic record of Manzanar is one of the most comprehensive of any of the War Relocation Authority centers.
The WRA (War Relocation Authority) hired Dorothea Lange, Clem Albers, and Francis Stewart to photograph the camps.
Ansel Adams volunteered to photograph Manzanar at the request of his friend, Ralph Merritt, who was the director of the Manzanar War Relocation Center.
From National Park Service
The Toyo Miyatake collection is not in the public domain and therefore his photographs are not included in our website. We have, however, used many of his images – by permission – in our exhibits and publications. Many books featuring his work are in print. We suggest you contact Toyo Miyatake Studios in Los Angeles for more information on his work and his continuing legacy.
What all of the photographers had in common was a desire to show some kind of truth, and an inability to avoid restrictions from the authorities in the pursuit of that truth.
What we are left with is a valuable resource to help us understand the camp experience. Although these artists were censored and manipulated, they provide for us today a concrete record of a time when American citizens were held behind barbed wire without due process of law.
For that we are grateful.
Dorothea Lange at Manzanar (Library of Congress)
In contrast, Dorothea Lange ("Migrant Mother"), who had earned her reputation as a social documentary photographer with images of migrant farm workers made during the Depression, worked for the War Relocation Authority photographing the evacuation of Japanese-Americans and their arrival at Manzanar. Lange's vision is uniquely unlike Adams and Miyatake. She photographed the upheaval of the evacuation and the bleak conditions of the internment camps.
Videos
Manzanar (Library of Congress)
"A Grave Injustice" . . . A Congressional Apology
In 1988, apologizing on behalf of the nation for the "grave injustice" done to persons of Japanese ancestry, Congress implemented the Civil Liberties Act. Congress declared that the internments were "motivated largely by racial prejudice, wartime hysteria, and a failure of political leadership," and authorized a $20,000 payment to Japanese-Americans who suffered injustices during World War II.
Manzanar Oral History Program
The Manzanar Oral History Program documents the World War II history of Japanese Americans at Manzanar and elsewhere through the personal accounts of former incarcerees, War Relocation Authority staff and their children, military personnel, and residents of the communities neighboring the camps. Topics covered include immigration, settlement, forced removal, life behind barbed wire, and resettlement after incarceration. The project also documents other eras at Manzanar, including Indigenous experiences, Owens Valley and Los Angeles water conflicts, and the Manzanar orchard community.
Manzanar Oral History Program
Since 1999, Manzanar National Historic Site has collected more than 650 oral history interviews, preserving these stories and experiences for future generations. Manzanar's oral histories are used for educational and research purposes, and are preserved at the Manzanar National Historic Site archives. Some of the site's oral histories are available online through the Densho archive. Others are available online through California Revealed as well as on Manzanar's You Tube Channel.
Manzanar YouTube channel
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVrqWFbuonduneCCwt4KnNQ
Densho Digital Repository
The Manzanar National Historic Site Collection contains interviews conducted by the Manzanar Oral History Project. These interviews document the experiences of Japanese Americans who were incarcerated at Manzanar and other facilities during World War II, and are preserved at the Manzanar National Historic Site Archives. The Manzanar National Historic Site, administered by the National Park Service, was established to preserve the stories of the internment of nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II and to serve as a reminder to this and future generations of the fragility of American civil liberties. For more information, please visit: www.nps.gov/manz.
https://ddr.densho.org/ddr-manz-1/
Manzanar Oral Histories
Manzanar's extensive oral history collection includes both video and audio interviews. Most were recorded by NPS staff starting in 1999. Some others, including donated oral history recordings, were later added to the collection.
https://www.nps.gov/manz/learn/historyculture/manzanar-oral-history-interviews.htm
Manzanar location, Owens Valley
Relocations recur throughout the history of Manzanar and the Owens Valley. The Paiute and early settlers as well as Japanese Americans all were uprooted from their homes.
American Indians began utilizing the valley almost 10,000 years ago. About 1,500 years ago the Owens Valley Paiute established settlements here. They hunted, fished, collected pine nuts, and practiced a form of irrigated agriculture.
Miners and ranchers moved into the valley in the early 1860s and homesteaded Paiute lands raising cattle, sheep, fruit, wheat, and other crops. The military was called in and forcibly relocated nearly 1,000 Owens Valley Paiute to Fort Tejon in 1863. Many Paiute returned to the Owens valley and worked on local ranches.
Manzanar location, Owens Valley
The town of Manzanar—the Spanish word for “apple orchard”—developed as an agricultural settlement beginning in 1910. Farmers grew apples, pears, peaches, potatoes, and alfalfa on several thousand acres surrounding the town. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power began acquiring water rights in the valley in 1905 and completed the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913. Land buyouts continued in the 1920s, and by 1929 Los Angeles owned all of Manzanar's land and water rights. Within five years, the town was abandoned. In the 1930s local residents pinned their economic hopes on tourism. With the onset of World War II tourism diminished.
In 1942 the U.S. Army leased 6,200 acres at Manzanar from Los Angeles to hold Japanese Americans during World War II. Though some valley residents opposed the construction of the internment camp, others helped build it and worked here. Among these were a few Owens Valley Manzanar whose own families had been exiled earlier from these lands.
Camps—PBS, Internment History
More than 120,000 Americans of Japanese Ancestry were incarcerated in the following 10 camps scattered throughout Western states during World War II:
Amache (Granada), CO Opened: August 24, 1942. Closed: October 15, 1945. Peak population: 7,318.
Gila River, AZ Opened July 20, 1942. Closed November 10, 1945. Peak Population 13,348.
Heart Mountain, WY Opened August 12, 1942. Closed November 10, 1945. Peak population 10,767.
Jerome, AR Opened October 6, 1942. Closed June 30, 1944. Peak population 8,497.
Manzanar, CA Opened March 21, 1942. Closed November 21, 1945. Peak population 10,046.
Minidoka, ID Opened August 10, 1942. Closed October 28, 1945. Peak population 9,397.
Poston (Colorado River), AZ Opened May 8, 1942. Closed November 28, 1945. Peak population 17,814.
Rohwer, AR Opened September 18, 1942. Closed November 30, 1945. Peak population 8,475.
Topaz (Central Utah), UT Opened September 11, 1942. Closed October 31, 1945. Peak population 8,130.
Tule Lake, CA Opened May 27, 1942. Closed March 20, 1946. Peak population 18,789.
Resources