Every year since the late 1960s, on the last Saturday in April, there has been a pilgrimage to a place called Manzanar, California, where one of the 10 boarding camps in the United States was once. The annual trips began as a way to remember the Japanese-Americans who were incarcerated during the Second World War and mark a dark chapter in our history. The pilgrimage includes the old elderly internees and their families, as well as the neighbors of the site, school children and, since 9/11, American Muslims, who see parallels between what happened and today.
Manzanar is the best known of the camps, as it has often made the news during the war because of unrest, strikes and even deaths. At its peak, the camp welcomed more than 10,000 Japanese-Americans inside their barbed wire. Most of them came from Los Angeles, about 230 miles to the south. A large majority were also US citizens, detained without charge or trial for years, for the crime of resembling people who had bombed Pearl Harbor.
Manzanar is now a national historic site thanks to the work of Sue Kunitomi Embrey and the Manzanar Committee, which has been lobbying for decades for the designation. I have often visited it, but my personal pilgrimages have been in two other camps that have already held my family and me. One is in Rohwer, Arkansas, in what was then a foul and uninhabitable swamp, and the other is in the cold and desolate trash of Tule Lake, California. It was the hardest camp, with over 18,500 detainees behind three layers of barbed wire, wire fencing and tanks patrolling the perimeter.
I was 5 years old at the beginning of our internment in Arkansas. I remember every morning the school reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, my eyes on the stars and the stripes of the flag, but at the same time I could see through the window the barbed wire and the sentry towers where the Guards kept firearms trained to us.
I was 7 years old when we were transferred to another camp for "disloals". The only crime of my mother and father, on principle, refused to sign a commitment of fidelity promulgated by the government. The authorities had already taken my parents' home on Garnet Street in Los Angeles, their dry cleaning business both prosperous and finally their freedom. Now they wanted them to humble themselves; It was an indignity too far.
Continue reading the main story
CONNECTION COVER
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Photos rarely seen of the internment Japanese FEB. 8, 2017
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When Lies Overruled Rights FEB. 17, 2017
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Why Korematsu is not a previous NOV. 18, 2016
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Great Mistake
Manzanar is the best known of the camps, as it has often made the news during the war because of unrest, strikes and even deaths. At its peak, the camp welcomed more than 10,000 Japanese-Americans inside their barbed wire. Most of them came from Los Angeles, about 230 miles to the south. A large majority were also US citizens, detained without charge or trial for years, for the crime of resembling people who had bombed Pearl Harbor.
Manzanar is now a national historic site thanks to the work of Sue Kunitomi Embrey and the Manzanar Committee, which has been lobbying for decades for the designation. I have often visited it, but my personal pilgrimages have been in two other camps that have already held my family and me. One is in Rohwer, Arkansas, in what was then a foul and uninhabitable swamp, and the other is in the cold and desolate trash of Tule Lake, California. It was the hardest camp, with over 18,500 detainees behind three layers of barbed wire, wire fencing and tanks patrolling the perimeter.
I was 5 years old at the beginning of our internment in Arkansas. I remember every morning the school reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, my eyes on the stars and the stripes of the flag, but at the same time I could see through the window the barbed wire and the sentry towers where the Guards kept firearms trained to us.
I was 7 years old when we were transferred to another camp for "disloals". The only crime of my mother and father, on principle, refused to sign a commitment of fidelity promulgated by the government. The authorities had already taken my parents' home on Garnet Street in Los Angeles, their dry cleaning business both prosperous and finally their freedom. Now they wanted them to humble themselves; It was an indignity too far.
Continue reading the main story
CONNECTION COVER
slideshow
Photos rarely seen of the internment Japanese FEB. 8, 2017
Opinion Op-Ed Contributor
When Lies Overruled Rights FEB. 17, 2017
Opinion Op-Ed Contributor
Why Korematsu is not a previous NOV. 18, 2016
Racing / Relation
Violence in Chicago: Times Highlights
4 MAY
One count charged with being communist, shaking a school in Brooklyn
4 MAY
Red Sox Bar Fan From Fenway Park for the use of Slass Racial
4 MAY
Texas attorneys charge murder for former police officer
3 MAY
Obama says his presidential library will be a "Hub for the Community"
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