Manzanar Committee

LOS ANGELES — On July 24, the National Park Service (NPS) announced that the Manzanar Committee was selected as one of nineteen recipients of a grant from the Japanese American Confinement Sites grant program.

Congress established the Japanese American Confinement Sites grant program in 2006 (under Public Law 109-441, 16 USC 461) to preserve and interpret the places where Japanese Americans were confined after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. The law authorizes up to $38 million for the life of the grant program to identify, research, evaluate, interpret, protect, restore, repair and acquire historic confinement sites.

The program aims to teach and inspire present and future generations about the injustice of the wartime program and demonstrate the nation’s commitment since then to equal justice under the law, according to an NPS statement.

The NPS also stated that $960,000 was awarded to help fund a wide variety of projects in twelve states, ranging from the construction of a new interpretive learning center at the Heart Mountain concentration camp in Wyoming to the preservation of a stockade and jail at the Tule Lake camp in California.

The Manzanar Committee received $49,400 for From Barbed Wire To Barbed Hooks, a documentary film project about the prisoners who would brave armed guards and barbed wire to sneak out of the World War II American concentration camp at Manzanar to fish in nearby Eastern Sierra lakes and streams which were teeming with trout.

Specifically, the grant funds will be used to complete the film, along with post production work.

“Aside from guaranteeing that we can finish the film this year, this grant is a big vote of confidence from the National Park Service,” said producer/director Cory Shiozaki. “This is an untold story. By sneaking out through the barbed wire to match wits with the trout in the surrounding waters of the Eastern Sierra, the Manzanar fishermen experienced freedom from a unique perspective. I’m glad that we will be able to preserve the story in a way that it deserves.”

Indeed, for the Manzanar fisherman, sneaking out of camp to go fishing was a way to restore their freedom, albeit only for a short while.

“This story, as unique as it was to Manzanar, is symbolic of the struggle of all of the former prisoners to find some semblance of dignity and freedom under horribly adverse conditions, allowing them to feel like they couldn’t be deprived of their civil rights,” said Manzanar Committee Co-Chair Bruce Embrey.

“I think it will be one more important story among similar stories of resistance from all of the confinement sites,” added Embrey. There’s a variety of ways people resisted, whether it was in court or any small form of resistance. This is one of the best stories of resistance from the camps, yet very few people know about it.”

Shiozaki, who has been invited to help create a permanent exhibit about the fishermen at the Manzanar National Historic Site, began the project as a collection of oral histories in 2004. Since then, with the help of Richard Imamura, it has grown into a multi-faceted program with the documentary film, an annual lecture and walking tour at the Manzanar National Historic Site (NHS), a traveling multimedia exhibit and more.

Over the years, interviews with 21 former internees or their descendants have been videotaped and vintage photos and fishing tackle have been donated.

“I think Cory’s and Richard’s work is amazing,” said Embrey. “We are absolutely thrilled and so very grateful that the National Park Service has provided full funding for this project.”

Embrey pointed out that not only are all of the funded projects important, but they are helping to provide another form of the redress and reparations that Japanese Americans demanded for their incarceration during World War II.

“I think, not just for Manzanar, but for all of the confinement sites that received funding—Heart Mountain, Tule Lake getting that stockade rebuilt—all of those represent another step forward for redress and reparations and really preserving the camp experience so that future generations can see what happened,” Embrey stressed.

“It’s another concrete step towards making the apology and righting the wrong of the incarceration and I think that’s really what it represents,” Embrey added. “It’s not just words. It’s not just saying ‘gee, it was really bad.’ This is the expression. This is the best way to explain to future generations and codify the injustice in its totality, to understand how oppressive it was and the hardship the Issei and Nisei suffered.”

“To me, this is our government stepping up and making the commitment—backing up their words with real deeds.”

For more information on the From Barbed Wire To Barbed Hooks project, contact Shiozaki by phone at (310) 729-6541 or by e-mail at fearnotrout -at- earthlink.net

The Manzanar Committee is dedicated to educating and raising public awareness about the incarceration and violation of civil rights of persons of Japanese ancestry during World War II and to the continuing struggle of all peoples when Constitutional rights are in danger. A non-profit organization that has sponsored the annual Manzanar Pilgrimage since 1969, along with other educational programs, the Manzanar Committee has also played a key role in the establishment and continued development of the Manzanar National Historic Site. For more information, call (323) 662-5102 or check their web site at http://www.manzanarcommittee.org and their blog at http://blog.manzanarcommittee.org.

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