Mary Adams Urashima, who is leading the fight to preserve Historic Wintersburg, the site of a former Japanese American community in Huntington Beach, California, attended her first Manzanar Pilgrimage and Manzanar At Dusk program on April 25, 2015, and was visibly moved by what she experienced. She graciously agreed to share those experiences with us here.
If you don’t want to change your perspective, don’t go to Manzanar.
The road to Manzanar is breathtaking. The foot of the Sierras has the sort of terrain travelers stop to photograph, snow-dusted peaks and painter’s clouds. Highway 395 passes through 19th century California, pioneer mining towns with western false front buildings straight off a movie set. It’s a beautiful drive away from California’s urban coast and into the big empty.
And then, Manzanar. Nine miles past Lone Pine, a wooden watchtower pushes into the blue. My throat closes. The watchtower doesn’t belong here and never should have been here. Standing next to the base, it feels as though someone is looking down. It’s uncomfortable. In the 300 seconds I stand there, I hate it.
Try living under it, I think to myself.
That’s the point of Manzanar. To stand in a place that bears witness to the soul-wrenching history of people forced off the land and people forced on the land. It reminds us that those in power wield horrible, life-changing decisions. It reminds us to question, to not accept, that those in power always know better. It reminds us to speak up, because history repeats.
I take the chilly mile-walk from the visitors’ center through the camp to the cemetery. From a historian’s perspective, the cultural landscape of Manzanar is precious, something to protect fiercely in the generations ahead. I notice the walk also changes your posture, deep sand in places making it a little harder, the wind forcing your head down.
Years of that would have an effect.
A trail of pilgrims winds through the landscape to the cemetery’s iconic obelisk where people are gathering. There are graves, marked by stones. Taiko drums pull the crowd together like a collective heartbeat. The camp banners are brought out by people I know—my throat closes again—and a series of speakers connect the history of Manzanar to the present day.
Generational trauma, reminds the keynote speaker Dr. Satsuki Ina, is why places like Manzanar are the wound that never completely heals.
“Forced removal from our homes under armed guard, to an unknown destination. Imprisonment behind barbed wire, for an indefinite period of time, with thousands of other innocent people…” This, Dr. Ina explained, was a loss of control so massive and traumatic that it cannot simply be shaken off. Not once you’re free, not in a few years, not for generations. Why would anyone expect that?
Epigenetic scientists have referred to this legacy as the “ghost” in our genes. It is the shock and sadness that reverberates through generations until one day, this quiet hum increases in amplitude, and sings, loudly and others can hear it.
The 2015 Pilgrimage theme—Watashi wa Manzanar, “I am Manzanar”—struck me as intentional ownership, a way to reclaim the land and history to teach the lessons, to gather strength from each other, and to pass it on. It is not by coincidence that Japanese Americans reach out to disenfranchised communities.
Manzanar, along with the other confinement and detention centers, has become the steel within the soul, the song in the gene. After seven decades, new documents come to light, art and gardens are uncovered, and families come to Manzanar. They come, deliberately, to face history and to reconnect with those who understand without a word. In the crowd, there is undeniable warmth. Walking out into the desert to gain perspective, I look back at the pilgrims. I am struck, as I often have been working with people: they rarely know how beautiful they are.
By chance, we come across one of the National Park Service’s prominent archaeologists, Jeff Burton. He graciously walks us through the camp interior, pointing out restored gardens, lanterns and ponds. I think about those who created places of beauty and solace from the stones cast at them. What would one create as a lifeline to humanity and normalcy when all seems lost? It makes the auction of art from the camps—the auction that almost happened prior to the Pilgrimage—all the more abhorrent.
That night, at Manzanar At Dusk—wind-blown from the day—the local high school gym is filled with pilgrims. There are college students connecting with older generations, diverse groups in intimate conversation, listening and asking questions, photographs pulled from the pages of a family album with a hopeful remark that maybe someone can help identify the faces. There is dancing and laughing. One young woman stands up to say the experience was life-changing. I believe most will come back.
I know I will.
I made the pilgrimage to Manzanar because my son’s ancestry includes Japanese, as well as my English, French and Scots-Irish roots. His generation must use the ghost in the gene. I went because I am trying to save a Japanese pioneer property from demolition, a place that contains the horrific civil liberties history that Manzanar represents. I went to better understand the experience of forced evacuation and mass confinement, because words are inadequate for life-shattering events. To write, I had to walk the land, to absorb what I could by osmosis and conversation.
Now, I’ll never get Manzanar out of my head. But that’s entirely the point.
Mary Adams Urashima is the author of Historic Wintersburg in Huntington Beach, and chair of the preservation effort for Historic Wintersburg, a Japanese pioneer farm and mission site. She assisted with the PBS program airing nationwide in May 2015, Our American Family: The Furuta’s, about the family that farmed the Historic Wintersburg property. She is researching her next book about the years of evacuation and confinement for Orange County, California’s Japanese Americans who were confined at Poston and Gila River.
This story was reprinted on Discover Nikkei on June 9, 2015.
The views expressed in this story are those of the author, and are not necessarily those of the Manzanar Committee.
LEAD PHOTO: Mary Adams Urashima (in red), shown here during one of the small group discussions at the 2015 Manzanar At Dusk program, April 25, 2015, at Lone Pine High School in Lone Pine, California. Photo: Gann Matsuda/Manzanar Committee.
News, Speeches, Reflections and Photos From The 46th Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage/2015 Manzanar At Dusk
- Rev. Paul Nakamura:“A Ministry Bound With The Quest For Justice And Civil Rights For All” – Part 1
- Rev. Paul Nakamura: “A Ministry Bound With The Quest For Justice And Civil Rights For All” – Part 2
- Manzanar Committee’s Bruce Embrey At 46th Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage: “Remembering Is Not Passive. We Must Act On Our Memories”
- Watashi wa Manzanar! Continuing Our Civil Rights Legacy
- Kodomo No Tame Ni, Please! For The Sake Of The Children And Grandchildren, We Need To Know!
- Hearing Stories About The Japanese American Incarceration Opens Doors To New Perspectives
- A Family Ripped Apart Forever By The Infamous Loyalty Questionnaire
- 46th Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage Photos and Downloadable Printed Program
- 2015 Manzanar At Dusk – In Photos
- 46th Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage – Official Photo Essay
- My First Manzanar Pilgrimage
- The Pain Of Unjust Incarceration Transcends Generations, Ethnicity
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Mary, thank you for attending and for sharing your heartfelt feelings. Thank you, too, for the work you are doing to preserve a vital part of Japanese American history in Huntington Beach. I very much enjoyed watching the Furuta family’s story last week.