About the Manzanar Committee/Contact Us
To contact us, please scroll to the end of this page…
Our Mission Statement:
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.
About the Manzanar Committee…
In December 1969, a group of about 150 people, mostly young, mostly Japanese Americans, drove by car and bus to a place between Lone Pine and Independence, California. The place we had come looking for was Manzanar, one of ten concentration camps in which Japanese Americans were imprisoned during World War II.
This was, we thought, our first Manzanar Pilgrimage. The bitter cold and biting wind gave us our first lesson on how life must have been for the internees. Our humility was reinforced when we learned that what we had brashly called our “first” pilgrimage was for two Issei ministers, their 25th—Rev. Sentoku Mayeda and Rev. Shoichi Wakahiro are gone—but their spirits live on.
In 1972, after a year-long campaign led by the Manzanar Committee and the Japanese American Citizens League, Manzanar was designated California State Historic Landmark #850.
In April 1985, the National Park Service, Department of Interior designated Manzanar as a National Historic Landmark. The plaque was presented to the City of Los Angeles during the pilgrimage program on April 27, 1985.
H.R. 543, introduced by Congress member Mel Levine, received considerable support in Congress. The bill passed on February 19, 1992, the 50th anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 9066, designating Manzanar as a National Historic Site. The 23rd Annual Pilgrimage, held on April 25, 1992, brought more than 2,200 participants to celebrate the designation.
The original auditorium was restored by the National Park Service as a state-of-the-art Interpretive Center, which had its grand opening in 2004. In addition to telling the story of the concentration camp experience, the exhibit covers the history of pre-camp communities which lived on the land, such as the Owens Valley Paiute, farmers, rancher and miners.
The Manzanar Committee, which has sponsored the Pilgrimage going on 43 years, along with the Manzanar At Dusk program, is an all-volunteer organization, incorporated under the laws of the State of California as a non-profit educational organization. We invite your support, your energy, and your participation as a member. All donations are tax-deductible.
You may contact the Committee at:
Manzanar Committee
1566 Curran St.
Los Angeles, CA 90026-2036
(323) 662-5102
About our blog…
Welcome to our official blog. Here you’ll find the latest news about our work and a place to post your thoughts about Manzanar—past, present and future. If you have an article, commentary piece, short story, poem, etc., about Manzanar, the Manzanar Pilgrimage, the Japanese American concentration camp experience, the Redress and Reparations movement, or anything closely related, including the issues raised by the camp experience and their relevance to what’s happening today, please send it to us and we’ll put it up here on the blog (we do reserve the right to edit or reject any submission)!
We also encourage those of you who participate in the annual Manzanar At Dusk (MAD) program to send us your thoughts, ideas, questions—anything that the discussions during the MAD program might inspire you to write. We’ll put those up here as well so we can continue the dialogue (you can comment on any blog entry by clicking on the “comments” link at the end of each entry).
We look forward to your contributions and participation!
For submission information, contact us via the form below.
