To download a printable flyer,
click on the image above.

To honor its 20th Anniversary as a National Historic Site, Manzanar is hosting its Fourth Annual Volunteer Day on Saturday, March 3, 2012, from 8:30 AM to 1:00 PM.

Owens Valley residents, their families, friends, and others are invited to join the Manzanar staff in an outdoor work project followed by a catered lunch and program presented by Archeologist Jeff Burton.

The Volunteer Day work project involves clearing a section of the historic Chicken Ranch to preserve this rarely seen section of the site.

The chicken ranch was created during World War II for the Manzanar War Relocation Center which held over 10,000 Japanese Americans. The ranch was established to supplement the food needs of the internees and the War Relocation Authority employees and their families. The Japanese American crews constructed the chicken facilities during the summer and fall of 1943. They maintained it during the next two years, supplying over 113,000 eggs and over 8,000 harvested chickens.

Volunteers will be provided with shovels, pruners, rakes, brooms, and wheelbarrows to remove vegetation from the area. Work will be supervised by park staff.

Manzanar welcomes community involvement in the preservation of this special site. Staff and community members will work together to improve the site, get to know each other, and have some good, dirty, outdoor fun.

Please wear sturdy, closed-toe shoes, a hat, and sunscreen. Manzanar will provide water, food, work gloves, a commemorative water bottle and bandana will be given to every participant.

The day’s schedule is as follows:

8:30 AM – 9:00 AM: Arrive, park and sign-in at the Interpretive Center parking lot
9:00 AM: Welcome, outline of work, safety message
9:15 AM – 12:00 PM: Work project
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM: Picnic lunch provided by Friends of Manzanar, discussion by park archeologist about Manzanar’s Chicken Ranch, past and present

Volunteers should RSVP as participation is limited. Please call Park Ranger Carrie Andresen for more information and to RSVP at (760) 878-2194, extension 3314.

Manzanar National Historic Site is located nine miles north of Lone Pine and six miles south of Independence on the west side of U.S. Highway 395.

For more information on Manzanar National Historic Site, please visit the web site at http://www.nps.gov/manz or call (760) 878-2194.

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Manzanar Committee Comment Policies

Gordon K. Hirabayashi.
Photo: University of Alberta, Edmonton

A native of Auburn, Washington (just northeast of Tacoma), Hirabayashi defied Executive Order 9066, the United States Government’s decree on February 19, 1942, that resulted in the mass roundup and incarceration of over 110,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry in American concentration camps during World War II.

Indeed, Hirabayashi, along with Fred Korematsu and Minoru Yasui, chose to defy the government’s orders, and filed a lawsuit that challenged the constitutionality of the incarceration. The case eventually made it to the United States Supreme Court.

Hirabayashi’s former wife, Esther, also passed away on January 2, at the age of 87. Their son, Jay, announced the passing of his parents on Facebook.

“My Dad, Gordon K. Hirabayashi, who was ninety-three, passed away early this morning,” he wrote. “He was an American hero, besides being a great father, who taught me about the values of honesty, integrity, and justice. My Mother, Esther Hirabayashi, who was eighty-seven, also passed away this morning, about ten hours later. She was a beautiful, intelligent, generous soul. Although my parents were divorced, they somehow chose to leave us on the same day. I am missing them a lot right now.”

Jay Hirabayashi also indicated that his father suffered from Alzheimer’s Disease.

Gordon Hirabayashi was a senior at the University of Washington when the curfew order came in March 1942.

“After the curfew order was announced, we knew there would be further orders to remove all persons of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast,” Hirabayashi wrote. “When the exclusion orders specifying the deadline for forced removal from various districts of Seattle were posted on telephone poles, I was confronted with a dilemma: Do I stay out of trouble and succumb to the status of second-class citizen, or do I continue to live like other Americans and thus disobey the law?”¹

“When the curfew was imposed, I obeyed for about a week, Hirabayashi added. “We had about twelve living in the [YMCA] dormitory, so it was a small group, and they all became my volunteer timekeepers. ‘Hey, Gordy, it’s five minutes to eight,’ and I’d have to dash back from the library or from the coffee shop. One of those times, I stopped and I thought, ‘Why the hell am I running back? Am I an American? And if I am, why am I running back and nobody else is?’”²

“I think if the order said all civilians must obey the curfew, if it was just a non-essential restrictive move, I might not have objected. But I felt it was unfair, just to be referred to as a ‘non-alien’—they never referred to me as a citizen. This was so pointedly, so obviously a violation of what the Constitution stood for, what citizenship meant. So I stopped and turned around and went back.”³

Originally, Hirabayashi had no intention of challenging the constitutionality of the government’s actions.

“About two weeks before my time came up, I said to myself, If I am defying the curfew, how can I accept this thing? This is much worse, the same principle but much worse in terms of uprooting and denial of our rights, and the suffering,” he wrote. “So that’s when I began to mull it over and I kicked it around with my roommate, Bill Makino, and he agreed with me. So we said, Let’s investigate this further and think about it. And we both decided we can’t go along with it. It’s an absolute denial of our rights.”⁴

“I had no plans to bring a test case,” he added. “Today, if I violate anything on the grounds of principle, I would spend some time thinking about the legal aspects, the court battles and so on. But at that time, I was just a student. I had read of World War I and constitutional cases, but I didn’t give it very much thought. I did anticipate that I would be apprehended, but I didn’t know very much about the legal procedures in these things. I just felt that something was going to happen to curtail my freedom.”⁵

Hirabayashi turned himself in to the FBI after defying the order to be removed from Seattle, and was tried and convicted in October 1942. He spent ninety days in prison.

In 1943, Hirabayashi’s case was heard by the Supreme Court, which ruled against him in a 9-0 vote.

When my case was before the Supreme Court in 1943, I fully expected that, as a citizen, the Constitution would protect me. Surprisingly, even though I lost, I did not abandon my beliefs and my values, and I never look at my case as just my own, or just as a Japanese American case. It is an American case, with principles that affect the fundamental human rights of all Americans.⁶

Some forty years later, during the Japanese American community’s fight for redress, Hirabayashi’s, Korematsu’s and Yasui’s cases were reopened, with attorneys filing a petition for a writ of error coram nobis in federal court, noting that the government suppressed, altered and destroyed crucial evidence during World War II that would have virtually destroyed the government’s use of “military necessity” as their justification for the incarceration.

A writ of error coram nobis allows for judicial review of a judgment based on factual errors not known to the court at the time the judgment was delivered.

Three years later, in a unanimous decision, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated Hirabayashi conviction, citing that his attorneys had proven their allegations of governmental misconduct.

“As an American citizen, I wanted to uphold the principles of the Constitution, and the curfew and evacuation orders which singled out a group on the basis of ethnicity violated them,” Hirabayashi told the late University of California, Berkeley Professor Ronald Takaki. “It was not acceptable to be less than a full citizen in a white man’s country.”⁷

Manzanar Committee Co-Chair Bruce Embrey hailed Hirabayashi as champion of civil rights.

“With the passing of Gordon Hirabayashi, we have lost a true hero, a true champion of civil rights,” said Embrey. “Asking for nothing more than equal treatment under the law, and demanding his Constitutional rights, he made history.”

“His historic stand in defense of the Constitution, and against the incarceration of the Nikkei community, serves as an inspiration to all who cherish democracy and human rights,” added Embrey. “On behalf of the Manzanar Committee, I want to extend our deepest condolences to his family, friends and loved ones. He will be sorely missed.”

Hirabayashi, who earned a master’s degree in sociology from the University of Washington after the war, was Professor Emeritus at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. He is survived by his wife, Susan Carnahan, daughters Marion Oldenburg and Sharon Yuen, and his son, Jay (all children were from his marriage to Esther Hirabayashi); a sister, Esther Furugori, a brother, Professor James Hirabayashi of San Jose State University, nine grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren.

A memorial service for Gordon Hirabayashi is scheduled for Friday, January 6, in Edmonton.

^1-6Hirabayashi, Gordon (1990). “Gordon Hirabayashi v. The United States ‘Am I An American?,’” In Irons, Peter (Ed.), The Courage Of Their Convictions: Sixteen Americans Who Fought Their Way To The Supreme Court. New York: Penguin Books. pp. 50-62. ISBN-10: 0-1401-2810-7. ISBN-13: 978-0140128109.

⁷ Takaki, Ronald. Strangers From A Different Shore: A History Of Asian Americans. Boston: Little, Brown And Company. 1989, p. 393. ISBN-10: 0-3168-3109-3. ISBN-13: 978-0316831093.

Related Stories

• Gordon Hirabayshi, 1918-2012 – Angry Asian Man
• Gordon Hirabayashi, Civil Rights Icon Who Resisted Wartime Incarceration, Dies – Nichibei
• Gordon Hirabayashi Has Died; He Refused To Go To WWII Internment Camp – NPR – The Two Way
• Civil Rights Icon Gordon Hirabayashi Dies at 93 – Rafu Shimpo

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.

Unless otherwise specified, all stories, images, video and audio content on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License. You may copy, distribute and/or transmit any story, image, video or audio content published on this site under the terms of this license, but only if proper attribution is indicated. The full name of the author and a link back to the original article on this blog are required.

Manzanar Committee Comment Policies

Manzanar Committee member Kanji Sahara (left), shown here during
the 2011 Manzanar At Dusk program on April 30, 2011.
Photo: James To

Editor’s Note: On December 9, 2011, the New York Times published a review of the new museum at the Heart Mountain National Historic Landmark, which opened on August 20, 2011. But it was clear that the author failed to do thorough research. In fact, he was careless, sloppy, and as a journalist, his work was shoddy, at best. As a result, the story ended up perpetuating the falsehoods that many continue to believe about the Japanese American Incarceration experience, giving the reader the idea that the incarceration was somewhat justified.

Many in the Japanese American community were outraged, including Manzanar Committee member Kanji Sahara, a Nisei (second generation American of Japanese ancestry), who was incarcerated at the concentration camp in Jerome, Arkansas during World War II. Sahara submitted the following as a Letter to the Editor, and has given his permission for us to publish it here as well.

by Kanji Sahara

Edward Rothstein’s “The How of an Internment, But Not All The Whys” (Art & Design, December 9, 2011) reviews the new Heart Mountain museum and propagates incorrect facts regarding the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans.

After World War II started, the FBI arrested and detained a few thousand German, Italian and Japanese aliens. These were “monitored aliens” that the FBI tracked before World War I and considered dangerous. However, the 120,000 Nikkei (Japanese emigrants and their descendants) put in camps were not treated as individuals but members of an ethnic group. There is a distinction between arresting monitored aliens and mass incarceration of an ethnic group.

Rothstein repeats several myths regarding “suspicious acts” by Nikkei which led to call for their removal. There is not a single documented act of espionage, sabotage or fifth column activity by Nikkei on the West Coast. FBI Director Hoover stated mass removal was not necessary. In 1983, the Congressional Committee said Evacuation was due to race prejudice, war hysteria and failure of political leadership.

Rothstein states Internment had large loopholes. This is because only the Nikkei in the West Coast states were put in camps. Thus Colorado’s Amache Camp housed California Nikkei, while those Nikkei living in Denver were free.

Rothstein cites “…jobs held outside the camp.” In 1942, western sugar beet farmers needed workers to harvest the crop. About 10,000 young men temporarily left camp to harvest sugar beets.

Rothstein states “…its newspaper editors working in Cody.” This is because every Saturday, the Cody Enterprise printed the Heart Mountain Sentinel.

Targeting of Muslim Americans has occurred since 9/11. The best antidote is to know the truth concerning the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.

The views expressed in this story are those of the author, and are not necessarily those of the Manzanar Committee.

Related Stories:

• A Response To New York Times’ “The How of an Internment, but Not All the Whys” – 8 Asians
• New York Times Museum Review Offers Possible Justifications For Internment? – Angry Asian Man
• The Ugly Side of Selective Memory & Revisionist History – Asian Nation
• Letters: When Japanese-Americans Were Interned in Camps – New York Times
• Scholars Take Issue with NYT Review of Heart Mountain Museum – Rafu Shimpo
• Insinuations and Innuendo About Internment – Rafu Shimpo
• The Ugly Side of Selective Memory & Revisionist History – The Color Line

Unless otherwise specified, all stories, images, video and audio content on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License. You may copy, distribute and/or transmit any story, image, video or audio content published on this site under the terms of this license, but only if proper attribution is indicated. The full name of the author and a link back to the original article on this blog are required.

Manzanar Committee Comment Policies

Manzanar Committee member Joyce Okazaki was a child when she was incarcerated at Manzanar, shown here in this famous photo by renowned photographer Ansel Adams.

The Manzanar Committee encourages those with questions to feel free to contact us. We don’t always have the answers, but if we don’t, we can usually put people in touch with those who do.

Manzanar Committee member Joyce Okazaki, who was incarcerated at Manzanar as a child, answered some questions sent to us by Terry Healy, who teaches a sixth grade class at Woodrow Wilson Elementary School in Manhattan, Kansas.

by Joyce Okazaki

I was sent with my family to Manzanar, California, and arrived there on April 2, 1942. I was a second grader, and when I left in August, 1944, I finished fifth grade. I had a difficult adjustment to regular school, but did not suffer any discrimination from people in Chicago, Illinois.

The following are my answers to often asked questions by students in schools across the country, when assigned by their teachers.

1. What was the reaction of those who were sent to the camps?

In that day and time, the Japanese Americans were a silent and obedient minority, who went along with whatever was ordered for them by the authorities. There were very few, only three out of 120,000 people, who refused to obey the curfew, or to register and be forcibly removed from their homes to go to an unknown place.

Although I was a child then, I went with my parents, who obeyed orders. But imagine if you are an adult, forced to leave your comfortable home, leave your job, and sell or store your belongings and furniture, because you don’t know where you are going and how long you will be gone. No one tells you anything other than you have to leave, and you can only take what you can carry. If your parents have young children, they have to carry everything for the children as well as themselves.

2. What is the best way to describe the camps? We have heard internment camps, prison camps, concentration camps, and relocation camps?

The best description is concentration camp, because I was incarcerated in one, surrounded by barbed wire fencing and eight guard towers with armed sentries. I was a citizen and denied my civil rights. There was no hearing, and no charges for any crimes.

An internment camp for internees are for enemy aliens during a time of war. We were citizens.

A prison camp is for criminals who are convicted of crimes usually after being tried in court.

A relocation camp is for people who have to be moved away from a hazard, such as a toxic or polluted area. An evacuation of an area happens during a time of hurricanes, fires or floods to move people from their homes, but are eventually moved back within a short period of time.

A concentration camp is a place where people are imprisoned, not because of any crimes they committed, but because of who they are. During World War II, America’s concentration camps were distinguishable from Nazi Germany’s camps, which were torture camps and in some cases, death camps or extermination camps. Concentration camps have existed in the former Soviet Union, Cambodia, and Bosnia. All of these camps had one thing in common: the people in power removed a minority group from the general population and the rest of society let it happen.

3. What was the impact on the families that were sent to the camps short term? Long term?

Manzanar Committee member Joyce Okazaki (seated to the left of the gentleman in the blue shirt) participates in a small group discussion
at the 2007 Manzanar At Dusk program.
Photo: Gann Matsuda.

Families also had to learn to go outside to another barrack to shower, use the toilet, and do laundry.

The long-term impact was that Japanese American adults did not talk about this period in their lives for many years to their families, friends and the community, and some of the people may never have spoken about this event. This is probably because of the perceived shame of being sent to a prison for no reason, and many could never understand the reason why this had to happen. They were silent to their graves.

4. Did many people leave the camps to go to other parts of the United States or remain there?

The West Coast of the United States was designated as a restricted military zone, and was closed to all who were incarcerated in concentration camps. The Japanese Americans were not allowed to move back to the West Coast. Once the US Supreme Court decided, in December of 1942, that the Japanese Americans, who were determined to be loyal, could leave, some applied for permission to leave the camp, provided that they had a sponsor at the destination.

Each person leaving camp was given a one-way ticket to wherever they chose to go and $25. My father requested permission to leave and was given a train ticket to New York. He found a job that was in Chicago, Illinois, and moved there. He sent for us and we left camp in August 1944. We lived in Chicago for eight years before Dad got a transfer to Los Angeles, and we moved.

Many of the people who settled in Chicago have remained there all of their lives. Others moved to New York, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Denver, Colorado, Salt Lake City, Utah, Seabrook, New Jersey, and various other cities that were accepting of the Japanese Americans.

After December, 1944, the War Relocation Authority (WRA) decided to lift the restrictions of moving back to the West Coast. My grandparents then moved back to Los Angeles in March 1945. After the war ended with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, those remaining in the camps returned to the West Coast, and suffered from a housing shortage. The last camp to close was Tule Lake, California, which closed on March 20, 1946.

5. Did the court case of Fred Korematsu make any difference?

The original decision of Korematsu vs. US was tried all the way to the US Supreme Court. The Court ruled that the US Government was justified in placing all Japanese Americans into concentration camps because of military necessity. Documents stated that there were instances of spying and sabotage recorded. All of this was later found to be false after documents found in the National Archives in the early 1980’s actually showed that documents were falsified to justify their position. One such document, of which there were ten copies, was the only one remaining in the files, because the other nine copies were destroyed, was discovered by a researcher, Aiko Herzig Yoshinaga. With this document, constitutional lawyers then set about to open the case by a writ of error of Coram Nobis, an old procedure, to attempt to appeal Korematsu’s case, The appeal was filed in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, and the Supreme Court decision was eventually vacated, freeing Korematsu of being a felon in 1984.

The views expressed in this story are those of the author, and are not necessarily those of the Manzanar Committee.

Unless otherwise specified, all stories, images, video and audio content on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License. You may copy, distribute and/or transmit any story, image, video or audio content published on this site under the terms of this license, but only if proper attribution is indicated. The full name of the author and a link back to the original article on this blog are required.

Manzanar Committee Comment Policies

by Joyce Okazaki

Mako Nakagawa of Seattle, Washington, headlined
an event at the Japanese American National Museum
on August 27, 2011, where she called for the use of accurate, non-euphemistic language to describe the
World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans.
Photo: Mako Nakagawa

The event, which was presented in collaboration with The George and Sakaye Aratani Endowed Chair, and the UCLA Asian American Studies Center, discussed the “…need to replace government created euphemisms of World War II with more accurate terminology.”

According to the Pacific Citizen, “Nakagawa promoted the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) resolution in 2010, at their National Convention in Chicago, on the use of accurate terminology to describe the World War II incarceration of the people of Japanese descent. The resolution gained unanimous support from the JACL National Board and the National Council, made up of all the chapter delegates.”

“The primary goal of the resolution is, ‘to affect future learners of this episode of history with less distortion by misleading euphemistic terms, and concomitantly preserve and protect the essence of our United States Constitution so that this historical wrong is never again repeated.’”

Nakagawa, an educator with the Seattle School District, has been a teacher, program manager, teacher trainer, curriculum designer, and elementary school principal. She went on to hold a curriculum advisory position in multicultural education with the State Office of Public Instruction in Washington, where she developed the concept of “Cooperative Pluralism.”

After six years, Nakagawa started her own business, Mako & Associates, where she gave speeches, conducted workshops, designed projects to meet the needs of clients, specializing in the areas of diversity training and the Japanese American experience during World War II. She is also the originator of the Rainbow Program, which won awards for multicultural education. She was also the keynote speaker at the 42nd Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage on April 30, 2011.

During the program, Nakagawa reiterated her position about use of accurate terminology instead of the United States Government’s attempts at covering up what happened to the Japanese Americans. She brought up examples that the present government and media uses—all sorts of euphemisms to hide the truth, such as “collateral damage” for the bombing of women and children, and “enhanced interrogation techniques” for torturing prisoners.

She also brought up what happened at the last JACL Convention, where an emergency ad hoc committee was formed upon reading what the Educational Committee, which was selected to prepare a handbook after the 2010 convention, wrote. The handbook pinpointed the euphemistic words as targeted words, but added that they were acceptable if placed within quotation marks.

The handbook also proposed that an alternative might be the words, “American concentration camp.” However, this was not in keeping with the original resolution. Hence, the emergency resolution, which called for the handbook to be re-written in line with the original resolution, was brought up at the recently held convention in Los Angeles.

During this process, the American Jewish Committee tried to sway the vote by calling on the JACL National Board to interject their opinion on the use of the words. Despite that, the emergency resolution was passed.

Nakagawa also discussed the meaning of the euphemistic words, “evacuation,” as meaning one was to be saved from impending disaster, a rescue mission, and “relocation,” meaning moving from one place to another. The words “internment” and “internee” refer to people who are citizens of the country with which the United States is at war. They are considered enemy aliens, and in this case, the people in the camps are ruled by the Geneva Convention.

But that was not the case with the War Relocation Authority (WRA) Camps, such as Manzanar. These camps were supposed to be governed by the Constitution of the United States, but those incarcerated within the barbed wire were labeled, “non-aliens,” a totally different class to hide behind the Constitution and denied civil rights.

Nakagawa then showed a ten-minute film produced by the Office of War Information of the Motion Picture Industry, narrated by former WRA Director Milton Eisenhower, to show the extent of the propaganda perpetrated by the U.S. Government. Another short film proposed genocide of all Japanese. These were shocking and repulsive to the audience in attendance.

Aiko Herzig Yoshinaga, who was originally scheduled to participate in the event, was unable to attend the session, but Karen Ishizuka, author, filmmaker and former curator at JANM was present. Ishizuka, while with JANM, was instrumental in negotiating with the American Jewish Committee, during her curated exhibit, America’s Concentration Camps, shown at Ellis Island, New York, in 1998.

Ishizuka showed a slide presentation that tells the story of her book, Lost and Found: Reclaiming the Japanese American Incarceration, and how she developed the exhibit. She states that the JANM staff came to agreement with the American Jewish Committee on the term, “concentration camp,” with President and Chief Executive Irene Hirano playing an important part in negotiations with the officials of the Jewish community. The final statement, issued jointly by JANM and the AJC, at the beginning of the exhibit in all of its venues, read as follows:

A concentration camp is a place where people are imprisoned, not because of any crimes they committed, but simply because of who they are. Although many groups have been singled out for such persecution throughout history, the term, “concentration camp” was first used at the turn of the century in the Spanish American and Boer Wars.

During World War II, America’s concentration camps were clearly distinguishable from Nazi Germany’s. Nazi camps were places of torture, barbarous medical experiments, and summary executions; some were extermination centers with gas chambers. Six million Jews and many others, including Gypsies, Poles, homosexuals, and political dissidents were slaughtered in the Holocaust.

In recent years, concentration camps have existed in the former Soviet Union, Cambodia, and Bosnia.

Despite the difference, all had one thing in common: the people in power removed a minority group from the general population, and the rest of society let it happen.

In her book, Ishizuka wrote, “the extensive and persistent use of euphemisms functioned to undermine, demoralize, and gain the cooperation of the victims of the incarceration…Euphemisms deceived the American and worldwide publics in addition to Americans of Japanese ancestry.”

She also stated that she did not understand why the American Jewish Committee was again raising an issue with the terminology after the agreement was reached in 1998.

The last slide shown had the words of Raymond Okamura, who campaigned for the repeal of the Emergency Detention Act of 1950, which allowed for mass arrests and incarceration, and cautioned of the social and political repercussions of using euphemisms.

“One indication of the emotional scars left by the incarceration is the continued use of the government euphemisms by the former prisoners…If this practice persists, no one will be able to testify to the magnitude of the occurrence.”

Joyce Okazaki, who spent her part of her childhood behind the barbed wire at Manzanar, is a member of the Manzanar Committee.

Unattributed views expressed in this story are those of the author, and are not necessarily those of the Manzanar Committee.

Related Stories:

• Words Can Lie Or Clarify Criticizes Euphemistic Language Used To Describe WWII Camps Used To Imprison Japanese Americans
• Manzanar Committee Member Joyce Okazaki: “Yes, It Was A Concentration Camp”
• More From Okazaki On Use of “Concentration Camp;” Refutes Rafu Shimpo Columnist George Yoshinaga
• Grateful Crane’s Soji Kashiwagi Weighs In On Use Of “Concentration Camp”
• Sue Kunitomi Embrey: Concentration Camps, Not Relocation Centers
• Mako Nakagawa Delivers Keynote Address At 42nd Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage
• Cast in Bronze: Terminology Symposium in San Francisco, October 22, 2011

Unless otherwise specified, all stories, images, video and audio content on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License. You may copy, distribute and/or transmit any story, image, video or audio content published on this site under the terms of this license, but only if proper attribution is indicated. The full name of the author and a link back to the original article on this blog are required.

Manzanar Committee Comment Policies

Editor’s Note: UCLA Nikkei Student Union and UCLA Kyodo Taiko member Yoshimi Kawashima participated in her second Manzanar Pilgrimage this past April, at the 42nd Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage. She shares her thoughts about her experiences with us below.

Yoshimi Kawashima
Photo: Gann Matsuda

The dust stirred gently in the opaque light of the rising sun, drifting along the near empty road. Eyes still drowsy from the four-hour trip, mind still struggling to awake from rising with the dawn light, we finally reached the parking lot which would lead to the Manzanar National Historic Site—my second time at the annual Manzanar Pilgrimage since my freshman year at UCLA.

When I went to my first Manzanar Pilgrimage in April 2009, I had absolutely no idea what to expect. I was only newly exposed to the history of Japanese American Internment, and now, physically stepping into the forlorn desert they had once been forced to call home brought forth mixed emotions.

What does it mean to be a (Japanese) American of this generation?

I distinctly remember the car ride my first year, when one my of the upperclassmen and Board member of the UCLA Nikkei Student Union (NSU), Ed Kobayashi, elaborated on how Manzanar was one of the two internment camps in California during World War II, and every year, people from all walks of life come to make a pilgrimage to this historic site.

My initial feeling of detachment and indifference was borne from my ignorance—I knew it was significant but it was easy to listen to how the internees had to suffer, but not truly understand or comprehend the weight of those words.

Oh how the times have changed.

Memories of standing in the scorching sun amid the barren landscape along with my fellow NSU members dominated my initial impression of the camp. But this time, as a college junior, I searched for familiarity. My purpose on this pilgrimage was different. No longer was I making the pilgrimage for the organization which I was a part of, almost devoid of any knowledge of internment and Japanese Americans, Instead, I arrived as someone who had gained familiarity with the rich history.

Along with Eryn Tokuhara (left), Michelle Cheng (center, hidden), Kawashima (right)
carries the banner representing the Poston concentration camp at the 42nd Annual
Manzanar Pilgrimage on April 30, 2011.
Photo: Yuta Ebikawa

Experiencing the hot, dry heat of the desert, sleeping in the freezing temperatures at night at our camp site near Manzanar, listening directly to the stories by the Nisei, and seeing how many generations the stories touched, truly moved my heart.

As two years had gone by since my last visit, I still held tightly to that memory. But as time passes, so does the land, and so do the people.

There was familiarity and yet a distinct feeling of a change—a transition I had completely missed. All the upperclassmen who had accompanied me on my previous trip were nowhere to be found. To be sure, no longer was I just a mere observer this year, as I had the honor and privilege to perform with UCLA Kyodo Taiko to support the event, and was asked to carry the Poston banner with Eryn Tokuhara and Michelle Cheng, two of my fellow Kyodo members, in recognizing the ten different internment camps.

With the wind blowing, it was quite a trial for three small women to hold up the large banner. This experience brought to heart another dose of realization: being embraced into the Nikkei community.

Moreover, as I stood there holding the Poston banner, the man beside me inquired as to where I was from and what high school I attended. Little did I expect to meet one of the physical education teachers, Mr. Beadles, from Nobel Middle School (located in Northridge, California), at Manzanar. It struck me how small the world really is, and how far-reaching the Manzanar Pilgrimage and its message is.

The greatest difference between my first Pilgrimage and this year’s event was definitely the people I encountered, particularly with the Manzanar At Dusk (MAD) program. I remembered my first year—my discussion group had two elderly former internees who recounted their experiences in the camps: the confusion at being told to pack up their belongings in a single suitcase, the loyalty questionnaire, and that fighting in the war was a testament to the strength of the Japanese American community.

Kawashima (foreground, second from left) performs with UCLA Kyodo Taiko
at the 42nd Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage on April 30, 2011.
Photo: Gann Matsuda

I am no longer the newbie who is completely unaware of the gravity of what occurred at Manzanar, the strength and sheer willpower of the Japanese American population, and the potential for invoking the impact each one of us holds to create change. Regardless of whether my grandparents may have been interned, as an American of this generation, I hold close to my heart the words of those with whom I had the privilege to speak at Manzanar At Dusk.

“As the next generation, you have a duty to not just hold what you hear today within you, but to pass it on.”

To be sure, the experience has the potential to touch more than one life.

Although many printed press, media, and interviews may have brought their stories to the light, what holds the greatest influence is directly hearing, not only from those who went through the experience, but from those who were touched by it. History repeats itself, not only because of the actors who play in the grand scheme of things, but by those who refuse to confront it and to apply the lessons learned by those who make the sacrifices. Nothing should ever be taken for granted.

Shikata ga nai. It cannot be helped. Perhaps we cannot change the past—that is truly sho ga nai. But we must take what we have learned and take action—never forget, but move on confidently, upholding the flow of time between generations. Issho ni ganbarimashou. Let us all work hard together, never forgetting, passing it on, and paying it forward.

Entering her senior year at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Yoshimi Kawashima, 21, is majoring in East Asian Studies and minoring in Cognitive Science. As a member of the UCLA Nikkei Student Union, she co-produced their 25th Annual Culture Night in 2011. A native of Van Nuys, California, Kawashima also performs with UCLA Kyodo Taiko, and served as an Aratani intern at the Japanese American National Museum in the summer of 2009, working for Discover Nikkei.

This story was reprinted on the Discover Nikkei web site on September 7, 2011: 42nd Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage: The Passage of Time.

The views expressed in this story are those of the author, and are not necessarily those of the Manzanar Committee.

Related Stories:

• 41st Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage Highlights the Unfinished Business of the Civil Rights Struggle
• 41st Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage: A Letter To Obaa-chan
• 41st Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage: Reflecting and Revisiting Living History
• Connections And Common Bonds Are Key At Manzanar At Dusk Program
• Students Taking Leadership Role In 2011 Manzanar At Dusk Program
• 42nd Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage/Manzanar At Dusk 2011 – A Personal Reflection
• 42nd Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage/2011 Manzanar At Dusk: Keeping The Manzanar Story Alive
• 42nd Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage: Everyone Has A Story To Tell, But Not Everyone Has A Chance To Tell Their Story

The Manzanar Committee encourages all those who may wish to share their thoughts, experiences and stories from the 42nd Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage and 2011 Manzanar At Dusk programs, held on April 30, 2011, to submit them for publication. Whether it is a story, commentary piece, poem, photographs, audio or video, we welcome your contributions for possible publication here on our blog.

For information on submitting your work, click on: About the Manzanar Committee/Contact Us.

Unless otherwise specified, all stories, images, video and audio content on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License. You may copy, distribute and/or transmit any story, image, video or audio content published on this site under the terms of this license, but only if proper attribution is indicated. The full name of the author and a link back to the original article on this blog are required.

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Born in Sierra Madre, California in April 1923, Yosh Kuromiya and his family moved to Monrovia, where he attended grammar school, junior high and high school. He was attending Pasadena Junior College as an art major when his family was forced out of their homes and imprisoned, like other Americans of Japanese ancestry, during World War II. His family was first sent to the assembly center at the Pomona Fairgrounds, before they were imprisoned at the Heart Mountain concentration camp in Wyoming.

Draft resister Yosh Kuromiya (seated, center) was a member of the “Poster Shop Gang,” designing and printing posters at the Heart Mountain concentration camp, one of ten such camps where Americans of Japanese ancestry were unjustly imprisoned during World War II.
Photo: Kuromiya Family Collection

Kuromiya was sentenced to three years in federal prison. He was released on parole after two years, and was pardoned by President Harry S. Truman in late 1947.

A retired landscape architect, Kuromiya resides in Alhambra, California with his wife, Irene. Today, he often speaks to groups and organizations about his experiences during World War II, and especially about his experience as a draft resister.

Below is the text of a speech he gave to the Greater Los Angeles Singles Chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League on May 13, 2011.

Good evening and happy Friday the 13th! If you haven’t already had your share of misfortune today, maybe you are about to, but I hope not.

I would like to thank you all, for having me here tonight. However, I must warn you that I am neither a historian, a professor, a scholar, nor even a speaker. My exposure to history is that I’ve been around for 88 years, but never seemed to make a difference. I’ve professed a few ideas during those years but never received an encouraging response, much less a degree.

As for being a scholar, I barely made it out of high school. I think they needed the space. As for public speaking, I am hard of hearing, and as you are about to discover, most people would regard it as a blessing if they could suddenly lose their hearing when they see me approaching the stand.

I wondered what would be a worthy topic to discuss with a group of Japanese Americans, and Nisei in particular, because I happen to be one.

I believe what makes us so proud of being Japanese American is our culture, or more accurately, the culture we inherited from our parents. It is perhaps our greatest asset, source of inspiration, and what defines us the most. Some may disagree because there were many occasions when it was rather uncomfortable to be one. Indeed, it seemed more of a burden being a Nisei and an ever present cross for us to bear.

Yosh Kuromiya (top row, second from left), is pictured here with fellow Japanese American draft resisters, all dressed in prison-issued suits, on July 14, 1946, the day they were released from McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary. Kuromiya spent two years of a three-year sentence at McNeil Island. He received a full pardon
from President Harry S. Truman in late 1947.
Photo: Kuromiya Family Collection

We Nisei attended schools where we were expected to adopt Western values and rules of behavior, but it didn’t necessarily guarantee acceptance from our white schoolmates and in some cases, not even from the teachers. Nonetheless, many Nisei (but not me) excelled academically, due largely to the encouragement of our parents drawing on the rigid disciplinary standards of the Japanese culture. We were generally regarded as “quaint” or “quiet” since, unlike our white counterparts, we often avoided expressing ourselves publicly. Our shyness was often misinterpreted as slyness.

At home, many of us became even more Japanese, conceding to our parents’ traditional values. We worked in the family business or farm. Our Saturdays were preempted by Japanese language schools or studying the ancient cultural arts of Japan. We were caught between two worlds, each offering rich resources to be sure, but demanding sometimes conflicting commitments and priorities. We could not deny our Japanese roots and risk alienating our parents, nor could we ignore the American in us and forego our future in the land of our birth. We must somehow continue to serve two masters; one, ethnically and culturally, the other, politically and socially, into a harmonious blend of the most humane aspects that each had to offer.

However, with the outbreak of World War II between our two masters, our dilemma was further exacerbated. We Nisei, along with our Issei parents, were held by our country as guilty of harboring enemy sympathies. This, by orders of a government that had arbitrarily overlooked the basic principles our country was founded on.

Strangely, or perhaps not so strangely, due to our pre-conditioned mandate of obedience to authority, there was little protest. What little protest there was, which took on varying forms, was met with censure and ostracism by fellow prisoners out of fear for their own safety in the event of a reprisal from an already unsympathetic government.

Thus, we prisoners in the camps, in essence, became a part of the scenario of deception by acceding to the unreasonable demands of our persecutors. What appeared as an obvious injustice was in fact the failure of both “oppressor” and the “oppressed” to perceive the injustice as a form of deception. Resolution could have been realized through either party, as deception is totally powerless in itself, and only an illusion that appears as reality to those who are willing to believe in it.

Perhaps many of us “victims” did have a sub-conscious sense of guilt for our lack of confidence in constitutional principles which prevented us from speaking out too loudly. The line of demarcation between oppressor and the oppressed thereby became somewhat blurred. Many of us Nisei, in our own way, failed to uphold the principles of the U.S. Constitution. It was not just the U.S. Government.

Draft resister Yosh Kuromiya speaks before the Greater Los Angeles Singles chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League,
May 13, 2011.
Photo: Kuromiya Family Collection

I have great admiration for Aiko for the conscientious public service she has rendered throughout the years. However, I could find no reference in her book to what seemed to be a major euphemism to justify the acceptance of questionable demands by the government with the rationalization of proving ones loyalty.

When did it become a citizen’s responsibility to prove his innocence, especially when no charges of disloyalty were ever filed nor convictions established? Was our acquiescence to government directives regarded as a form of self-incrimination?

It would seem so.

With fewer Nisei each year who lived with the many deceptions and self-deceptions, it seems this era of unreality will remain unresolved and the lies will remain a part of Japanese American history. Will the Nisei generation in our confusion forever remain a part of that lie?

History itself does not change. It is our perceptions of it that change as we peel away the layers of deceptions and self-deception to reveal the true history of Japanese Americans. But that, it seems, is a legacy we Nisei must entrust to later generations to confirm. We Nisei in our desperate search for validation from without seem to have forsaken our reality from within, and thereby our true identity as masters of our perceptions and not merely victims of our “mis-perceptions.”

Thank you.

The views expressed in this story are those of the author, and are not necessarily those of the Manzanar Committee.

This story was reprinted on the Discover Nikkei web site on June 28, 2011:
Yosh Kuromiya: Random Thoughts On Being Nisei During World War II.

Unless otherwise specified, all stories, images, video and audio content on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License. You may copy, distribute and/or transmit any story, image, video or audio content published on this site under the terms of this license, but only if proper attribution is indicated. The full name of the author and a link back to the original article on this blog are required.

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Editor’s Note: The following is a personal reflection by Jason Honeycutt, who visited the Manzanar National Historic Site in May, 2010.

CANOGA PARK, CA — On the almost five-hour drive north on US Highway 395 to Mammoth Mountain, I had driven by it over twenty times, always curious what it was. It looked like a prison of some sort.

Replica of one of the eight guardtowers at the Manzanar National Historic Site.
Photo: Jason Honeycutt

Heading north, a friend on our snowboard trip mentioned that it was the “Manzanar Relocation Center.” Over twenty times passing it, I wondered how many others made the same mistake, not knowing what was right in front of our eyes for so long.

I grew up in the rural Midwest, and in American History class, you heard whispers about concentration camps for the “Japanese” during World War II, with no real distinction made between prisoners of war and American citizens. Of course, it was a footnote to the story of how America was helping Europe to be free, to be liberated of Nazi Germany discriminating against people based on their heritage.

Why wasn’t the history of these imprisoned Americans in our history books more clearly? Maybe, like it was swept under the rug after the war’s end, certain people wanted to sweep it under history’s rug by not talking about some of the skeletons in our closet.

On our trip home from Mammoth, we made sure to schedule a half day to see Manzanar. Pulling in the camp, my car was rocking in the wind, sand blasting from every angle. As I fought to open the door of the car against the wind, in came a flood of sand, the wind quickly slamming the door shut. Sand was pelting me from every angle, in the cracks of my ears, under my eyelids, down my shirt. It was like nothing I had ever known—sand in places I’d never imagined.

As I leaned backwards against the sandstorm, making my way to the old Manzanar high school auditorium, which now serves as the Interpretive Center, I thought, “this is only a couple minutes of this. These people had to endure this for over three years?”

Monument at the Manzanar cemetery, known as the Soul Consoling Tower.
Photo: Jason Honeycutt

I eventually drove to the different parts of the camp. A sea of thick scrub brush overtook where barracks used to be, where people used to spend their nights. As my feet pressed into the sandy ground, I thought about how many others were standing right where I was, how many footprints had been erased by the passage of time. After the war had ended and Manzanar was dismantled, it was almost as if the desert wanted to erase the embarrassment of what had happened there. Every prisoner there had their life completely dismantled, their property sold for pennies on the dollar, stripped of their possessions and dignity, then, when the camp closed, they were left to rebuild with nothing, thrown back into “America.”

Manzanar was like nothing I had ever experienced—sheer anger, guilt, embarrassment.

“How didn’t I know? Why weren’t we taught this growing up?”

I felt like crying but I was too mad. I felt like fighting, but who? My jaw was stiff, locked together. I was helpless. Maybe I had a slight glimpse of what these Americans might have experienced stepping foot onto the sands of Manzanar for the first time.

Jason Honeycutt, a television editor and music video director, currently works for FX Network. Inspired by what he saw and experienced during his Manzanar visit, he has begun work on a feature film screenplay based on the camp. Honeycutt lives in Canoga Park, California with his wife and daughter.

The Manzanar Committee welcomes submissions of prose, poetry, commentary, short stories, audio, video—any thoughts 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. Just send us what you have to the e-mail address on the right, and we’ll publish it here (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, click on: About the Manzanar Committee/Contact Us.

Unless otherwise specified, all stories, images, video and audio content on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License. You may copy, distribute and/or transmit any story, image, video or audio content published on this site under the terms of this license, but only if proper attribution is indicated. The full name of the author and a link back to the original article on this blog are required.

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The Japanese American community lost one of its giants on November 12, 2010, when William Hohri, the lead plaintiff in Hohri v. United States, the class action lawsuit filed by the National Coalition for Japanese American Redress (NCJAR), passed away at the age of 83.

Hohri, who was one of the 11,070 Americans of Japanese ancestry who were unjustly imprisoned at Manzanar during World War II, was a driving force behind NCJAR’s lawsuit that sought $27 billion in damages from the United States Government for injuries suffered as a result of the forced relocation and imprisonment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

The Manzanar Committee joins the rest of our community in mourning the loss of one of its leaders, and expresses its deepest sympathies to his wife, Yuriko, and his family.

For more, our good friend Martha Nakagawa wrote a comprehensive story/obituary for the Rafu Shimpo, which we urge you to read: Hohri, 83; Lead Plaintiff in Internees’ Lawsuit Against Government.

The Manzanar National Historic Site also has Hohri’s story of his life at Manzanar documented in their “ID Booklet” series, which features over sixty individual biographies, most written by the former prisoners or their families.

Click here to Download Hohri’s ID Booklet (requires Adobe Reader software).

Unless otherwise specified, all stories, images, video and audio content on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License. You may copy, distribute and/or transmit any story, image, video or audio content published on this site under the terms of this license, but only if proper attribution is indicated. The full name of the author and a link back to the original article on this blog are required.

Manzanar Committee Comment Policies

by Bruce Embrey

To download a copy of this paper, click on the image above.

As its title succinctly states, it is an effort to clarify the nature of the War Relocation Authority camps where Americans of Japanese ancestry were unjustly imprisoned during World War II.

Despite being used in an official state plaque, despite being used by Presidents, the Attorney General of the United States, and numerous scholars, the use of concentration camp to describe these camps, rather than relocation centers, or other euphemistic terms, still generates considerable resistance, often times, from within the Nikkei community.

This debate rages on precisely because words matter. The terms one chooses to use to describe the incarceration and wholesale deprivation of the civil rights of the Nikkei community fundamentally impacts what political lessons one draws from this ugly chapter of American History.

Euphemistic language and misnomers distort history. By failing to capture accurately what occurred during World War II, the work to insure this never happens again will be all that much weaker.

We hope republishing this paper will contribute to a better understanding of what the Japanese Americans endured 68 years ago.

Bruce Embrey is co-chair of the Manzanar Committee.

The views expressed in this story are those of the author and are not necessarily those of the Manzanar Committee.

The PDF version of Concentration Camps, Not Relocation Centers, available for download above, requires Adobe Reader to view the file.

Related Stories:

• Words Can Lie Or Clarify Criticizes Euphemistic Language Used To Describe WWII Camps Used To Imprison Japanese Americans
• Manzanar Committee Member Joyce Okazaki: “Yes, It Was A Concentration Camp”
• More From Okazaki On Use of “Concentration Camp;” Refutes Rafu Shimpo Columnist George Yoshinaga
• Grateful Crane’s Soji Kashiwagi Weighs In On Use Of “Concentration Camp”
• Mako Nakagawa Delivers Keynote Address At 42nd Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage
• Euphemistic Terms Used To Describe WWII Incarceration Of Japanese Americans Targeted At JANM Event
• Cast in Bronze: Terminology Symposium in San Francisco, October 22, 2011

Unless otherwise specified, all stories, images, video and audio content on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License. You may copy, distribute and/or transmit any story, image, video or audio content published on this site under the terms of this license, but only if proper attribution is indicated. The full name of the author and a link back to the original article on this blog are required.

Manzanar Committee Comment Policies