Manzanar

We’re home.

The plan was to stay in Mammoth until Wednesday, skiing tomorrow, April 22nd, my birthday. Alas, our plans were foiled.

Oh, the mountain is open, it’s just that they’ve hit a skein of unseasonably cold weather. So, what was slush on Saturday, before we hit the slopes, has been rock solid ice since.

We were able to find some soft snow on the Juniper Springs side of the mountain on Sunday, which faces east and has a lower altitude, but coming down from McCoy Station on Sunday was akin to skiing on a washboard. And I’ve never had an urge to play in a jug band.

My spirits sank when this morning’s ski report said it was 22 degrees at the base lodge and 9 on top, with 48 MPH winds. The day before was the windiest I’d ever skied through. And, it’s got to be close to forty degrees for the snow to soften up. And, after the pond-skimming finale at Canyon Lodge yesterday afternoon, they closed that side of the mountain for the season. So, we were left with no east-facing slopes. I asked a couple what the conditions were like around 9:30, they said not to buy a ticket, it was absolutely horrible. And, after shopping in town, a plethora of skiers testified to the same effect. Usually, two runs and out. The snow was rock hard, the wind profuse and scree was being blown onto the snow, which was wreaking havoc with their boards. With a strong chance of snow in the future, not enough to make a difference, but insuring cold temps, and more 50 MPH winds forecasted, we bailed. It was just too painful to stay. We hit it completely wrong. It’s supposed to be sixty degrees on Saturday, but before that…there will be no above-freezing temps on the mountain.

So we loaded up the car and drove downhill.

And downhill it is. Mammoth Mountain is at the peak of the Sierras. Looking down from the summit can induce vertigo, it’s 8,000 vertical feet to the valley below. Having no schedule to adhere to, we took a detour to Convict Lake, where Felice had scheduled my birthday dinner for tomorrow evening. Positively staggering. The mountains come down like Alps to a lake with waves like those on an ocean.

Back on the highway, we sauntered down to Bishop. Where we made a stop at Erick Schat’s Bakkery, for some gelato. And then some chocolate chip cookies. Hell, it’s my birthday tomorrow, and I was hurting, our plans having been blown.

On the road again, we were caught between towering peaks and the desert, trying to see through the bugs embedded on the windshield. And when we got to Manzanar, I told Felice I wanted to stop.

It was almost five. We had hundreds of miles to go. But I’d driven by this Japanese internment camp so many times without stopping. This time would be different.

There’s not much there. You notice a guard tower and a structure that looks like an airplane hangar. You get the feeling they removed all the evidence, so we wouldn’t be confronted with a low point in America’s history.

But turning off the highway onto a dirt road, we passed a guard shack and then started driving past markers…delineating where all the buildings had stood, starting back in 1942, when Japanese Americans, some even citizens, were herded onto this godforsaken landscape.

We were stunned how large the camp was. But what shocked us wasn’t the cracked concrete, the remnants of buildings that once stood, but the cemetery. Out here in the desert, people had given their lives for..?

Completing the loop, we stopped back at the airplane hangar, which turned out to be a school/gymnasium, built by the "prisoners". After the war it had been a location for Lone Pine functions, but when our country finally faced its past, decades later, they turned it into a museum. Of what once was.

There was no one there. Only two rangers and us. It was like stumbling on a museum in the future. After all the humans had perished. It was like we were visiting from another planet, another era, another century, which it was.

The displays were akin to those in all war museums. Recounting history, ill-formed decisions which led to human pain. But with no one else in attendance, the rangers had not started the movie. They could show it to us. The museum was open for another half hour. It was either exhibits or film.

We chose film.

Funny how everything’s more serious when the lights are out. That’s the power of movies, they can take you away. To another time and place. When the Emperor of Japan allowed his subjects to emigrate. Which many did. In the late nineteenth century, they came to America and started restaurants, businesses, families…they built lives. Until the U.S. government took it all away.

Parents sold possessions for pennies on the dollar. One mother smashed all her dishes, rather than give them away. And with tears in their eyes, they were taken to the California desert, blistering hot in the summer and bone-chilling cold in the winter. With a wind… One of the prisoners testified, the wind never stopped blowing.

They were told it was for their protection. But then why did the soldiers have bayonets at the end of their rifles? Why was there barbed wire? Why, when a protest about the indignities finally arose, did the guards shoot and kill?

Not only was there depression, but dissension. Everybody didn’t get along. Unrest fomented in the camp.

Ultimately you could leave if you had someone to sponsor you, if you could prove that you would not be a burden on your new community. After pledging fealty to a country that mistreated you. And if you didn’t??? If you didn’t renounce the Japanese Emperor? You were shipped to another camp in Oregon. Many were ultimately deported back to the old country.

Kids pledged allegiance to the flag… But there was no flag in the camp school. They played sports against local clubs, but they were always the home team.

Finally, with the war over, the prisoners were given a ticket wherever they desired and the princely sum of $25. If this is the American dream, I want no part of it.

We may live in the greatest country in the world…but that does not mean our history is not littered with indignities, injustices. Hell, did you read the "New York Times" about the Pentagon disinformation campaign? Utilizing retired military men?

Who is running our country? And for what purposes? And if you just scare people enough, what will they do? Whose lives will they sacrifice in order to feel safe themselves?

When the lights came up in the theatre, we were ushered to the lobby, it was time for the museum to close. But before we left, I detoured to the bathroom. On the wall of the men’s room I was confronted with a display. Of a latrine at the camp. With all the toilets in a row, no dividers in between. I can’t imagine being able to do my business under those conditions.

And business is exactly what those entombed in Manzanar couldn’t do. How many lives were ruined for an unjust, ridiculous cause. No Japanese American was ever convicted of undermining the American cause, of aiding the enemy.

Unless you’re a skier, unless you’re going to Mammoth Mountain, chances are you’re never going to be on Route 395 passing Manzanar. It’s completely out of the way. Hundreds of miles from Los Angeles and Reno, on the other side of the Sierras from Yosemite. But if you find yourself on that highway, take that turn, open that can of worms. Learn about man’s inhumanity to man. Only by studying history, by never forgetting, do we have a chance of preventing a tragedy like this in the future.

5 Responses to Manzanar »»


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  1. Comment by Kiku Funabiki | 2008/05/02 at 15:07:36

    Bob: I am Kiku Hori Funabiki, 83 1/2 year old ex-prisoner from an American Concentration Camp sanctioned and created thru FDR’s edict, Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942. I appreciated your observations and insights of Manzanar.

    Ken Burns in his highly acclaimed WWII documentary is quoted that on interviewing those in Middle America, 90% had no clue that these camps existed.
    Ironically, the ten camps were located in some of the most desolate corners of Mid-America. I plead with you not only to continue to inform Americans but to urge them to visit this country’s shame. Some of the sites have been funded for the Dept. of Parks and Rec. to develop them into public museums like Manzanar.

    I testified before the Congressional Committee on the Judiciary in Washington D.C. in 1984 for redress and reparations. In the Congressional Record, there is an entry by a Congressman Kindness (!) who in his eight line statement directed at me mentions the phrase "for your "protection" four times to justify our forced removal . Then, Congressman, why not the removal of German and Italian Americans?

    I add to your observation of the indignity of the men’s latrine, that the women’s latrine was constructed in a spacious area with three rows of toilets with no partitions, two rows facing each other. If I might be so indelicate, I was constipated for the whole duration of the incarceration.

    May I recommend two books, one "Years of Infamy" by Michi Weglyn, meticulously documented, the Bible for anyone researching this unconscionable
    injustice. The second, if I may, "Our Side of the Fence", now in its third printing, an anthology of the experiences and insights as told by eleven former detainees, myself included. We were all U.S. citizens, who were children and adolescents growing up within barbed wire enclosed compounds. We now are all in our late 70’s and 80’s. We are an endangered species. The stories are told as we lived the experience, not by historians and academia.

    Try Amazon or order directly to Natl. Japanese American Historical Society in San Francisco: njahs@njahs.org

    Warm wishes,

    Kiku Funabiki

  2. comment_type != "trackback" && $comment->comment_type != "pingback" && !ereg("", $comment->comment_content) && !ereg("", $comment->comment_content)) { ?>
  3. Comment by Kiku Arima | 2008/05/02 at 15:07:53

    Hello, Mr. Lefstz:

    A friend, Jim Nelson, shared your recent article on Manzanar. I was an internee in Manzanar during WWII. My mother and father were second generation citizens of Japanese ancestry who were interned in Manzanar along with 10,000 other Japanese Americans…….Manzanar was one of 10 "relocation centers" in the United States with a total population of !00,000 internees.

    Our friends and family lost everything during this dark period in U.S. history which many Americans are unaware. I appreciated reading your article and am sharing it with friends who were also uprooted and lost several years from their lives.

    Thank you for your article.

    Kiku Arima

  4. comment_type != "trackback" && $comment->comment_type != "pingback" && !ereg("", $comment->comment_content) && !ereg("", $comment->comment_content)) { ?>
  5. Comment by Mas Hashimoto | 2008/05/02 at 15:08:10

    Dear Mr. Lefsetz:

    A friend kindly sent me your article on Manzanar. April 22 is my wife’s birthday, but she was born after camp (in 1947). We’re both serious snow skiers who have skied the slush and ice and the cold winds of June at Monmouth.

    I’m a retired high school social studies teacher who was interned in Poston. My best and dearest friends are Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston ("Farewell to Manzanar"). I continue to teach about the Japanese American experience to students around the Monterey Bay area whenever invited.

    I would like your permission to reprint the article. I edit a small local Watsonville-Santa Cruz Japanese American Citizens League chapter monthly newsletter .

    You can check our website http://www.watsonvillesantacruzjacl.org for this past year’s newsletters. The newsletters are amateurish but we try.

    Onward!
    Mas Hashimoto

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  7. Comment by Robert Horsting | 2008/05/02 at 15:08:28

    Dear Mr. Lefsetz,

    I was sent a copy of your email, which documented your trip to Manzanar. I was touched by the direct and honest style in which you convey your thoughts, and more so by the fact that this visit had such an impact on an unintended visitor.

    My wife and I will be going there, for our first visit, as part of a volunteer group to clean-up the ground, such as they are(?). I’m looking forward to seeing what you had the opportunity to see, but I feel that the lack of other people at the site probably compounded the sense of isolation and contributed to the experience.

    A friend, Cory Shiozaki is completing work on a documentary, "From Barbed Wire To Barbed hooks", about the people that risked punishment by sneaking out of camp to go fishing in the local mountain streams.

    I’m very happy that you are such a prolific writer and that you shared the experience with your network of friends and readers, many of whom I’m sure had no idea of this episode of our U.S. history.

    Thank you very much,
    Robert Horsting
    Producer/Co-Director- CITIZEN TANOUYE
    http://www.citizentanouye.com

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  9. Comment by Jim Nelson | 2008/05/02 at 15:08:50

    Bob, I thought you might like to know that I shared your E-mail about Manzanar with my in-laws, the Japanese American side of my family, and they shared it, and shared it, and so on, and now apparently a great many people in the JA community throughout the LA area has read what you wrote (I believe you even corresponded with our friend Kiku Arima). You’ve made a lot of wonderful people very happy with your touching remarks about Manzanar.

    Jim Nelson
    A Taste Of Triple A


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  1. Comment by Kiku Funabiki | 2008/05/02 at 15:07:36

    Bob: I am Kiku Hori Funabiki, 83 1/2 year old ex-prisoner from an American Concentration Camp sanctioned and created thru FDR’s edict, Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942. I appreciated your observations and insights of Manzanar.

    Ken Burns in his highly acclaimed WWII documentary is quoted that on interviewing those in Middle America, 90% had no clue that these camps existed.
    Ironically, the ten camps were located in some of the most desolate corners of Mid-America. I plead with you not only to continue to inform Americans but to urge them to visit this country’s shame. Some of the sites have been funded for the Dept. of Parks and Rec. to develop them into public museums like Manzanar.

    I testified before the Congressional Committee on the Judiciary in Washington D.C. in 1984 for redress and reparations. In the Congressional Record, there is an entry by a Congressman Kindness (!) who in his eight line statement directed at me mentions the phrase "for your "protection" four times to justify our forced removal . Then, Congressman, why not the removal of German and Italian Americans?

    I add to your observation of the indignity of the men’s latrine, that the women’s latrine was constructed in a spacious area with three rows of toilets with no partitions, two rows facing each other. If I might be so indelicate, I was constipated for the whole duration of the incarceration.

    May I recommend two books, one "Years of Infamy" by Michi Weglyn, meticulously documented, the Bible for anyone researching this unconscionable
    injustice. The second, if I may, "Our Side of the Fence", now in its third printing, an anthology of the experiences and insights as told by eleven former detainees, myself included. We were all U.S. citizens, who were children and adolescents growing up within barbed wire enclosed compounds. We now are all in our late 70’s and 80’s. We are an endangered species. The stories are told as we lived the experience, not by historians and academia.

    Try Amazon or order directly to Natl. Japanese American Historical Society in San Francisco: njahs@njahs.org

    Warm wishes,

    Kiku Funabiki

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    1. Comment by Kiku Arima | 2008/05/02 at 15:07:53

      Hello, Mr. Lefstz:

      A friend, Jim Nelson, shared your recent article on Manzanar. I was an internee in Manzanar during WWII. My mother and father were second generation citizens of Japanese ancestry who were interned in Manzanar along with 10,000 other Japanese Americans…….Manzanar was one of 10 "relocation centers" in the United States with a total population of !00,000 internees.

      Our friends and family lost everything during this dark period in U.S. history which many Americans are unaware. I appreciated reading your article and am sharing it with friends who were also uprooted and lost several years from their lives.

      Thank you for your article.

      Kiku Arima

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      1. Comment by Mas Hashimoto | 2008/05/02 at 15:08:10

        Dear Mr. Lefsetz:

        A friend kindly sent me your article on Manzanar. April 22 is my wife’s birthday, but she was born after camp (in 1947). We’re both serious snow skiers who have skied the slush and ice and the cold winds of June at Monmouth.

        I’m a retired high school social studies teacher who was interned in Poston. My best and dearest friends are Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston ("Farewell to Manzanar"). I continue to teach about the Japanese American experience to students around the Monterey Bay area whenever invited.

        I would like your permission to reprint the article. I edit a small local Watsonville-Santa Cruz Japanese American Citizens League chapter monthly newsletter .

        You can check our website http://www.watsonvillesantacruzjacl.org for this past year’s newsletters. The newsletters are amateurish but we try.

        Onward!
        Mas Hashimoto

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        1. Comment by Robert Horsting | 2008/05/02 at 15:08:28

          Dear Mr. Lefsetz,

          I was sent a copy of your email, which documented your trip to Manzanar. I was touched by the direct and honest style in which you convey your thoughts, and more so by the fact that this visit had such an impact on an unintended visitor.

          My wife and I will be going there, for our first visit, as part of a volunteer group to clean-up the ground, such as they are(?). I’m looking forward to seeing what you had the opportunity to see, but I feel that the lack of other people at the site probably compounded the sense of isolation and contributed to the experience.

          A friend, Cory Shiozaki is completing work on a documentary, "From Barbed Wire To Barbed hooks", about the people that risked punishment by sneaking out of camp to go fishing in the local mountain streams.

          I’m very happy that you are such a prolific writer and that you shared the experience with your network of friends and readers, many of whom I’m sure had no idea of this episode of our U.S. history.

          Thank you very much,
          Robert Horsting
          Producer/Co-Director- CITIZEN TANOUYE
          http://www.citizentanouye.com

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          1. Comment by Jim Nelson | 2008/05/02 at 15:08:50

            Bob, I thought you might like to know that I shared your E-mail about Manzanar with my in-laws, the Japanese American side of my family, and they shared it, and shared it, and so on, and now apparently a great many people in the JA community throughout the LA area has read what you wrote (I believe you even corresponded with our friend Kiku Arima). You’ve made a lot of wonderful people very happy with your touching remarks about Manzanar.

            Jim Nelson
            A Taste Of Triple A

          This is a read-only blog. E-mail comments directly to Bob.