99% Invisible - 253- Manzanar

Episode Date: March 29, 2017

When Warren Furutani was growing up in Los Angeles in the 1950s, he sometimes heard his parents refer to a place where they once spent time — a place they called “camp.” To him “camp” meant summer camp or a … Continue reading →

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. When Warren for Attani was growing up in Los Angeles in the 1950s, he sometimes heard his parents refer to a place they once spent time, a place they called camp. You know camp reference for me was summer camp or the Y camp. So what is this camp thing they keep talking about? The fact that it's brought up here and there, but not elaborated on? You can't help but wonder, there must be much more to the story. Warren was right. There was a lot more to the story.

Producer Emmett Fitzgerald. During World War II, the US government incarcerated Warren Furatani's parents, along with over 110,000 other Japanese Americans in remote detention centers. When they talked about camp, that's what they meant. In college in the 1960s, Warren got involved in the civil rights movement and the Asian American movement. And as he got more politically active, he started to research his people's history. He wanted to find out what had happened to his parents and other Japanese Americans during the war. One day he was at a Vietnam war protest with his friend Victor Shibata and they started talking about how they wanted

to organize a march for the Asian American community. But they didn't know where to go. And Victor and I said well well, there's this camps that our parents were on. What are these camps? We started talking to some people about this place called Man's and I was the closest camp to Los Angeles. And we said, damn it, we better just go up there and just find it. It wasn't going to be easy to find. After World War II, Man's and I had been completely dismantled. By 1969,

there were hardly any signs of it left. But Warren Invictor spoke with some people from their parents' generation and learned that the camp had been located a few miles past the town of Lone Pine, off Route 395, and that a big green auditorium building was still standing, being used by the highway department to store machinery. And so, on a clear fall day, the two men hopped in Victor Shabbata's old triumph convertible and went looking for this place called Manzanar. They drove north out of LA about four hours toward the Sierra Nevada Mountains and ended up in a high desert valley.

It was totally desolate. But a few miles outside of Lone Pine, they found the green building. And they turned off the highway onto a small dirt road. Tumble weeds, no trees, a lot of underbrush, and in the background was the sear of autumn mountains covered in snow. It was this dramatic landscape as you could imagine. The two men continued driving through the desert, and then suddenly, they came across an old white pillar with Japanese lettering on it.

It just was stunning. Just like it was waiting there to be discovered. It was the original pillar marking the Man's and our cemetery, and it was surrounded by faded gravestones of people who had died while in the camp. As they explored the area further, Warren and Victor eventually came across a big pile of debris. And we found all of these broken dishes and on the back of the dish said army, dinner wear, with dates on it. And different things we found it was like an archaeological day and revealed the historical reality called camp. The two young men had found the remains of a camp that only a few decades earlier had imprisoned over 10,000

Japanese Americans. And in the process they were helping uncover a dark chapter in US history that a lot of people at the time would have rather forgotten. The incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II wasn't even mentioned in most high school history textbooks in the 60s. There was no books, no stories, no information couldn't find it in the card catalog in the library.

So we started writing our own history. And part of writing that history meant drawing attention to man's and our itself. When Warren and Victor found it, the place had no historical designation, no sign, and no plaque. But that was all about to change. Warren and Victor drove back to Los Angeles, but they knew they wanted to come back and bring more people with them next time. And there's a thing in Japanese called Hakomaiji, where you have a pilgrimage back to important places. And so, on a December morning in 1969, over 150 people piled into cars and vans and buses on a pilgrimage to Manzanar. and buses on a pilgrimage to Manzanar. Going to that part of California,

at that time of year was just stupid. Cold, it was so cold. But the shivering pilgrims followed Warren Invictor's directions to the cemetery. So we cleaned up the cemetery and we brought paint and wire brushes and scraped everything down and repainted the monuments. We did a lot of work in terms of refurbishing the area. We knew we were coming back.

Most of the people on the pilgrimage were younger Japanese Americans who had never spent time at camp. But there were a few people there that day who had actually lived at Manzanar. One of them was Sue Kunitomi Embry from Los Angeles. The story of how she ended up in this desolate valley begins in 1941. I was 18. I had finished high school in January and I was helping my mother take care of a small grocery store which she had purchased just a year before.

Sue Embry died in 2006. This audio is from an interview she did with Dencho, the Japanese American Legacy Project, back in 2002. And the notice that came to our neighborhood with data made a third and we had to leave on the 9th which meant we had about five days. Five days to pack up all their belongings and report to Manzanar. The camp was one of ten set up by the U.S. government to imprison Japanese Americans during World War II. Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, anti-Japanese racism reached a fever pitch in the United States. Military

leaders repeatedly questioned the loyalty of all people of Japanese descent without evidence. And then, in 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, paving the way for the incarceration of thousands of Japanese Americans on the West Coast. Here's a clip from a 40s propaganda film justifying the decision. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, our West Coast became a potential combat zone. Living in that zone were more than 100,000 persons of Japanese ancestry.

Two-thirds of them American citizens. One-third aliens. We knew that some among them were potentially dangerous. Military authorities therefore determined that all of them, citizens and aliens alike, would have to move. Most families had to sell property quickly, often at a fraction of its value. Some rented out their homes or left them with friends, but others abandoned them all together. On May 9, Sue's family, her widowed mother and her six brothers and sisters,

all went to the train station. They were told that they could only bring what they could carry with them. We know, I kept thinking, we're American citizens and they're doing this to us and we have no rights, nobody to speak up for us. They arrived at Manzanar in the dark and found their way to their assigned barrack. The camp was divided into 36 residential blocks, each with 14 barracks, two litreins, and a mess hall. Families were usually allowed to sleep together.

We had eight pots, a canvas cot, no partitions of any kind. We all slept in one degree. In total, there were 800 buildings and over 10,000 people packed into one square mile. One of the hardest parts of life at camp was the total lack of privacy. The latrines were completely open and exposed, with no stalls or dividers between the showers or toilets.

So in the beginning, people like my mother would stay up late, hoping to take a shower. Well, we're her neighbors who went around, but they all stayed up late, and they all wanted to take their shower and privacy. A five-strand, barbed wire fence encircled the entire camp with eight guard towers around the perimeter. Each guard tower had a search light and a soldier with a machine gun. I remember going out one day, one night, and search light following the other way to the left train. And I think everyone remembers those search lights.

Manzanar was undoubtedly a prison, but the people inside did everything they could to turn it into a livable city. They had schools, churches and clubs, baseball fields and basketball courts. People built rock gardens and planted flowers and vegetables. It was a real attempt to beautify their surrounding, and I think it really helped the morale of the people. The camp also had its own newspaper, ironically called The Manzanar Free Press,

where Sue Embraewart as a reporter and editor. Manzanar operated through the end of the war. During that time, there were several legal challenges to the camps, but each time the courts upheld the constitutionality of Japanese-American incarceration. On November 21, 1945, a few months after the US bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki and nearly four years after the camp had first opened, the government closed Manzanar for good and dismantled the camp. Families were forced to move once again.

People who couldn't afford to leave on their own were given a bus ticket and $25. Often they didn't have a home to go back to. When Sue Embrie's parents returned to Los Angeles, they found that their old grocery store and house had been demolished. After Sue Kunitomi Embrie left camp, she moved to the Midwest for a little while, but ultimately ended up back in Los Angeles. But it bothered her how little people talked about what Japanese Americans had been through during the war.

So when she heard about a bunch of young college students making a pilgrimage to Manznar, she decided to join them. Which brings us back to that winter day in 1969, when around 150 people traveled to Manznar to draw attention to what had happened there. The media showed up at this pilgrimage in December when tallying very cold. That's Bruce Embrie, Sue's son. He says his mom and another person who had also been imprisoned at Manznar began telling reporters what life had been like there during the war. And it caused an uproar. I mean, people were just completely aghast that anyone would speak to the broader public

outside the confines of the Japanese American community about what happened. The older generation, they were mad. Again, Warren Furatani, who helped organize the pilgrimage. Why are you bringing this up? It's better left for God, and you know, it's the hatchet's been buried, leave it buried. But these activists were just getting started, especially Sue Embrie. I think the pilgrimage made her understand how important the site was to the community. And I think in particular how the community itself had to come to grips with what happened. Following the 1969 pilgrimage, Sue Embrie, Warren for a tawny and others formed the Manzanar Committee,

with the specific goal of getting the site recognized as a historic landmark. We felt that we needed society to acknowledge this fact, not let it be buried in the back pages or in a simple paragraph in a history book. They lobbied hard for three years, all the while continuing yearly programages to the site. In 1972, the state of California designated Manzanar a state landmark and agreed to install a bronze plaque. It was one of the first public acknowledgments of what had happened there during the war. So the wording of the plaque became a huge issue. Particularly the question of what to call manzanar.

Was it a concentration camp, an internment camp, a relocation center? This is still contentious today. Some people don't like the term concentration camp because it's associated with Nazi genocide. Then again, internment camp feels like a euphemism. Don't let my mother-in-law hear someone call it internment camp. camp feels like a euphemism. Don't let my mother-in-law hear someone call it in term again.

And she's a 93-year-old, white-haired, petite, dynamol, shilt, kick your ass. In the end, after a few fiery meetings, the Manzanar Committee convinced the state that the plaque should read as follows. In the early part of World War II, 110,000 persons of Japanese ancestry were interned in relocation centers by Executive Order 9066. Manzanar, the first of 10 such concentration camps, was bounded by barbed wire and guard towers, confining 10,000 persons, the majority of which being American citizens, maybe injustices and humiliation suffered here as a result of hysteria,

of racism and economic exploitation never emerge again. California registered historical landmark number 850. 1,500 people attended the 1973 pilgrimage to watch the plaque get installed. But it didn't go over to Elle with some folks who lived in nearby towns. Within weeks, they've shot it full of shotgun pellets, someone took an axe to it to try and chisel off the word racism. You can still see the bullet holes on the plaque today. But Sue Embry and the Man's in our Committee were undeturbed.

In fact, they were already thinking bigger. They wanted Man's in our to be a national historic site. It's important to note that all this was occurring alongside a larger fight for redress and reparations. Several Japanese-American organizations had demanded an official apology from the U.S. government and payments for those who had been incarcerated during the war. And in 1988, President Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act, giving $20,000 in reparations to every living person who had been sent to a camp.

He had no payment can make up for those lost years. So what is most important in this bill has less to do with property than with honor. For here we admit a wrong. Here we reaffirm our commitment as a nation to equal justice under the law. Sue Embry was very involved in the redress movement and she wanted to keep the momentum going in the fight to get Manzanar turned into a national historic site. But the Manzanar Committee faced stiff opposition from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

The DWP actually owned the land, and the rights to its water. So here comes this middle-aged woman saying, no, this land is really significant to us, our community and to the region itself. And we want it to be a national park while the DDoP didn't want to have any part of that. The Mains and Our Committee ended up drafting legislation for Congress and Sue Embry flew to Washington, D.C. to testify before the U.S. Senate subcommittee on public lands, national parks, and forests. She says democracy is a fragile concept, only as good and strong as the people who practice it. Let us tell the world that we are people

strong and resolute, acknowledging the errors of our past, and we're not to repeat them in the future. And this is the legacy which we believe the management historic site can leave for future generations. The legislation passed, and on March 3, 1992, Manzanar was declared a national historic site. But apart from the cemetery, there was hardly anything there. The National Park Service had to decide how they wanted to memorialize this injustice. They formed a committee that included people who had been incarcerated at Manzanar, and the committee decided that they didn't just want a museum where visitors could read about what happened on placards.

They wanted to rebuild portions of the camp, exactly as they had been during the war, so that visitors could feel what life had been like. You walk in, it's an empty room, although we have a cot and a stack of army blankets and a stack of mattress covers, and a bunch of cots up against the wall. This is a Lisa Lynch of the Man's and Our National Historic Site, showing me a rebuilt barrack. She says they tried hard to get it right, but it's still not as harsh as it would have been when people arrived here back in 1942. I mean, there should be dirt blowing up through the floor. The building should be creaking.

The thing is, we had the option of either building them as they were, The thing is, we had the option of either building them as they were, but not allowing people to walk in because they wouldn't be safe for people to come into, or we could build them to earthquake standards, accessibility standards, and that's what we chose to do. Outside there's a dirt basketball court with white metal hoops, and a one-way road tracing a long and winding circuit through what used to be the camp. Sign posts along the way show where specific buildings once stood. In some places, cracked concrete foundations and the remains of rock gardens are still visible or have been unearthed.

In the distance, you can see a rebuilt guard tower. It's 40 feet tall, with lattice wood sides and a giant search light at the top. It was very controversial because a lot of the locals especially did not want it to have a guard tower because people don't want it to reflect badly on the community. But the park service continued to seek guidance from folks who had actually lived at the camp. Over time, people have said over and over the most important thing to show are the guard towers and the latrines. I've had people literally say, you know, we're glad you have the visitor center. We really like that you have the barracks, but no one will ever understand until they go in and see that roo toilets. Alisa Lynch takes me to the site's newest edition, a replica of a woman's

latrine. The building wasn't open to the public when I visited, but she showed me inside. It's just an open room. There's a long, trough sink and a row of five toilets with no dividers between them. You hear over and over about the humiliation. You know, I've heard women talk about having your first period in public, you know, which I think is a very personal thing to all people, all women, and there's no privacy here. Lynch has spoken with hundreds of people who lived at Manzanar, and they all have different perspectives on their time at camp. has spoken with hundreds of people who lived at Manzanar. And they all have different perspectives

on their time at camp. Some people finally remember the friendships they built here. Others say the experience tore their family apart. Yes, it had baseball teams. It also had 120 armed soldiers. You know, yes, it had beautiful gardens, but it also had guard towers. She just wants the site to show the full, messy history of what happened here.

I think the national parks represent America at its best and Americans at their best. And I think it's also good that we look at the times when we haven't been our best, and it's a lesson for the future. This site exists, this national park exists because of the efforts of ordinary people to make sure that their story wasn't swept away by the wind or buried by those that don't want to be reminded of the weaknesses of some in our past. That's Bruce Ember again. Every spring he's one of the hundreds if not

thousands of people who come to Man's and Art for the annual pilgrimage. The one that started back in 1969. They hold religious ceremonies and drumming performances and remember what happened here together. But it's not just for Japanese Americans. Lately, since 9-11, the pilgrimage has almost always had a speaker from the Muslim community. In recent years, the activists who lead the pilgrimage have tried to connect the wartime discrimination against Japanese Americans with contemporary discrimination against Muslim Americans in the name of security. It's really important that the parallels to what's happening today get raised.

And this is a story I think that needs to be amplified and shouted from the rooftops so that America doesn't embark on some of the same nonproductive racist behavior. This year's pilgrimage will happen on April 29th, and Bruce thinks it'll be the biggest ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ‍ʻ� 99% Invisible Was Produced This Week by Emmett Fitzgerald with Sharifusef, Delaney Hall, Avery Truffleman, and me Roman Mars. Katie Mingle is our senior editor. Kurt Colstead is the digital director.

In Terran Mazza is the office manager. All original music was composed this week by Sean Rial. Special thanks to Den Show, the Japanese American legacy project, and the Manzanar National Historic Site for the use of their interview with Sue Empery. There are tons of remarkable oral histories of Japanese American incarceration you can check out at DenShow.org. We have some really amazing images of Manzanar to complement this episode that you should really check out by Ansel Adams and Dorothy Elang for some really stunning contemporary photos that Emmett took while he was up there. They're on our website, 99pi.org. We are a project of 91.7 K-A-L-W in San Francisco and produced on Radio Row in beautiful downtown

Oakland, California. You can find the show and join discussions about the show on Facebook. You can tweet at me at Roman Mars and the show at 99PI Ork. We're on Instagram and Tumblr too. But if you want to get really excited with Kurt about how people in Finland dry their dishes, you have to go to 99pi.org. Radio to P.I. From P.R.X.