National Park After Dark - A Deadly Uprising: Manzanar National Historic Site

Episode Date: March 23, 2026

During World War II, the United States government rounded up over 120,000 Japanese Americans, most of whom were U.S. citizens, and sent them to remote incarceration camps across the western United States for suspected disloyalty. One of those camps was Manzanar, located in the harsh desert of eastern California. When a popular community leader was arrested without explanation, thousands of incarcerated residents gathered in protest, sparking what we now know as the Manzanar Uprising, which left two people dead and changed the course of history. For a full list of our sources, visit npadpodcast.com/episodes For the latest NPAD updates, group travel details, merch and more, follow us on npadpodcast.com and our socials: Instagram: @‌nationalparkafterdarkTikTok: @‌nationalparkafterdark Support the show by becoming an Outsider and receive ad free listening, bonus content and more on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. Want to see our faces? Catch full episodes on our YouTube Page! Thank you to this week’s partners! Nutrafol: Get $10 off your first month’s subscription and free shipping when you visit Nutrafol dot com and enter promo code NPAD.Coyuchi: Get FIFTEEN PERCENT OFF your first order when you visit Coyuchi dot com slash NPAD. That’s Coyuchi dot comslash NPAD to get FIFTEEN PERCENT OFF. C-O-Y-U-C-H-I dot com slash NPAD.IQBAR: Text PARK to 64000 to get 20% off all IQBAR products, plus FREE shipping. Message anddata rates may apply. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Close your eyes. Listen to Monday.com. Feel the sensation of an AI work platform. So flexible and intuitive, it feels like it was built just for you. Now open your eyes, go to Monday.com. Start for free and finally, breathe. So good, so good. Everything you want for summer is at Nordstrom rack stores now and up to 60% off. Stock up and save on the brands you love like Vince, Sam Edelman, Frame and Free People.

Join the Nordy Club to unlock exclusive discounts, shop new arrivals first, and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you rack. During the height of World War II in 1942, thousands of families were abruptly notified by authorities that they would need to pack their belongings and evacuate their homes. This order came after months of strict curfews that prohibited certain residents from leaving their houses between the hours of 8 p.m. and 6 a.m.

Now they were being told that for the safety of their country, they had to leave. There were very few answers. Families were not told where they were going, how long they would be gone for, or what their lives would look like when they arrived. Their futures were completely uncertain, but there was no choice but to comply. Following those orders, families began packing what they could. Suitcases were filled with treasured possessions, family heirlooms, photographs, and the clothing they believed they might need. Homes were left behind neat and orderly, many personal belongings still sitting where they had always been. Doors were shut with the hope that someday they might be able to return and pick up the lives they had been forced to abandon.

Soon after, they were directed to local train stations. Soldiers stood nearby with rifles in their hands, fingers resting on the triggers, watching as thousands of people gathered on loading platforms. Men, women, and children stood waiting, many carrying a suitcase in each hand, unsure of what was about to happen next. When the trains arrived, families were packed into the cars together. This space was cramped and airless,

people pressed tightly against one another with little room to move. A heavy stillness settled over the crowded cars. Even the children seemed unusually quiet, sensing the gravity of the moment and the uncertainty surrounding them. The journey dragged on. Some sat inside those train cars for days as the heat inside grew almost unbearable. Occasionally, the train would stop and soldiers would step inside to distribute small portions of food before the doors shut again and the train continued on.

And when the train finally stopped for the last time, the doors opened. Instead of a new town or temporary housing, they stepped out into a place surrounded by fences and guards. They had been relocated to a prison. Hearing a description like this, it's easy to think you recognize this story. Many minds immediately go to the roundups of Jewish families across Europe, forced into trains, and sent to concentration camps during the Holocaust.

But that is not the story we are telling today, because what we're talking about happened on U.S. soil. After the Japanese Navy bombed Pearl Harbor, killing more than 2,400 people, and pushing the United States into World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt issued an executive order that triggered the forced removal of Japanese Americans from their homes. Citizenship did not matter. Even American-born citizens of Japanese descent were included. Anyone of Japanese ancestry living in the United States was ordered to leave and relocate to internment camps scattered across the country. There was no evidence required, no charges filed, and no other criteria

needed to be detained. Many families complied willingly at first, believing they were cooperating with the war effort and doing what their country asked of them. Few realized that what awaited them was incarceration. The mass imprisonment of Japanese Americans remains one of the lesser-known chapters of American history. So two are the acts of resistance that grew inside those camps, including one uprising that left two people dead and ultimately changed the course of history. Welcome to National Park After Dark. Hello everyone and welcome back to National Park After Dark. My name is Danielle and I am listening to the story today.

And my name is Cassie. I'm the one telling it. And it's one that has been a long time coming. I know you've had it on your bookshelf quite literally for what, a couple of years now. Yeah. And you picked a really good time to tell it. Is that intentional? Yes and no. I think that this has been something that people have been asking for.

And like you mentioned, it's been on my list. And also, if you know anything about me, I love World War II history. And I'm always trying to find a reason to talk about World War II on the podcast, which is few and far between that I've managed to bring it to light here. But because there are national park sites that commemorate this history, it felt like, a good time to talk about it. And it does, it does feel like a timely episode as well. Okay. Well, your intro was a little different than usual, but really engaging. And I am totally here for it. And I kind of forgot when we were still in the intro. I'm like, oh, she's just going. I know. It's one of the longest intros I think I've ever done.

Yeah. Okay. Well, I'm really looking forward to this one because like you said, we have had recommendations for this topic before. And I know very little about this chapter. of history. And I think my first introduction to it was actually on a ghost tour in Tacoma, Washington of all places. Can I ask how old you were? Yeah, I was with Ian. So I was 29, 30. Yeah, that's crazy. That's so crazy to me because when you think about it, this is something I feel like. And maybe it is taught in schools now. I mean, it's been a long time since we were in elementary school and high school and stuff. But this feels like something that should be a staple in American history when you're learning about it because when I think back to World War II history and I think

about the Holocaust, I remember the first time I learned about it. It was in fourth grade. We read the book, Night by Eli Weasel. And it was this turning point in my own education where I learned something about the world that I had never imagined possible before. And so to hear that you have not heard of this story until you were in your 20s is it feels like this is something that needs to be talked about so much more. Well, I'm ready for it, especially because I think, like you said in your intro as well, this is something that you're familiar with, this description, but somewhere else. Not here. Not here. The U.S. would never. And the U.S. has and repeatedly does. So I think by learning about history, we get a lot of insight into the present.

So let's do it. Yes. All right. So for today, we're going back to the 1940s and talking about what World War II look like in an unlikely place, and that is California. In the months following the attack on Pearl Harbor, fear and suspicion swept across the United States. People distressed their neighbors, and many used the attack on Pearl Harbor to double

down on the pre-existing racial prejudices, specifically towards Japanese and other Asian immigrants. But today's story actually starts well before the Pearl Harbor bombing. By 1941, the U.S. federal government already had a long history of racist and discriminatory policies against Asian immigrants and their families. As early as the 1800s, Chinese immigrants began coming to California to work in gold mines, railroad construction, and garment factories. this influx of immigrant labor brought with it rising social tensions, economic implications, and a spike in anti-Asian sentiments from Americans who felt these immigrants were stealing their jobs. In response, Congress passed the Page Act in 1875 and later the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882,

which suspended Chinese immigration and became the first act in American history to place broad restrictions on immigration. In an attempt to appease Japan as a growing global power, Japanese immigrants in the United States were initially exempt from these anti-Asian policies. But by the early 20th century, they too were lumped into these restrictions. The Immigration Act of 1984 was the nail in the coffin for Japanese immigration to the U.S., prohibiting any more immigration from Asian countries. What's more, due to prejudice naturalization laws, any Japanese people who were already in the U.S. had no path to citizenship. So it's like even the people who are here and were trying to become citizens, were now excluded from that entirely, but they're already here. Despite these policies, the Japanese immigrants built vibrant lives on the West Coast. Many of these first-generation immigrants, called the Ease, worked on farms, fisheries, and ran small business.

They also built families giving way to second generation, which were known as Nisais, who were U.S.-born children of Japanese immigrants. Nisais were American citizens and many of them were able to break into white-collar jobs and move up in society as promised by the American dream. However, in the years leading up to World War II, anti-Japanese sentiment was already on the rise and after Pearl Harbor was bombed, it reached a fever pitch. In February 1942, only a couple of months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. Under this executive order, more than 120,000 Japanese Americans were forcibly removed from their homes and taken to remote incarceration camps across the western

United States. Of these, 120,000 people, the majority were U.S. citizens, Nise children, and adults who were born and raised in the United States. Within just a few weeks, 10 internment camps opened in the Western United States with camps in California, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, and Arkansas. One of the biggest and most infamous was the camp at Manzinar. And that will be the location of our story today. That is the only one I'm familiar with also. Really? I think.

I know that that's like one of the big. biggest ones, but I actually have this like on my, on my person on my side because this was the first book that I read about Japanese internment. And it's called Looking Like the Enemy, My Story of Imprisonment in Japanese American Interment Camps. And it's by Mary Matsuda Grunwald. And her story is really interesting. She doesn't go to Manzanar. She actually goes to a couple different camps across the west that she's transported to. But her story is really interesting because she lived in the San Juan Islands with her family and they were a farming family and they were given these executive orders. They were forced to board a train and go and they were citizens.

And she details the daily life and the internment camps here. And it's not in Manzanar. And I think Manzanar gets a lot of attention in history because of what unfolded there. And it's why I picked it for this episode too. But I really like that. her story because it felt like a very kind of a she was a really normal everyday person who was imprisoned and then she's just sitting in this camp like okay now what now what do I do and her story it's really I brought it here because I just wanted to give a book recommendation for people of it she just does a really good job of painting the picture and if you look into a lot of these books in World War II a lot of them focus around the Holocaust and

And the reason, and she talks about it in her book, the reason that it's not talked about more about Japanese American internment camps is because the Japanese people were really quiet about what happened to them. And from the way that she described it, it was as a culture. They're really proud people and they work really hard and they're also very private people. So there was this big shame of being incarcerated and a lot of people for a very long. time didn't talk about it. This book that she wrote, she was in a camp as a child and she wrote this book in her 80s. Wow. Okay. So took her a really long time to talk about it. And that's kind of a theme with a lot of the books that have come out about this period of time in the United States.

Interesting. But it does make sense regarding the cultural attitudes that the Japanese people have and just I understand how it translates over into just a time that they didn't want to speak about. Yeah. And as I kind of alluded to in the intro a little bit as well, is that a lot of these families actually thought that they were helping the U.S. government in this. They're like, oh, we're helping the war effort. They need us here. We don't know why. We're not going to question it because we love our country and we're going to go. There were a lot of feelings about it like we don't want to go. This is we're uprooting our whole life. But this is for the betterment of the country. And she talks a lot.

lot about that in her book. And there's also a lot of people have asked, why did all these people willingly go to these internment camps? And why was, why is this part of history not talked about as much? And it's because a lot of these people thought that they were helping their country when they went. And I think there was an added shame afterwards in speaking out against it because it was like speaking out against your country. And also correct me if I'm wrong here. But, you know, right now, Now, in 2026, we have the benefit of hindsight and retrospect. And we have these historic examples of, okay, this pattern seems to be repeating. And we know what happened last time.

And we can see these indicators of, you know, red flags of like, okay, this seems to be going in a similar direction of what happened 60, 70, 80, 100 years ago. But in this timeframe, they don't have that reference, right? Not really. I mean, not to this scale. If you look at indigenous history, I guess you could go back to that. And there's a similar vein of pushing a lot of indigenous children into boarding schools and pushing them out of their location. But in terms of these and of course camps with indigenous people and imprisonment there. But at the time of this story, the Holocaust is ongoing. And at the time of this history as well, a lot of people don't understand exactly what's happening for the Holocaust. A lot of people didn't know that they were killing so many people in these camps during the Holocaust. So it's kind of in conjunction with each other. And she actually goes into detail in her book that she would have been a lot more terrified to board the trains if she had known what was happening to the people

boarding trains in Europe. Of course. So there was like a big disconnect of knowing what was going on around the world at the time. Okay. Girl, winter is so last season. And now Springs got you looking at pictures of tank tops with hungry eyes. Your algorithm is feeding you cutoffs. You're thirsty for the sun on your shoulders. That perfect hang on the patio sundress. Those sandals you can wear all day and all night. And you've had enough of shopping from your couch. Done hoping it looks Anything like the picture when you tear up on that envelope? It's time for a little in-person spring treat. It's time for a trip to Ross.

Work your magic. This episode is brought to you by Prime. Obsession is in session. And this summer, Prime Originals have everything you want. Steamy romances, irresistible love stories, and the book to screen favorites you've already read twice. Off-campus, every year after, The Love Hypothesis, Sterling Point, and more.

Slow burns, second chances, chemistry you can feel through the screen. Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on Prime. So we're in Manzanar. Three hours north of Los Angeles, Manzanar sits near the California-N-Vada border on the east side of the Sierra Nevada's. This California high desert is desolate, remote, and dusty. Summers can be oppressively hot with temperatures in the 90s. Without much in the surrounding Owens Valley to protect it from weather,

Manzanar experiences high winds year-round, which are especially brutal and cold in the winter in the shadow of Mount Whitney. It's worth noting that California's Owens Valley was not always considered a desert. In fact, under the stewardship of the native NUMU peoples, the valley was lush. They even called it Pai'u-Hunadu, which means land where the water always flows. For the NUMU, the water War started in the 1800s with the arrival of white settlers in their homeland. At the time, the riverbanks in the valley were lined with willows, cottonwoods, and green grasses, many over six feet tall. However, the settlers came to the valley and seized tracks of the Paiuna do for themselves. At the time, California water laws governed landowner rights to divert and use water.

Basically, whoever claims it first gets the right to it. It's kind of a use it or lose it. Many of those same laws from the 1800s are still in place today. These same laws explicitly prohibit people of color and specifically indigenous people from having water rights in the state of California. To make matters worse, in the early 1900s, the city of Los Angeles needed water, and they decided to divert it from Owens Lake specifically. Today, one third of LA's water supply comes from Owens Valley and the eastern Cierras. This sounds really familiar, and I think it's from my St. Francis Dam disaster story I did. Yeah, because that took place in the Owens valleys, right? Yes.

Yeah. And I remember like going down the rabbit hole of this whole water wars and just this valley being at the epicenter of that entire battle that is still obviously a really big deal. Yeah. I think that was, it must have been when I learned about this. Yeah. And I think that it's important to talk about it in this episode too because it kind of paints the picture of what Manzanar is like. You have these really high winds. You have this place that used to be lush. But now all of the water is being taken out of the valley and it's a dry desert. So I think that that is super important to know for when you're picturing what it was like to be at Manzanar. Because before the water was diverted, Owens Lake covered 100 square miles and was filled every year by snow. snow melt from the Ceras. Within 10 years of the diversion, the lake dried up. Now, instead of being known for its greenery in Natural Springs, Owens Lake is known for its intense dust storms. So even before the

incarceration camps opened in Manzinar, the Owens Valley area already had a long history of displacement and grief at the hands of the U.S. government. Today, many of the Numu people live on Bishop Paiute reservation nearby. They continue to fight for their rights to the the water and for their land. The incarceration camp at Manzanar was one square mile of desert surrounded by a barbed wire fence. Over 11,000 Japanese Americans were sent there in March and April of 1942. Almost all of them came from Los Angeles County, with over 7,000 of them living in L.A. prior to the war. Because most of them had been city residents their whole life, no one was prepared to deal with the intense winds, dust storms, and dramatic temperature changes.

of the high desert. There were eight guard towers throughout the camp. The barren fence land was divided into blocks. Each block had 14 barracks in a mess hall. The barracks were further divided into four to six units of about 16 by 20 feet each, where upwards of eight people lived, often among strangers. So eight people and 16 by 20 foot room. That's my personal nightmare. Yeah, well, I would never be able to sleep and something like that. Yeah. So what is it? 16, but I wonder how big this room is.

I think maybe about that size, if not a little bigger, to be honest. Yeah. And eight people in such a small space. Yeah. Prisoners often use army blankets to partition off smaller rooms with these already small spaces, sacrificing warmth and comfort for a little privacy. Inmates wore all the clothes they could find on top of each other, since no one had adequate winter gear or wind insulation.

kids made toys out of whatever they could find. When the wind picked up, sand would blow in through the knot holes and slits around the doorways, and people often woke up coughing and covered in dust. Many Owens Valley residents, both Japanese American attorneys and the Numu people, developed upper respiratory diseases from all the dust of the old lake bed, which is laced with naturally occurring arsenic and other carcinogens. The Owens Valley air quality is consistently worse than other places in the state. Life inside Manzanar was marked by overcrowding, poor living conditions, and growing distrust among the incarcerated community.

This distrust and division was largely fueled by allegations, which were often true, that some Japanese prisoners were conspiring with camp authorities to prove their loyalty and receive better treatment. Many of these informants were members of the Japanese American Citizens League, or the JACL, which was a civic organization started before the war by Japanese Americans, predominantly the Nise. The league promoted a simulation and loyalty to the United States as a means to gain acceptance in American society. So essentially, it was just a way to try and they're like, okay, we'll give up our Japanese culture to be Americanized, so we're accepted and treated well and can live. of a good life here in the United States. During World War II, the league grew in prominence as many of its members helped to build the internment camps where they would soon be sent to live. These Nisei volunteered to build the camps in hopes of getting better jobs and special privileges while there, with their highest goal always being to prove their loyalty to their country,

the United States. Many JACL members even assisted the FBI in its initial roundup of suspected Japanese aliens when the FBI began apprehending community leaders, language teachers, fishermen, and others whose activities had landed them on an FBI watch list. Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the FBI started taking people from their homes and detaining them at pop-up camps before the official 10 Japanese-American incarceration camps were even completed. They often took fathers of families into a different camp location first, leaving behind mothers and children. In the event that children got lost or separated from their mothers,

the children were sent to Manzanar Children's Village, which was an orphanage inside the camp. Hundreds of Japanese American kids were sent there despite having living parents or family members who were being detained elsewhere. The JACL did not represent all Nisei, however. In Los Angeles, before the war, there were only 650 JACL members,

compared to over 20,000 Nisei. A prominent member of the Japanese American Citizens League in L.A. and the founder of the Anti-Axis Committee within it was Fred Tayama. And you'll want to remember his name because he comes up in the story in Manzanar. While they may have been a minority at camp, JACL members were quite influential due to their relationship with camp authorities. They often worked in more white color, supervisory, and generally favored jobs. They also edited the camp's newspaper, the Manzanar Free Press, which allowed them to shape the narrative around what was happening at camp and further proved their loyalty to the administration. As Japanese Americans themselves, these JICL members faced intense racism too, especially in the wake of Pearl Harbor.

But this discrimination and prejudice only made them double down on their efforts to prove their loyalty to the United States by being good and compliant citizens. Of course, J.A.C.L's collaboration with the camp leader angered many of their fellow prisoners. First generation, Isay, felt betrayed, along with second generation Nise, especially the Kibai, who were Nisei, who spoke, there's a lot of, like, words here. But there's just a lot of different generations of Japanese people living here. So I'm just trying to. I got the first two. Those are, I understand that for sure. This third one, what is this? So this third one is the key. who were Nisei, so they are second generation Americans here, and they speak Japanese and were educated either partially or fully in Japan, but now they're in the United States.

But they were born Japanese Americans? Yes. Okay. I got that. For Isay, they valued group solidarity over American individualism and wanted to preserve Japanese values, tradition, language, and culture. Many of them were already disillusioned by the United States government after they were promised citizenship in exchange for military service in World War I, which never came to fruition. Okay, maybe I don't get it. I thought they were already citizens.

The Nise are already citizens. The E say are not. Okay. It's very confusing. So there's first generation and second generation. So first generation are Japanese people who came to the United States. States looking for citizenship and then the Nisei are their children who are born in the U.S. Right. So they're citizens. Yeah, but I'm talking about the ESA who served in World War I. We're hoping for citizenship.

Okay. But the Nisei are citizens. Okay. I thought I got, I think I got tripped up because you said the Nise, the ESA are Nise, but they have different outlooks. Oh. I didn't mean to say. Okay.

I just wanted to make sure. Yeah. Okay, it's fine. Yeah, I just want to make sure I understand, especially if now that we're getting into, like, individual people are coming up that are maybe pertinent to this. Yeah, what's about to happen and see where they're all at. Okay. Yeah, there's a lot of history in this, but it's all pertinent to the story. Yeah, so they served in World War I in hopes of getting citizenship that never happened. And the aggressive and over-the-top patriotism of the JACL caused further divisions within an art. fractured Japanese American community, with JACL members claiming, Isay could never be truly loyal to America because they were born in another country. By December 1942, almost exactly one year after Pearl Harbor was bombed, tensions at Manzanar reached a breaking point. In addition to cramped in dirty living conditions,

inmates were beginning to suspect some camp administrations or stealing their food rations and selling them on the black market. Specifically, a sugar shortage at camp led Mess Hall cook Harry Ueno to organize a Manzanar Kitchen Workers' Union. Along with over 1,000 other mess hall workers, Harry and the union sought to investigate the sugar shortages and also negotiate for better wages and working conditions. Harry was born in Hawaii in 1907. When he was 8 years old, he and his family moved back to Japan, but he returned to the U.S.

himself eight years later in 1923 when he was only 16 in search of work. He worked at a lumber mill in Washington State before working different jobs in Milwaukee and Chicago where the Great Depression had hit especially hard. Ultimately, in 1929, he ended up in Los Angeles and settled there with his wife, Yaso. Together, they had three kids who they raised in L.A. For years, Harry sold fruits and vegetables and Jewish kosher markets in the city, the other vendors sold primarily meats, and they needed a produce option. So Harry was a welcomed addition. That is, until Per Harbor was bombed. Harry had to quit the Jewish market immediately due to increased hostility and all anti-Japanese propaganda that was already circulating and only intensifying. Christmas, 1941, would be the last

holiday Harry would spend with his family for many years, but there was nothing celebratory about that day. Fellow Japanese Americans were already being rounded up and detained, and Harry was terrified. He knew it was only a matter of time before they came for him and his family, too. As part of the Executive Order 9066, the government implemented a curfew for all Japanese Americans on the West Coast and limited their travel to only a five-mile radius from their home. They also froze their bank assets, so even those with savings had nowhere to go. The FBI was rounding up more and more Japanese Americans every week. In the spring, Harry and his family received the inevitable notice that they too were being sent to Manzanar.

He sold most of their furniture for a few bucks to his neighbors and packed only what he could carry, which, in their case, they were only allotted one suitcase per person. On May 15th, 1942, Harry and his wife and kids left their L.A. home and arrived at Manzinar Block 22 late that night. The five of them had to share a 20-foot by 24-foot barrack with three other strangers. Camp conditions continued to be miserable. They were eating dust, breathing dust, and when the wind blew up small pebbles in the sand, it felt like being hit over and over with a BB gun. The rice was always undercooked since none of the former L.A. residents knew how to cook at that altitude. So when Block 22 opened their own mess hall, Harry saw an opportunity to make life maybe a little bit better for his family and his community, so he applied for a job as a cook. He didn't have any public or professional cooking experience, but Harriet was a fast learner, and he soon became beloved in the mess hall.

He would take undercooked rice that was about to be thrown away and drive it. it in the oven, fry it in oil, and sprinkle it with sugar and give it to kids as a snack. Not just his kids, but all the kids on the block and beyond could use a tiny little treat. He even built a pond next to the mess hall so the people would have something pretty to look at while they waited in long lines for his meals. God. Tell me nothing bad happens to him because I'll fucking be so upset. Harry, so wholesome. So wholesome. Holesome Harry. Holesome Harry. Holesome Harry. Holesome Harry. Yeah. And just the smallest things that you can do to make such a miserable existence a little bit better. Like even a slightly more bearable, you know. And he's like, you know, sweet treats are important. Aesthetically pleasing things are important. You know, this is our situation. Let's do the best we can right now and bring up morale a little bit. Right. Exactly.

However, soon after he started working as a cook, Harry realized pretty quickly that things were amiss with the food stores. First, he started getting shortchanged on his block sugar rations at the camp canteen, receiving less and less than the standard allotment per person. The shortage became so severe that there wasn't enough sugar for people to even sweeten their coffee, and there were no more crispy rice snacks for the kids. Always trying to make things just a little bit better for his family and community, Harry decided to look into this shortage. In the Block 1 mess hall, for example, where all the camp administrators,

he noticed there were full bowls of sugar on every table. He also heard rumblings that some administrators were stealing camp rations of meat and sugar to sell for profit on the black market. And the Nise police officers, some who were part of the JACL, were getting special treatment from those same camp authorities were intentionally looking the other way. So he's like, wait a second, there's sugar everywhere, except for my community. For us. Yeah.

Harry was not the only person who was angry about this. As he listened to complaints from all the other mess hall cooks, he decided to go talk to the camp administration himself and ask for permission to organize a union. He thought it would be better for everyone if the mess hall workers could synthesize their complaints and requests instead of having 38 different demands from 38 different mess halls. At this point, even though Harry tried to go through all the proper channels for organizing and improving camp living conditions, the camp director, Ned Kimball, knew that Harry was onto his sugar ceiling and smuggling, so he had a few niece, follow Harry around all the time to intimidate him. Kimball even offered Harry a job outside of Manzanar where he could make more money, and his wife Yaso could get a better paying job too, but Harry turned it down. So it's like, I'm going to try to intimidate you, I'm going to try and make you leave. I just don't want you to be focusing on this sugar shortage. Yeah, I want to get rid of you.

Yeah. Because you're drawing attention. Causing problems for me. Right. He was afraid to take his family outside of Manzanar for as long as the war was going on after hearing horror stories of Japanese Americans being attacked. And he was especially worried about his kids facing violence and discrimination at school. So it was not a win-win situation. You're either imprisoned in these internment camps or you're facing extreme racism outside.

And you're not even at least in the internment camps. he was with a Japanese community, and he had that. And if he was outside of it, he's going to face extreme racism. And there were a lot of people being harmed. There was a lot of violence towards Japanese Americans. And so there was no win for this situation for his family. By the late fall of 1942, the Kitchen Workers Union had become a notable force in Manzanar. So, of course, the camp administrators wanted to get rid of Harry.

the lead organizer. And with a union organizing on the rise, the distrust and disdain for JACLers only grew. Inmates like Fred Tayama, who I mentioned earlier and said, let's remember him, were called Enu. And I'm adding another word here. I'm so sorry. It's okay. I know it's important and I want to know like historically accurate information. It's just getting it straight. Yeah. I mean, this one I don't know how historically accurate. It is pertinent. It's more of, it's a dig. So inmates like Fred Taima were called Enu, which is actually a Japanese insult, meaning dog. And that was, they called them dogs for their cooperation with the authorities and going against others. So like a traitor? Yeah, pretty much. In their eyes. Yeah. Okay. When Taima was sent to Salt Lake City as Manzanar's representative for the National JACL Convention, many inmates were furious. Not only was he sent to represent the entire camp, which no one trusted him to do accurately, he was also advocating for inmates to be drafted into the American military to serve in the war.

They're like, okay, he's acting as a spokesperson, but we're not all on board with what he's advocating for or saying. Yeah. And I mean, if you think about it, the U.S. government has said, we don't trust you because you are a Japanese and you have to be in. in these internment camps to be in our country. But we also want you to die for us. And we want you to fight other Japanese people. I mean, it's a tale as old as time. Indigenous people, black people, Japanese Americans, you know, just it's over and over.

Prove your loyalty to us by dying in war for us. But we're not going to treat you as citizens regardless. Yeah. I mean, up until that point, like we were talking about before, you know, precedent of what has occurred before this point in time. And yeah, I mean, they did the same thing with people of color, indigenous, black people, all that being recruited into the military or drafted into the military or sent on all of these highly dangerous missions of all kinds. You know, they're okay with that, but not with... God forbid you work or go to school. But we're not...

We're going to intimidate the shit out of you for wanting the same, for sugar. Yeah. We're not going to give you basic food, but we would like you to die in our military. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. At the time, this, of course, was a very unpopular strategy among Manzanar residents who had suffered a year of gross injustices at the hands of the U.S. government.

And they were asked to swear their undying loyalty to it, which, ironically, the Japanese American draft in an attempt to make people prove their loyalty sometimes did the opposite. Previously loyal citizens, many of them U.S. citizens by birth, turned more anti-American in its wake, which of course they did. Yeah. And also a quick side note here, the Nisei draft strategy did prove to be effective for Japanese American assimilation and increased respect. By shedding blood on the battlefield, more people believed the Japanese Americans

were loyal, though of course it should never have come to that. The Al Nisei 442nd regimental combat team fought for the Allies in Europe and became the most decorated American unit in World War II. They also suffered the highest percentage of casualties at almost 10,000. Again, never heard of this. Yeah. And this book, going back to looking like the enemy, She talks about the story here because her brother actually went to war. And their belief, a lot of the Japanese family's belief, was when they sent one of their sons or husbands or anything to war, they were sending them to die. And that was often the case. But it was also a lot of these men wanted to go to help their family to be like, I'm at war here, protect my family.

and my family, we are all loyal. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. There is no feeling quite like sitting down to enjoy a meal you just prepared yourself. That sense of accomplishment, chef's kiss. And it also helps when that home-cooked meal tastes delicious.

And that's why I use Hello Fresh. HelloFresh is America's number one meal kit for a reason. They've got over 100 recipes to choose from every week with bigger portions to satisfy everyone. I just finished up my next month's worth of recipe selections because I love to plan ahead, and I am so looking forward to the cumin-spice salmon and cuss-coose bowls with green beans, almonds, and lemon yogurt sauce. I actually get that one a lot. It's just so good. They have so many high-protein recipes and just added three times the seafood for no upcharge.

I also love the seasonal produce offerings they have like pears, apples, and asparagus as well. The recipe cards speak to my organizational loving soul with simple, straightforward instructions that make home cooking a breeze. With wholesome ingredients like sustainably sourced seafood and 100% antibiotic and hormone-free chicken, when dinner tastes this good, nothing hits like home cooking. Go to hellofresh.com slash NPA 10Fm to get 10 free meals plus a freeze-willing knife, a 100. $144.99 value on your third box. Offer valid while supplies last. Free meals applied as discount on first box. New subscribers only. varies by plan. So going back to Tayama, if Taima was disliked before he left, he was hated upon his return. So when a group of unidentified inmates attacked him and his bunk on

the evening of December 5th, 1942, most people were not surprised. The injured Taima was hospitalized and three other prisoners, all Kibay, were arrested despite the beating taking place in the dark and Taima not being able to clearly identify his attackers. While Taima was being attacked around 8.30 p.m., Harry was already in bed several blocks away. He had to start work in the mess hall at 5 a.m. the next morning. Around 9 p.m., Harry woke to banging on the door of his barrack. He got up in his nightgown to see the assistant police chief there who told him to get changed before taking him down to the police station. There, as he was interrogated, Harry began to put together pieces of what had happened.

Tyama was attacked and he was being blamed for it. After being held at the police station for several hours, the police put Harry in handcuffs at 1 a.m. and drove him out of camp. At this point, Harry still did not know where he was going and he was concerned his family wouldn't know where he was either. The camp administrations admitted that they had no evidence that Harry was involved in the attack on Tyama, but they were holding him anyway. Harry was taken to the jail in Independence, California, where he got to sleep on a real mattress for the first time since leaving his home in L.A.

Because the ones at camp were sacks stuffed with straw. So it was like he was sent to prison, but it was like slightly an upgrade from what he had been living in before. Was he the only one detained for this? There were a couple other people detained that were arrested, but other union workers as well. Okay. But he was kind of the main person that they suspected. Back at camp, word had spread about Taima's attack and Harry's arrest. The kitchen workers union was already angry about.

about the food shortages at camp and now they were furious. They knew Harry was innocent and that he was being framed by the camp administrators as punishment for his successful organizing. At 10 a.m. on the morning of December 6th, about 200 inmates gathered in the mess hall in block 22, Harry's block to start planning to get him back to Manzanar and released. This group planned to put pressure on the administration through a kitchen strike and agreed to meet up in a few hours to hash out the details. By 1 p.m., the news had spread even more throughout the camp, and over 2,000 people showed up to Block 22 for the meeting. After some fiery speeches,

a committee of five was assembled to meet with the camp leadership, hoping to talk with them and calmly ask that Harry be brought back to camp immediately. While these five inmates went to talk with the new camp director Ralph P. Merritt, Kimball barely lasted a month at Manzanar before he left. The crowd of people at Block 22 began to move towards the administration building. Merritt had already gotten word that a large, unhappy crowd was gathering, so he had military police assemble right outside the detention center's gates. While the committee of five met with Merritt to talk, the crowd grew from 2000 to nearly 4,000 people, and they refused to disperse until their demands were met, namely that Harry was brought back to camp and pardoned.

Unbeknownst to them, Harry was actually returned to the mansinar jail that very same afternoon. But even so, the crowd believed he was unfairly targeted and continued pressure in camp authorities for his full release. The military police that were previously stationed outside the camp gates were then called inside, assembling between the large crowd and the camp police station. where Harry was now being held in the Mansnar jail. This unrest continued into the evening, which is where some of the facts of what happened began to get murkier. Harry, who was watching everything unfold from his jail cell window,

heard a sergeant shout, Hold your line, remember Pearl Harbor. He watched the militia police put on gas masks and tried to warn the inmates that tear gas was coming. When some inmates allegedly threw stones and bottles at the police, they retaliated by firing tear gas into the crowd. In the clouds of gas and smoke, Harry could no longer see what was happening, but he heard people running away, and then he heard six shots.

For reasons never clearly established, two soldiers opened fire on the crowd. When the fog cleared, Harry saw a man lying face down in the dirt about 10 feet away from the jail and police station. As the police dragged the body into the station, Harry saw the victim with 17-year-old Jimmy Ito from Pasadena. He was pronounced dead on sight, and he had been completely unarmed. Harry didn't know if anyone else had been shot or what was going on. He could only hear the mess hall bells constantly ringing. Later, he'd learn that 10 other inmates had been shot, one of whom was Katsugi, James Kanaga, a 21-year-old who went by the name of Jim and ultimately died from his injuries in the camp hospital several days later.

Like Ito, he was unarmed and posed no threat. These two deaths became some of the most tragic outcomes of this uprising. That night, all night, kitchen bells told, as tensions continue to escalate with some inmates attempting to find and beat suspected informants while police broke up inmate gatherings around the camp. Just after midnight, Harry was taken to another off-site jail, this time with the committee of five members who had attempted to negotiate with the camp leadership. None of them were involved in the mob outside the police station,

but Harry and the others were loaded into the back of a truck at gunpoint, regardless and driven to the bishop jail, where they were held for a few more days before being transferred to the Lone Pine Jail. Even though no one was officially charged with anything, camp administrators had already begun framing the night as a collision between pro-Japanese and pro-American groups, saying that the Japanese were celebrating the anniversary of Pearl Harbor. Oh my. Okay.

Which, like, couldn't be farther from reality of what is actually going on. Yeah. They're protesting the false imprisonment. of arguably one of their favorite community people who have done nothing but boost morale and try to help those who are around him. And now they're painting it as this picture of they're almost this terrorist group that's celebrating the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the death of 2400 Americans. It's like that's not what this is. Even the language used to describe the events of December 6, 1942, highlights the controversy and different perspectives. Camp authorities labeled it

as a riot, which makes it sound like it's a violent disturbance of peace, but as we know, detentions were already incredibly high leading up to this day. There hadn't been peace in a long time. Japanese American historians agree that calling it an uprising or a revolt is more accurate since a revolt is one intense expression of a continued resistance movement. Riot often has a violent unruly connotation, and while violence did break out, the military police were the ones who ultimately used deadly force against unarmed civilians. Yeah, I think a riot is a very unfair descriptor. It's like that wasn't a riot.

Right. I understand not, I don't understand calling it a riot, but envisioning what was happening here being a couple hundred guards with 4,000 angry people coming towards you. I understand how you could be intimidated by that, but you've also imprisoned 4,000 people and now you have and mistreated them. And mistreated however long. Yeah. And like I just mentioned, there's tensions rising. There's no such thing as peace here. There are a group of people who have been compliant because they thought that they were helping the American government only to be abused and mistreated, and now you falsely imprisoned a person who was trying to help them get food rations.

And you're calling it a riot? Yeah, that's unfair, to put it lightly. Yeah. Despite additional military police presence and surveillance in the days following the uprising, inmates continued to organize. Many of them started wearing black armbands to show their resistance, and they threatened a general strike unless Harry and the others were released. Schools stayed closed until early January, and camp operations slowed.

Following the uprising, many JACLers and their families were also sent away from Manzanar camp to a camp near Death Valley National Monument or National Park now, until they were able to resettle outside of the restricted area. This included Tyama and his family, along with other suspected informants who had been threatened with violence around the uprising. Harry and the other men continued to be moved around from Lone Pine Jail, first to a newly established isolation camp in Moab, Utah, for a month, then to Arizona, and ultimately to Tully Lake, which was a war relocation authority camp in California or many suspected disloyal internees were sent. Ultimately, Yaso and the kids were sent to join Harry at Tully Lake after almost a year of communicating only through heavily censored letters. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the camp authorities downplayed the deaths of both Etu and Kanagawa in their official reports, framing the uprising as a riot instead of acknowledging the unnecessary use of deadly force. The military investigation of the Manzanar uprising also fully exonerated the military police on site.

of any wrongdoing, including the two officers who shot live ammunition into the crowd. I wish I could say I am shocked, but I am not. I mean, that's something that we see now. I know. It's so fraught. I mean, like, you hear this all the time that students of history or people who are interested in history or have some sort of foundational knowledge of historic events. are so much more frustrated with what is happening in the present because it's like you want to

bash your head into a wall. Because you know the past. You're like, have we not like learned anything from this? You know? Being educated is so frustrated. It's so frustrating. Having a brain in 2026 is hard. And I think a lot of people are starting to realize that and that it all ties into, you know, the erasure of, And I know I'm kind of going off on a side tangent here, but within the National Park Service, you know, with the orders from this administration to remove signage that is quote unquote divisive in nature, whether it comes to historic events like this or slavery or in indigenous history or anything like that, it's intentional because they don't want us to recognize and remember events like this so that we. are blind to what's happening now. And it's just so disheartening. It's so disheartening. And it's one of the biggest reasons we do this show, you know,

and one of the biggest reasons that we decided we wanted to do topics that expanded far beyond true crime in the outdoors because these are the stories that are, you know, every story is important. You know, every story deserves to be told. But the reason we wanted to expand into dark history, quote unquote, is because it contains more than just tragic murders in a true crime packaging. You know, like this has to do with death and murder of two people you just told us. But it's not in the traditional form of, you know, category of true crime. And I am just like, I don't know, I'm just so proud of us, you know, I really am because it's like this, this is worth talking about and.

And knowing about and learning about. It shouldn't be divisive. You know, I know that some people are like, ooh, that's political. And it's like, it's not political. If you think about this. It's history. It's historic. And it happened.

And we're just telling you how it is, you know. And I think that there's. also this conversation that gets surrounded with talking about topics like this of, well, you don't love our country if you're going to talk about stuff like this. And that's so false because knowing your country's history, I think, is a form of love. And also, when we're talking about this, is I'm not saying, you as an American did this to Japanese people. It's like the American government has a history of doing this. And now we as a fresh new population, of Americans can make a decision to be better, to learn from this. You know, it's not, it's not

pointing fingers at people of today. It's pointing fingers at people of the past. And so when people feel, they take it personal, I think. Yeah. It's like you feel like you have to be on the defense for your country when learning about stuff like this. And I get it. It's hard. It's a hard conversation to have. And when you look at this, you're like, but what were we doing? Like, we were in World War II. we were trying to protect America. We were doing all this stuff. And it's like, yes, but there was a lot of other stuff going on here. And there were some decisions that were made that were bad. And now, in hindsight, when you know these things, you can make better decisions. And like you were saying, is if things feel like they're coming full circle and we're going back around to the same thing that we did once again,

now we have the tools to recognize it because we've heard this story before. Exactly. And one more thing before you continue. I love that you're fired up about this because I, these are the type of stories that I like telling because I think they're so important. So I love your reaction. Yeah. Well, just like one more thing. I have a lot of thoughts and feelings. But in regards to this of like kind of going back to how they were portraying it as a riot, you know, kind of advertising it to the American people who have no idea what's going on and are just taking their word for it, you know, when we're saying sometimes.

we in the present take it personally as like a personal attack on us as individuals to kind of hold that blame, which is unfair. And I think that as far as back then, you know, 90% of people probably had no idea what was truly happening at Manzanar. Especially in the 40s. Yeah. How are you going to know? You're going off of what you're truly going off of unless you have any personal connections. If you are separated from this event in every way and you're just hearing about it through the newspaper or whatever type of announcements that are being told by the administration of the day, how are you supposed to know? And people are focusing on their own families. You know, people have their husbands and their sons are off in this war. You know, they're focusing on

on making money to support their families and their loved ones who are gone and maybe have died or are under threat of dying. You know, people aren't focused on this corner of the world at this point unless, like you mentioned, they're personally affected. Yeah. I swear I had a bigger point to that, but I got lost in the sauce. So you can keep going. Unless I'm like, okay, there it is. And then I'll bring it up again. But there was something deeper to that. I just forget. But please continue. Yeah. I think we're very clear on where. Yeah. We stand. I think all in all, when you look at things that are happening right now, I think that we're unfortunately in a time too where there's a lot of biased information on every side.

I'm not even saying on one side or the other on every side. So I think it's more important than ever to research multiple sources when you're looking at things. Because even if someone who you fully agree with and you are on this side is saying something, double check it, you know? Do your own research because there are unfortunately a lot of bias that's happening and you're not always seeing the full picture and you might just be seeing one side. Going back to the story, some people were able to relocate and resettle outside of Manzanar soon after the uprising, but most inmates remained incarcerated there for at least two more years. Even though the war officially ended on September 2nd, 1945, Harry was kept at Tully Lake for almost six more months. While his wife and children were allowed to leave Tully Lake months earlier, the camp officials held Harry as long as they possibly could

and didn't give him a permit to go until February 28, 1946. The Tully Lake camp closed for good just a few weeks later. Harry and his family resettled in Northern California where he became a farmer and they began to rebuild their lives from scratch. It was difficult to find housing because so many Japanese Americans were looking for jobs and places to live after years of incarceration. Harry also never got his money back from when it was frozen at the bank at the beginning of the war, which was $250 then, which with inflation today amounts to over $10,000.

He just never got it back. Yeah. They just froze his assets and stole it, essentially. So they truly had to start from, they were released from these camps and given nothing. Tully Lake was the last of the incarceration camps to close in March of 1946, but some began to shut down much earlier. In December, 1944, the United States Supreme Court ruled that there was no basis for keeping loyal vacuies of Japanese ancestry in custody. In a case known as ex parte Endo named after Mitsuye Endo, Endo was a U.S.-born Japanese American who filed a petition for habeas corpus when she was detained. in April of 1942 and sent to an interment camp in Utah, basically saying her detention was unlawful.

She spent two and a half years awaiting the High Court's decision, which ultimately found that she was right, the government cannot detain loyal citizens against their will. And what year was that? So she went to the courts in 1942, but she wasn't released until the end of 1944, so two and a half years later. Okay. In the anticipation of this verdict, many camps began to close preemptively by the end of that year in 1944. However, many of the inmates no longer had anywhere to go. At this point, most of them had been gone from their homes for two or three years. The prisoner's wages they were paid for labor at camp weren't nearly enough to pay for mortgages or leases

on cars or other property. Without houses, vehicles, furniture, or most of their personal possessions, many Isay were back to where they started when they first immigrated to the United States, with hardly any money and even more limited job prospects. Even worse, three years of wartime propaganda had only intensified anti-Japanese racism, especially on the West Coast. This further isolated the Japanese Americans attempting to resettle and restart their lives. Many prisoners opted to stay at Manzanar as long as they could due to the stories of other attorneys being physically attacked and assaulted when they returned to their former home cities. Even without physical violence, many feared the humiliation and emotional

toll of returning. For many Japanese Americans, especially Isay, the shame was the worst part. It was taboo to even talk about Manzanar in the incarceration camps until almost 25 years later. It wasn't until December 1969 that an intergenerational group of Japanese Americans made what would become one of the first of many organized returns back to Manzanar in connection with other national civil rights movements happening at the time. With these visits, the Japanese American community began preserving Manzanar as a site of national historic significance. In 1988, the U.S. government issued a formal apology to a Japanese. Americans and paid surviving attorneys $20,000 each. In 1992, Manzanar was named a National Historic Site through the National Park Service. Nisei Su Kunutomi Embry was instrumental in preserving Manzanar history in creating the site we know today.

A prisoner in Manzanar herself as a young girl, she returned to the camp on that first return in 1969. After that, she became the chair of the Manzanar Committee and led the annual trip back for the next 36 years. During her long tenure as committee chair, she spearheaded efforts to designate Manzanar as a national historic site. Reflecting on her time at the incarceration camp, Embry says, I think Manzanar should stand as a symbol of something that happened in America, had happened before, and could happen again. It takes people who are aware of the past to make sure that it doesn't get repeated in the future. Oh, well, yeah. And that's what we've been trying.

She said it so beautiful. She said it in so many less words that meant the exact same thing. Yeah. Let's just leave it to the pros. I'm just rambling, but I am here for that. Like the other internment camps, Manzanar was disassembled hastily after the war. Not much remains of the original camp other than a few. reconstructed barracks at Block 14, the visitor center, and with some wooded signage, the site is

pretty sparse. The most well-known part of Manzanar today is the memorial, a white marble monument with Japanese characters engraved on it that stands prominently in the front of the sierras. The text reads, Soul Consoling Tower, and it commemorates the 150 prisoners who lost their lives at Manzanar. Ultimately, the Manzanar National Historic Site reminds us of a painful but important part of American history. In hindsight, the Japanese internment camps were clearly unjust and unconstitutional, but at the time, the government justified them with deep-seated racial prejudice born of wartime

fear and hatred. Like Kunitomi Embry said, it's important to understand history, so we're not doomed to repeat it. What happened at Manzanar is an uncomfortable and essential reminder of that. And that is my story of the Manzanar uprising. Wow. Thank you so much for sharing that one. And I know that you have a particular interest in this time period. So I know that you are really like invested in this, not more so than any other, but it's just something you really truly care about. And I think. think that shined through with any time you talk about World War II in this show, which I feel like

has been maybe I'm getting it confused a little bit with Watcher Cook because we did a couple episodes of. I really brought it up and watcher Cook. We're like, oh, this is my time. Okay. It's not a national park, but women were involved and we're going to talk about it. Yeah. Wow.

Well, thank you so much for sharing. And we will, of course, link the book on our bookshelf on our website for those who are interested in reading more about this. And we will see you next week. In the meantime, enjoy the view. But watch you're back. Bye. Bye. Thanks for joining us for another episode. We hope you learn something new and have another location to put on your list. If you want more MPAD content, make sure to follow along with our adventures on all socials at National Park After Dark. For more stories just like this one with the added bonus of exclusive content, you can join us on Patreon or Apple subscriptions.

If you prefer to watch our episodes, head over to our YouTube channel. And if you're enjoying the show, please take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe on your favorite listening platform. You're listening to this podcast, so I know you've got a curious mind. Here's a helpful fact you may not know yet. Drivers who switch and save with Progressive save over $900 on average. Pop over to progressive.com, answer some questions, and you'll get a quick quote with discounts that are easy to come by.

In fact, 99% of their auto customers earn at least. least one discount. Visit progressive.com and see if you can enjoy a little cash back. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. National average 12-month savings of $946 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2024 and May 2025. Potential savings will vary. Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money because behind every headline is a bottom line, whether it's the funds-fueling AI or Crypto's trillion dollar swings, there's a money side to every story, and when you see the money side, you understand what others miss. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now at Bloomberg.com.