Travelogue VI: Ghosts of 9066

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Return trip leg 2

Today is election day and at this moment polls are beginning to close in the eastern time zone. But I'll leave it to others to blog about today's critical decision-making, at least for right now. Erik has a final note on the subject, Mary Trump had a few words on it. Even Andy Borowitz chimed in to lighten the mood.

Instead, this will be the penultimate travelogue post from my trip to SoCal.

Manzanar

In 1942, a few months after the United States' entry into World War II, a stretch of desolate land in eastern California where a long-abandoned township once stood was chosen as one of ten sites to be used as "relocation centers" for anyone of Japanese descent living on the West Coast. Executive Order 9066, issued by FDR of all people, gave in to the paranoia and racism of the day and forcibly removed Japanese and Japanese-Americans—U.S. citizens and non-citizens alike—from their homes and businesses. This unconstitutional violation of rights and ethics was based on the concern that these people would be loyal to the Empire of Japan simply due to their ancestry, that some of them would use their knowledge and existence in the westernmost continental United States to supply an enemy nation with intelligence or act as saboteurs. Because racism. (Notably, German- and Italian-Americans were not similarly treated on the East Coast even though the U.S was also at war with Germany and Italy.)

Manzanar was the first of the camps, though not the largest. At its peak, Manzanar housed over 11,000 people in wood and tar-paper barracks over one square mile of area. Located on the eastern slope of a valley in the southern Sierra Nevada mountains, the environment was harsh and isolation was fairly severe. Yet, for three years the internees made the best of it and turned their concentration camp into a more livable space, planting gardens, running a school, publishing a newspaper, forming a baseball league, and gradually improving their living space structures as materials, such as linoleum flooring, became available over time.

Remarkable, really. The spirit to keep on and make whatever lemonade could be made form the rotten lemons given them impresses me no end. The injustice perpetrated on them was ever-present, and even when the war ended and the camps closed the internees were mostly returned to very little left from their pre-camp lives. It was one of the most abominable episodes in American history, the sort of thing modern Republicans would just assume no one ever thought about or remembered (even though they're now planning on doing this exact sort of thing again if they gain power after today).

Fortunately, the U.S. National Parks Service has taken over the grounds of Manzanar and has preserved what little remains from 1942-1945. They've built a small museum there and are using the few remaining structures as restored museum exhibits, and are slowly working to restore areas of the grounds that camp residents built themselves, like gardens and koi ponds and a small park. The barracks and other buildings are long gone (though one structure near what used to be the staff quarters remains in dilapidated shape), though markers for each "block" show where things used to stand. (Anyone who's watched M*A*S*H would have a sense of how things probably looked in terms of structures and what kind of comforts were available or not; the structures were more stable than tents, less so than the metal structure of the M*A*S*H hospital building.)

I had stopped by Manzanar once before, several years ago, but only had about 40 minutes then and wasn't able to see the grounds at all. This time I made sure to have an hour or so for the museum bits and at least that long to see the grounds themselves. It's actually rather pretty landscape there at the foot of the Sierras. I'd hate to have to live there in mid-summer or winter with no insulation and little electricity, though.

The few things still standing—which no doubt have been restored to some degree by the Parks Service—include the cemetery and the baseball field, as well as the entry gates and an ominous guard tower. Also a few signs at the perimeter warning of "sentry on duty" should anyone try to venture past the fencing.

It's a sobering and yet inspiring place to visit. U.S. Hwy 395 goes right past it, it's easy to get to. I overheard one guy in the visitor's center say to one of the park rangers, "this is the most horrendous place I've ever been, and I work in a prison." And what that place was used for is horrendous, and the conditions and all that surrounded 9066 that is there in the museum in its unvarnished historical accuracy show us how terrible our society has been and can be. But I'm also inspired by it, by the fortitude of the internees, and gratified that the National Parks service is maintaining and preserving this piece of ugly history.

We need these things to be preserved. We need to remember the ugly parts of our past in order to improve in our future. History often repeats itself—in Battlestar Galactica terms, this has all happened before and will all happen again—but it doesn't have to. We can learn from our mistakes, but only if they are remembered and preserved for our edification. And to bring this back to the election just for a second—if Trump wins, he's promised to create more concentration camps, for immigrants legal and otherwise, as a place to "store" them while he institutes mass deportations. We can make a different choice.

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