Over 90 percent of the evacuees were from the Los Angeles area; the others were from northern California, and Bainbridge Island, Washington. The camp covered acres and was surrounded by a barbed-wire fence and eight watchtowers.
It had 67 blocks, including 36 residential blocks, two staff housing blocks, an administrative block, two warehouse blocks, a garage block, and a military police compound. Each of the 36 evacuee residential blocks had 14 barracks, a mess hall, a recreation hall, two communal bathhouses, a laundry room, an ironing room, and a heating oil storage tank. The hospital became the largest in the county, and later on there was a Bank of America branch and a Sears Roebuck catalogue store.
Most of the buildings were flimsily constructed of wood frame, board, and tarpaper. By the fall of , 18 nursery schools and seven kindergartens were organized. The elementary and high school classes were held in barracks, mess halls and laundry rooms, but the internees built an impressive 14,square-foot wood frame auditorium that still stands today. Unrelated families were housed together, and in some cases, wives were assigned to room with men other than their husbands.
The lack of privacy in the barracks was difficult, especially for the women, and toilet paper was scarce.
The pressure of relocating 10, people within a few months took its toll on everyone. All the Japanese-American orphans in the West Coast evacuation zone, including half-Japanese babies living in Caucasian foster homes, were sent to Manzanar. The internees at Manzanar constructed three buildings with running water, baths, and toilets for the more than children who were housed there.
The primary work at Manzanar was industrial. The garment factory was started in May by ten women with a borrowed portable sewing machine, and it later expanded to two warehouses with 38 industrial machines. There was also a mattress factory, a food processing unit, and a camouflage net factory that supplied the U. Army for a short period. Employment at the camouflage net factory had been particularly contentious because its workers earned the highest wages in the camp and non-U.
Smaller businesses included a furniture shop, a dressmaking shop, a typewriter repair shop, a sign shop and a domestic sewing machine repair shop. Workers also produced their own shoyu and tofu. Some large-scale farming took place outside the fenced central area. Chicken and hog farms were established but cattle were only raised for a short time because of the prohibitive cost involved.
There were a number of victory gardens, and some of the experienced growers managed to cultivate fruit from about 1, apple and pear trees that the original farmers had planted before the town was abandoned decades earlier.
Evacuees also conducted experiments for the California Institute of Technology on extracting rubber from guayule, a small woody shrub, to aid in the war effort. Money worries were a major concern among the evacuees at the outset.
They believed that they would be paid Army wages although payment decisions were delayed for months, and internees were asked to "volunteer" their services to keep essential operations going. After failing to receive any pay for three months, internees protested and the turbulence resulted in the riots on December 6.
To complicate matters, the resentment of the Owens Valley residents toward the Japanese Americans and the camp itself was worsening. On December 6, , one of the most serious civil disturbances to occur at all the relocation centers erupted at Manzanar. Although the JACL leaders acted as representatives to the administration, the elders did not share their views and had little respect for them. Meetings turned into shouting sessions with beatings and death threats against the pro-administration group.
Internees attempted to make the best of a bad situation. The WRA formed an advisory council of internee-elected block managers. Internees established churches, temples, and boys and girls clubs.
They developed sports, music, dance, and other recreational programs; built gardens and ponds; and published a newspaper, the Manzanar Free Press. Most internees worked in the camp. They dug irrigation canals and ditches, tended acres of fruits and vegetables, and raised chickens, hogs, and cattle. They made clothes and furniture for themselves and camouflage netting and experimental rubber for the military. They served as mess hall workers, doctors, nurses, police officers, firefighters, and teachers.
Many pooled their resources and created a consumer cooperative that published the Manzanar Free Press and operated a general store, beauty parlor, barbershop, and bank. Church groups, service organizations, and some camp administrators helped find sponsors and jobs in the Midwest and the East. From all 10 camps, 4, people received permission to attend college, and about 10, were allowed to leave temporarily to harvest sugar beets in Idaho, Montana, Utah, and Wyoming.
A total of 11, Japanese Americans were processed through Manzanar. From a peak of 10, in September , the population dwindled to 6, by The last few hundred internees left in November , three months after the war ended. Many of them had spent three-and-a-half years at Manzanar. The removal of all Japanese Americans from the West Coast was based on widespread distrust of their loyalty after Pearl Harbor. Yet, no Japanese Americans were charged with espionage.
We had dreaded the day when some family in Manzanar would receive the fateful telegram…. About 5, Japanese Americans were serving in the U. Army when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in December The U.
Emotions were intense during as the United States entered the war and Japanese Americans were moved to the relocation centers. Various protests and disturbances occurred at some centers over political differences, wages, and rumors of informers and black marketing.
Others refused to serve while their families were behind barbed wire. Exactly what happened to Giichi Matsumura remains unknown. Aunt Kazue said she heard her father slipped on wet rocks and hit his head. Don Hosokawa said the body was later found next to a bloody rock.
His disappearance came four days before the U. Three search parties looked for him in the following weeks. They found only his sweater. About a month after he was lost, a hiker from nearby Independence was trying to summit Mount Williamson with her husband and a friend, but rain ruined their plans. A small burial party from camp made a last trip into the mountains, carrying a sheet from Ito Matsumura to wrap her husband in.
They buried him under granite and affixed a simple piece of paper to a block to mark the grave. About people attended a funeral ceremony back at the camp. A photo by Toyo Miyatake, famous for documenting Manzanar life, shows mourners in dark suits and dresses behind a wall of crepe paper flowers. At the Manzanar cemetery, where a tall white obelisk is often decorated with chains of origami cranes left by visitors, a sign says people died at camp.
Most were cremated and their ashes buried after their families left camp. The gravesite was not widely known so it initially appeared to be a mystery when hikers unearthed it Oct. When word reached rangers and historians at Manzanar, they had a hunch who it was.
Nate Derr had called Matsumura for a DNA sample because she was listed at the historic site as a contact person for her aunt. It took about three months for the Department of Justice to match her DNA with a tooth from the remains to positively identify her grandfather. Derr notified her in January last year. Then she had to decide what to do with the bones. The thought of scattering his ashes at one of those places held some appeal.
After consulting her siblings and cousins, they decided he should be cremated and laid to rest with his wife. His name was already on the grave marker, his toenail clippings and hair buried with her. Lori had to sign paperwork amending the death certificate from a burial to a cremation.
And she wanted to view the remains. Coroner Jason Molinar began to lead Lori and her niece, Lilah, from his office to a private viewing room when Lori halted in the doorway to reassure the year-old, who was scared. The skeleton was roughly arranged in order.
The skull was bleached white, most likely from sun exposure. The ribs, spine and joints were stained a shade of brown. Molinar pointed to a coil of fishing line, the remains of a rusty pocket knife and two buttons found with the bones.
A pair of shoes and belt he had worn were next to his lower leg bones. She then turned the camera to the skeleton and artifacts. She paused at the skull and pointed out the sutures, the fine cracks where the bones of the skull are joined that had begun to separate from exposure. The cracks had led the hikers to speculate on social media about foul play. Lori and her niece stood with their hands clasped in prayer and heads bowed. They prayed he would rest in peace and be reunited with his family.
After the viewing, they went to Manzanar to donate the shoes, belt, fishing line and knife, to be put on display. As Biggs looked at the weather-beaten shoes and withered belt, she was almost overcome with emotion.
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