Manzanar

Yesterday we decided it was finally time to visit Manzanar, the WWII "relocation center" for people of Japanese descent that has been made into a National Historic Site. It's less than 2 hours north of us, just past Lone Pine. We've been talking about going for ages.

Why hadn't we gone before? I suppose because it sounded a bit depressing, like the kind of thing you'd have to be in the right mood for. Or if not depressing, at least very serious, not a place to have fun. Not a place the twins would enjoy. Most of these worries turned out to be unfounded. It is a serious place and you do kind of have to be in the right mood. But it's also very interesting and the twins loved it.

On my first trip to Germany, back in 1985, my great-aunt (with whom I was staying) asked me if I would like to visit Dachau, the former Nazi concentration camp, which was nearby. I had not even heard of Dachau, nor had I thought of visiting it, but I said yes, of course, and we went. Now Dachau was depressing.

But Manzanar is more puzzling and thought-provoking than depressing. Pretty much nobody was killed at Manzanar, except in one riot that occurred there. The "internees" just had their lives destroyed, that's all, and much of that happened before they ever arrived, when they were forced to abandon their homes and businesses. Once they got to Manzanar, they just lived what was left of their lives, albeit in very difficult, uncomfortable circumstances, behind barbed wire fences, guarded by sentries with submachine guns. The overall impression that I took away from Manzanar was: what absolute nonsense. How completely unnecessary. What was my country thinking.

And of course it's impossible not to compare it with the current hysteria against Muslims. But I digress.

One caveat: I didn't get to see many of the displays (too busy babysitting), and maybe if I had, my impressions would have been different.

The only buildings on the site that have survived since the 1940s are a couple of stone sentry posts at the entrance, and the former auditorium, which was several different things through the years and now houses an excellent interpretive center with a great gift shop. Here we are walking, or in the case of the twins, running pell-mell toward it.



The other people in the picture were two older couples who appeared to be "of Japanese descent." When I saw them I thought, oh maybe someone they knew was here. Later, talking to a ranger, I asked "Do you get many Japanese-Americans here?" I knew it was an idiotic question before I finished asking it, but he was polite. He said, "We get many former internees here. Almost every day."

That brought tears to my eyes. This all happened so recently.

The best thing in the interpretive center, as far as the twins were concerned, is a toy room, with examples of toys similar to those the Manzanar children would have played with. And the best thing about the toy room? You can play with all the toys! The twins and I spent most of our time in that room. When we left, Baby A attempted to pull a toy wagon full of the toys out of the toy room and off to the car, but we prevented that. In the gift shop they sell those same toys. I bought a set of alphabet blocks.



In addition to the interpretive center there is a driving tour you can take of the site. They have reconstructed some of the barracks, so you can see how the people lived. Other than that, most of what you see on the driving tour are building foundations and bare land, with signs indicating what used to be there. There were two interesting exceptions: the cemetery, which includes the monument in my photo at the top, and the gardens.



When Rocket Boy read aloud from the brochure that here was the "mess hall garden," I assumed that meant a vegetable garden. But then we got out of the car and read a display near the garden. This was not a vegetable garden, this was a traditional Japanese garden, with rocks and water. It was not for growing food, it was for solace and contemplation.

Yesterday was a fabulous day to be out and about in the Owens Valley. It was cool but not cold, breezy but not windy, and the sky was a fabulous blue. But to the west, over the Eastern Sierra, a winter storm was clearly taking place (as you can kind of see in some of the photos). So weird. Some of the literature I read said that what the people interned there liked best about Manzanar was the beauty of the mountains.