Manzanar War Relocation Center

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Manzanar National Historic Site
Manzanar in the dust storm on July 3, 1942, picture by Dorothea Lange
Manzanar in the dust storm on July 3, 1942, picture by Dorothea Lange
Manzanar War Relocation Center (USA)
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Coordinates: 36 ° 43 ′ 34.5 "  N , 118 ° 8 ′ 42.3"  W.
Location: California , United States
Next city: Lone Pine
Surface: 3.3 km²
Founding: March 3, 1992
Visitors: 88200 (2006)
The exclusion zone, ten internment camps and other War Relocation Authority facilities
The exclusion zone, ten internment camps and other War Relocation Authority facilities
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The Manzanar War Relocation Center or Manzanar for short was during the Second World War 1942-1945 one of the ten internment camps in the United States as part of the internment of Japanese Americans from a restricted zone on the west coast, who were considered a security risk (" Enemy Alien "). Of the up to 10,046 internees, approximately two-thirds were American-born citizens of the United States. The camp was halfway between the small towns of Independence and Lone Pine in the Owens River Valley , Inyo County ,California in the Mojave Desert on the east side of the Sierra Nevada at the foot of Mount Williamson .

history

The Owens River valley was originally settled by Paiute Indians. Their presence has been proven since around the year 500. In the 1850s, the first whites came to the valley and built small farms under the Homestead Act or looked for ore. After conflicts, the Paiute were forced into a reservation at Fort Tejon, 200 km south, in 1863 . The place of the later camp became a cattle ranch , in which some returned Paiute were employed. In 1910, when the ranch had been abandoned, farmers founded a small town and named it Manzanar, from the Spanish word for apple plantation, and began growing fruit and other crops. As early as 1905, the Los Angeles City Council had begun purchasing rights to use surface water throughout the region . The first Los Angeles Aqueduct was built in 1913, the other rights were acquired and enforced against resistance ( California Water Wars ) . In 1928 nearly all water usage rights in the valley belonged to the city of Los Angeles, the water was diverted and the Owens River ran dry. Agriculture collapsed.

Internees working in the fields off Mount Williamson, picture by Ansel Adams , 1943
Memorial stone to the victims

As a war relocation center

The largely deserted region on the east side of the Sierra was used when in 1942 sites were sought for assembly points and internment camps for Japanese foreigners and Americans of Japanese descent. After the attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States' entry into World War II in December 1941, not only Japanese nationals in the United States, but all American citizens of Japanese descent were classified as a security risk. On 19 February 1942, signed President Franklin D. Roosevelt , the Executive Order 9066 on the basis of much of the Pacific Rim have been declared a prohibited area. All residents of Alaska , California , western Oregon and Washington, as well as a small strip of southern Arizona with Japanese ancestors, were sent to internment camps east of the Pacific region by the War Relocation Authority under the umbrella of the US Department of the Interior . Most of the Japanese Americans from Los Angeles were interned in Manzanar. A comparable authorization for the complete internment of residents of German and Italian descent on the east coast was not implemented. Individuals were interned.

The Manzanar Relocation Center consisted of 36 blocks with twelve barracks each. Up to 300 people were accommodated in each block. The barracks settlement was surrounded by an approximately 8 km long fence, which was equipped with eight watchtowers and was guarded by a unit of the military police . Originally, the inmates were supposed to work in a textile factory and other businesses; after protests by the union about unfair competition, the textile factory only produced camouflage nets for the army and otherwise the camp administration relied on agriculture for employment and self-sufficiency for the internees. The cultivation area first had to be made fertile. It was very large with a total of 150 hectares. Potatoes, grain, tomatoes, cucumbers, onions and melons were mainly grown around the camp, while several traditional Japanese gardens were laid out in the camp itself by the prisoners. The food in the camp corresponded to that of the general population, and the rations were identical.

On December 6, 1942, the Manzanar Riot took place in Manzanar , the largest and most serious protest of all internment camps. It arose out of a protracted conflict between US-nationals who were second-generation immigrants who cooperated with the military administration and first-generation Japanese-oriented immigrants ( Issei ) and US-born Japanese-born Americans who are completing their school or university education in Japan and then returned to the United States. The groups argued about the most attractive and best-paid jobs in the camp, about the food supply and about representation in the elected camp council, which only allowed people born in the USA to belong.

When a representative of the camp council loyal to the United States was beaten up by masked men, the military police arrested a suspected ringleader and wanted to remove him from Manzanar and forcibly move him to one of the other camps. Over a thousand internees gathered to protest the measure. The camp administration gave in to the transfer and kept the arrested person in the camp prison. As the demonstration continued, the local government grocery store was set on fire and the military police used tear gas. When an intern drove a truck towards the prison gate, the military police opened fire. A 17-year-old protester was shot dead and a second was so badly injured by a shot in the stomach that he died a few days later. Nine other internees were shot injured and a military policeman was hit by a ricochet .

Open protests and strikes that lasted several weeks followed for several days, and exposed representatives of the loyal side were temporarily relocated from the camp for safety because there were death threats. At night the military police patrolled reinforced by troops of the National Guard . 15 ringleaders of the protests were arrested and later transported to distant camps.

After the Second World War

In the 1960s, under the influence of the civil rights movement, criticism of the measures began to be voiced; in the 1980s, the discussion led to extensive scientific studies and a political debate. After a commission set up by the US Congress concluded that the measures could not be justified by military necessity, the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 awarded $ 20,000 in compensation to each surviving victim of forced relocation . In a 1992 amendment to the law, additional funds were made available to meet the commitment and President George HW Bush made a formal apology.

About her experiences in Manzanar, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston , a daughter of Japanese parents born in the United States, wrote the book Farewell to Manzanar in 1972 , which is now part of the canon of many American schools. It was filmed in a television production in 1976 under the same title and was nominated for two Emmys .

On July 30, 1976, the Manzanar War Relocation Center was added to the National Register of Historic Places as a site . Since February 4, 1985, the complex has been a National Historic Landmark . In 1992, the area was as Manzanar National Historic Site , a memorial of the type of National Historic Sites under the administration of the National Park Service . Two other memorials are dedicated to the same topic: Minidoka National Historic Site has existed in Idaho since 2001, and the Tule Lake War Relocation Center in northern California has been part of the World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument since 2008 .

literature

music

The song Kenji from Fort Minor is partly about Manzanar and the overall situation of the Japanese-born Americans in World War II.

Tom Paxton sings the song Manzanar, written by Tom Russell , on his CD under american skies .

Film adaptations

Life in the Manzanar camp is also a theme in the 1990 melodrama Come and See Paradise by director Alan Parker with Dennis Quaid and Tamlyn Tomita in the lead roles.

proof

  1. ^ Francis Nenik / Sebastian Stumpf: Seven Palms. The Thomas Mann House in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles . Spector Books, Leipzig 2018, ISBN 978-3-95905-180-4 , pp. 185 .
  2. ^ Francis Nenik / Sebastian Stumpf: Seven Palms. The Thomas Mann House in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles . Spector Books, Leipzig 2018, ISBN 978-3-95905-180-4 , pp. 190 .
  3. ↑ Burton, Chapter 8, page 3
  4. ^ Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, Personal Justice Denied, Summary
  5. ↑ Entry in the National Register Information System . National Park Service , accessed May 25, 2016
  6. ↑ Listing of National Historic Landmarks by State: California. National Park Service , accessed August 1, 2019.

Web links

Commons : Manzanar War Relocation Center  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files