Manzanar

The original auditorium, now the site of the museum

About 15 miles north of Alabama Hills is Manzanar, one of ten detention/relocation/ concentration camps in the United States, where US citizens of Japanese ancestry and Japanese resident aliens were incarcerated during WW II. It is a designated National Historic Site. The only original buildings that remain are the auditorium (now the museum) and a guard tower. Several buildings, including barracks and latrines, have been since been recreated to give the visitor a feel for the depressing living conditions.


It gives a heartrending glimpse into the lives these US citizens (including little children, pregnant women, and the elderly) who were forced, without just cause, into a barbed-wire enclosed prison and who persevered with dignity and grace.

Upon our arrival, it was hard to imagine the dry, desolate conditions that greeted the internees when I was surrounded by the grandeur of the snow capped Sierras. Wandering through the museum, there is a hushed reverence, and the solitude gives dimension to the stories of those who lived here. The sadness of the injustice done here permeates the air, and although it is not in my family's history, it was a visit worth making.

Multiple families lived in this single barracks