Manzanar and the Road home

September 10th 2010

All good things must come to an end and so ends our summer in Ashland. We decided to stay off interstate 5 on the route home and instead took the more inland route which passes through some of the most beautiful landscapes you will ever see. The principle part of the two-day journey in on U.S. route 395 paralleling the eastern slope of the Sierra.

Passing majestic, snow covered Mt. Shasta and the Lassen Volcano we were engulfed frequently in a literal tunnel of trees for hours It is so easy and relaxing to drive for hours through this kind of landscape a (and an excellent John LeCarre book on audio). I feast on all the eye candy and the best is yet to come.

The trusty Prius seems to drive on its own. A brief stretch through Nevada (Reno Yuck!) is the only difficult part of the trip and we are in and out of Nevada in less than an hour. Our final destination today is Lone Pine California.

Lone Pine is bordered on the West by the Sierra and Mt. Whitney, the tallest peak in the lower 48 states, and on the East about 90 miles away Death Valley. The contrasts and colors of the mountains here are overwhelming, particularly at sunrise and sunset. But despite the spectacular surroundings, Lone Pine is known for a serious blemish in the patina of American liberty.

Barely a few miles south of Lone Pine is the former site of Manzanar, the Japanese internment camp for tens of thousands of American citizens of Japanese descent during World War II.

Long before the first prisoners arrived in March 1942, Manzanar was home to Indian tribes, who mostly lived in villages near several creeks in the area. Ranchers and miners formally established the town of Manzanar in 1910, but abandoned the town by 1929 after Los Angeles purchased the water rights to virtually the entire area. As different as these groups were, their histories displayed a common thread of forced relocation..

After the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941, the United States Government swiftly moved to begin solving the “Japanese Problem” on the West Coast of the United States. In the evening hours of that same day, the FBI arrested selected “enemy” aliens, including 2,192 who were of Japanese decent. The California government pressed for action by the national government, as many citizens were alarmed about potential activities by people of Japanese descent.

On February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed an executive order, which authorized the Secretary of War to designate military commanders to prescribe military areas and to exclude “any or all persons” from such areas. The order also authorized the construction of what would later be called “relocation centers” to house those who were to be excluded. This order resulted in the forced relocation of over 120,000 Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were native-born American Citizens! The rest had been prevented from becoming citizens by federal law. Over 110,000 were imprisoned in the ten concentration camps located far inland and away from the coast.

I recently finished a book about the democracy practiced by the Indian Nations of the Northeast and how many believe it inspired the Founding Fathers in the drafting of our own Constitution. Henry James whose works were full of social and class commentary wrote of the much- admired "democratic spirit" of our country. In the case of Manzanar, and perhaps in our current times with all the flap over the new "aliens", are wee losing our way again?