Day 3 of the @aachristcollab Asian American History #reclaimtrip:
We drove 3 hours to Manzanar, one of ten concentration camps where Japanese Americans were incarcerated for years being able to only bring the things they could carry with them.
In front of the guard station and the Manzanar concentration camp sign. The US unconstitutionally incarcerated 127,000 Japanese Americans in camps like this. Over 10,000 Japanese people were forced here.
When we arrived into the visitor center at Manzanar, a white couple walking out with their very young child said, “This can’t be true. The US would never do anything like this. This must be fake news.”
This is what the barracks would’ve looked like. It was especially harsh in 100 degree heat. We were barely there for ten minutes and feeling like the oxygen was running out from the hot temperatures. Imagine going from your home to this because the government rounded you up.
This is what the barracks look like from the outside. There were rows and rows of this along one square mile. Each area was managed by a Japanese person who was essentially placed in an impossible position of maintaining “peace” and providing “oversight.”
This is what an “upgraded” child’s room (partition) would’ve looked like. The incarcerated were so stripped of everything that they celebrated getting linoleum fours and wall coverings.
This is a cemetery, which includes the graves of the elderly and of children. The little mounds in the back are grave sites. These camps were placed in “undesirable” and very distant places from population centers so coming here would have been an inconvenience for anyone.
This is the women’s toilet area. There was no privacy and this setup stripped away the dignity of people who would otherwise go to the restroom in private. Testimonies about the shame and embarrassment that the toilets and the showers induced are plenty.
The Japanese weren’t told where they were going or for how long. Read this quote about how unnerving it was.
The US government was very much aware of the “magnitude of the task” and got multiple agencies involved, while also creating a new one called the War Relocation Authority for this unconstitutional effort.
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