Solo Pilgrimage to Manzanar
A version of this article originally appeared in Pacific Citizen.
For those familiar with my writing on pilgrimages, it may come as a surprise that I had never visited Manzanar until this past March. The opportunity finally presented itself when I had back-to-back work engagements in LA and SF two weekends in a row with a few days to kill in between.
My trip began with a homecoming of sorts as I helped produce Nichi Bei Foundation’s Films of Remembrance Showcase at Gardena Valley Japanese Cultural Institute. Before the war my great grandparents were tenant farmers on the Kurata Ranch in Gardena. They avoided camp by “self-evacuating,” abandoning their farm and escaping by car to Utah. I plotted my route to follow some of the same roads they took until I hit the town of Mojave at the junction of state routes 14 and 58, heading north where they would have continued eastward toward Nevada.
An hour later I came upon the town of Lone Pine, the closest settlement to Manzanar and home to just over 2,000 people. Lone Pine is also adjacent to the Paiute-Shoshone Reservation, a little over 230 acres in size and with a Tribal population of approximately 350 residents. I would later return to Lone Pine to spend the night, but drove straight through to Manzanar in order to catch the interpretive center before it closed.
9-miles later, I found myself face-to-face with the iconic military sentry checkpoint, unmistakable from the many photos I had seen both during and after the war. Past the sentry houses I saw a sole residential barracks painted white, giving stark contrast to the green-grey desert landscape punctuated by the scenic backdrop of the high sierras. Driving through the check point on the access road, I pulled into the interpretive center about three hours to closing time.
I was impressed to learn that the center was incarceree-built and was used as an auditorium to host assemblies, dances, performances, and film screenings. By far the largest surviving building from any of the WRA camps, I wondered how many lives were shaped by this physical space and found myself gravitating to the architecture. I observed visible remains of the projection booth with holes cut in different shapes and sizes to accommodate various film gauges, wondering what movies were shown.
A highlight of the exhibit were the ten WRA camp banners, which are used annually at the Manzanar Pilgrimage. In 1992 Manzanar became the first camp designated as a National Historic Site, and has long represented the larger experience of wartime incarceration in our nation’s commemorative landscape. Seeing these banners together in one place, I recalled images of the eight camps I’ve previously visited, and the many survivors and descendants met along the way.
The last thing I saw before venturing outdoors were 8mm movies shot by camp administrator Francis C. Dieterich who captured color images of daily life at Manzanar that are otherwise absent from the historical record. I marveled at the lush green grass and colorful flowers amid the otherwise desolate landscape.
After a brief stop at the reconstructed fire station, which houses a 1940s fire engine, I drove to the baseball diamond. With my souvenir Manzanar baseball in hand, purchased from the gift shop, I walked onto the diamond and stood at home plate. Overwhelmed by the power of place, I felt a sudden urge to run the bases. Sprinting with a smile on my face, realizing how silly I must have looked to the trucker driving his 18-wheeler past the camp, it gave me a much-needed moment of joy after touring the center.
From there I drove to the Arai Fish Pond located in Block 33, built by Jack Hanashiro Arai, an Issei man who worked at a produce market in LA before being incarcerated with his wife and three children. Dug about 2-3 feet below ground level, the pond was reinforced with concrete and its perimeter lined by large stones. Arai stocked the pond with fish that he sourced outside of camp while on temporary leave work projects. The pond became an oasis for the residents of Block 33, which was rediscovered in 2011 during an archeological survey and later restored.
Most WRA camps had some form of garden practice, but pond gardens were made possible at Manzanar by the incarcerees’ liberal access to cement mix. Incarcerees became adept at using the material to create everything from garden features to Japanese style ofuro soaking tubs. Under fading sunlight, I decided to save the other gardens for the next day, making my way to the cemetery.
Of approximately 150 Japanese Americans who died in Manzanar, only six burials remain, as a majority of the deceased were cremated or later reburied where their families resettled. Every year since the camp closed in 1945, two Issei – Buddhist Reverend Sentoku Maeda and Christian Minister Shoichi Wakahiro – made the trek back to tend the lonely graves and offer prayers. Learning of their annual visit, student activists from the Organization of Southland Asian American Organizations asked to join them in 1969, attracting a crowd of over 100 spanning four generations of the Nikkei diaspora.
This became known as the first annual Manzanar Pilgrimage and is widely credited as starting the nationwide pilgrimage movement. One could argue that it also paved the way for Japanese Americans to begin turning towards our painful past, sparking renewed calls for reparations. The cemetery became a focal point of subsequent pilgrimages, and is probably the most recognizable image associated with Manzanar. I paid my respects at the individual grave sites then spent a few minutes admiring the offerings other pilgrims left at the Ireito – soul-consoling tower, written in kanji on the obelisk monument.
As I turned to leave, something in the distance caught my eye. I walked over to get a closer view, discovering what looked like a trail of tsuru, most likely left as offerings windswept from the monument. Following the dotted trail of sun-worn and tattered origami, I then noticed a replica signpost that read, “-STOP- AREA LIMITS FOR PERSONS OF JAPANESE ANCESTRY RESIDING IN THIS RELOCATION CENTER SENTRY ON DUTY.” It sent a chill down my spine as I considered the remains of six individuals who have yet to venture beyond the camp perimeter.
Inspired to perform a small act of civil disobedience, I began walking into the open desert past the sign and toward the snowcapped sierras. As I strolled through the dusty terrain, it struck me how futile armed sentries were in an area so close to Death Valley. Assuming someone did flee, where could they possibly go? Awed by the natural beauty, I was now far enough from the road to notice the almost deafening silence. Without a clear direction in mind, I kept walking toward the mountains until I came to a ridge of small boulders, likely moved there by camp construction workers while clearing the land. There to my surprise, I encountered a barbed wire fence, too well-maintained to be a war relic. As I approached, I noticed a sign that read, “UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR BOUNDARY LINE.” While I did not plan on walking much further, I found it ironic that the federal government had erected yet another fence that kept this Japanese American from leaving Manzanar.
As I drove the short distance back to Lone Pine I reflected on these meaningful experiences. I spent the night at the historic Dow Hotel, a Hollywood favorite that hosted the likes of Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, and John Wayne on their numerous location shoots in the area surrounding Lone Pine known as the Alabama Hills. The next morning, I visited the Museum of Western Film History located on the edge of town, dedicated to the over 400 mostly Western genre films shot locally between 1920 and current day.
After my brief Western detour, I returned to Manzanar where I documented the military sentry guardhouses designed by Issei stonemason Ryozo Kado, then walked through the extensive ruins of the administrative complex. Using concrete slabs as foundations, the footprints of Manzanar’s administration buildings are more visible than other WRA sites. Having watched Dieterich’s 8mm camp footage the day before, I was able to pick out a few recognizable locations, even eight decades later.
From there I drove to Block 14 – a partially reconstructed residential block including reproductions of two residential barracks, a latrine, mess hall, and basketball court. Compared to original barracks at other sites they lacked the aura of trauma, but were still effective in conveying their message. Of particular note was the classroom exhibit in one section of Building 8, which presents a facsimile of the camp school environment.
Despite being a reproduction, walking alone inside a mess hall that was meant to accommodate about 250 people evoked a slightly eerie feeling. Subtle sounds of cooking played from a speaker hidden somewhere in the kitchen added to the ambiance. I appreciated the inclusion of a trap door beneath the floorboards where mess hall cooks would hide stills for fermenting contraband alcohol. My last stop at Block 14 was the women’s latrine. I previously documented latrine foundations at Tule Lake, but seeing these toilets placed so closely together without partitions gave me a more visceral sense of the lack of privacy that incarcerees suffered daily.
I next drove to Merritt Park, a 1.5-acre garden completed in 1943 by Issei landscape architect Kuichiro Nishi and further beautified by Nisei floriculturist Tak Muto. Similar to the Arai Fish Pond, Merritt Park’s principal feature was a hand-dug pond, surrounded by a meticulously curated rock garden and accentuated by other landscape design features. Even in its current state, I was awed by the beautiful juxtaposition between the well-manicured yellowed grass lawn, and sierra vista in the distance.
From there I walked across Block 29 to reach the site of the orphanage, euphemistically named Children’s Village. There, I had a sobering realization that while many families in residential blocks found solace in one another during the difficult war years, these children were alienated even from other incarcerees. For these children their ordeals would continue long past the war years.
My first day at Manzanar I saw a handful of other visitors in the interpretive center and wandering the site. When I returned, I did not encounter a single person, which made the experience more personal in a way. It was already past noon and I had four hours of driving ahead of me so I knew my time at Manzanar was coming to an end. As a final stop I decided to again pay respects at the cemetery.
I drove into the empty parking lot and struck by the vastness of the space, suddenly remembered the guitar that I was carrying with me to the Tsuru for Solidarity leadership retreat in Bolinas the following weekend. Having seen the many offerings at the monument the previous day, I felt inspired to give my own. Somewhat timidly at first, I stood before the obelisk and played Don’t Fence Me In followed by a couple of originals and a few other covers. Before long I became completely immersed in my musical offering at the Manzanar cemetery. Everything else melted away until it was just me, the music, and the Ireito. After about 30 minutes I paid my final respects with a deep bow before hitting the road to Tahoe.
The next two days as I drove through the high sierras and eventually arrived in San Francisco, I often revisited that moment in my head. It was hard to believe that I experienced the most visited WRA site in such a personal way. At a time when the government is attempting to deny us our history, it is more important than ever that we make our own relationships to the past, so we may continue sharing these cautionary tales in the future.
Now having visited nine of the ten WRA sites, this seemed like a fitting conclusion to my solo pilgrimage to Manzanar.