Manzanar Historical Site

Manzanar Historical Site

From 1942 to 1945, tens of thousands of Japanese Americans where incarcerated in Internment camps scattered across the western United States. Manzanar was one of the 10 camps set up by the U.S. government during WW II in order to detain Japanese Americans.

For decades after the war, the legacy of the camps was unacknowledged. It wasn’t until Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston in 1973 published her book “Farewell to Manzanar” about her experience of incarceration that the story of Japanese Americans interment received national attention.

A television movie adapted Houston’s memoir about her imprisonment made citizens more aware of America’s own concentration camps. With discrimination and suspension of due process, Japanese Americans suffered economic loss and psychological trauma as a result of relocation and incarceration.

During the 1970s a campaign was launched calling for the U.S. government to address this assault of Japanese American’s civil liberties. In the 1980s the “Civil Liberties Act of 1988” granted former internees $20,000 in reparations.

The Manzanar Historic Site looks to preserve the stories of these Japanese American’s experience. It is an opportunity to confront and bring to light how tens of thousands of American citizens were denied their constitutional rights. The history of Manzanar is an extraordinary story of human perseverance during a dark chapter of American History.