Farewell to Manzanar

“One of the amazing things about America is the way it can both undermine you and keep you believing in your own possibilities, pumping you with hope.” Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, author of Farewell to Manzanar. 

 For the past 44 years, on this, the last weekend in April, thousands of people have gone on pilgrimage to the Manzanar National Historic Site.  On this barren landscape near Death Valley, 240 miles north east of L.A. was one of ten rough internment camps in the US western states where over 110,000 Japanese-Americans, mostly native-born American citizens, were relocated and held during World War II in the name of national security and in violation of their Constitutional rights.

The Pilgrimage to Manzanar actually began in 1945, the year 10,000 US citizens at that one camp were finally allowed to go home (to find their homes, farms, and stores stolen or destroyed).  As they left, two L.A. pastors, one Christian, one Buddhist, began returning there each year to remember this incident of shame and pray for its victims, living and dead.  In 1969 it became a group effort, and has grown each year.  Participants have restored barracks, collected stories, built a visitor interpretive center and pressured the government to declare it a national historic site.  Each pilgrimage includes an interfaith memorial service and Ondo dancing. In 2008 pilgrimage organizers invited along 100 southern Californian Muslim leaders, in response to anti-Muslim attitudes and actions post-9/11.  Deep friendships developed.

Farewell to Manzanar is a 1973 account by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, who was taken at age 7 with her Southern California fishing family to the camp.  It is widely read in California schools; my son read it in high school.  This month I saw the book displayed at my local public library as part of a state wide project “California Reads” which is encouraging communities to read one of five books this spring: two novels, this memoir, one sociology book and one anthology of US documents like the Federalist papers and the Constitution. The effort, called “Searching for Democracy” seeks to spark conversation about our democracy in anticipation of the 2012 elections.  The effort, our tax dollars at good work for once, includes a study guide and questions for discussions.

The Monterey Library chose the Manzanar book, and partnered with the local chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League in a variety of programs, exhibits and school projects.  Last month the author, now 78, spoke at the Library to an audience of 150 adults and teens.  At another event billed as a discussion of the book, the conversation ranged widely about the state of American rights and freedoms.  It was noted that among the 13 recipients of the annual Medal of Freedom announced this week, President Obama named Gordon Hirabayashi, who as a student at the University of Washington in 1942 defied the ordered relocation and was sent to federal prison for a year.  In 1987 a federal court overturned his conviction. Federal legislation in 1988 provided for payments and apologies to Japanese-Americans who were interned during World War II.  Sadly Mr. Hirabayashi died this January at age 93 before being honored by his nation.  Participants at the discussion wonder how contemporary citizens might react to such an order.

So I checked out the book, sat in my car, turned to the first page, and read it in one sitting.  It is a moving and devastating account of the disintegration of a family, especially her father, in shame and powerlessness.  It is a story of hope as well, as the author, after hiding the story for 35 years, tells it to her family who encourages her to write it up, and it becomes a regular part of California curricula. 

This book and the others in the Search for Democracy are giving Californians this spring, in the words of the organizers, an “opportunity to discover new perspectives by inviting us to think about individual responsibility, the importance of a free press, the collective good, and what is needed from each of us to sustain a healthy democracy."

Copyright © 2012 Deborah Streeter

Comments

[James Lawer]

A year and a half ago, I made my first visit to Manzanar. I wept. The initial signs tried to make it sound like it was, after all, a pretty good place. I wept because, before they were hauled off to the American internal concentration camps, directly across the street from where I was born in San Diego was (by my family's reports) one of the most beautiful gardens they had ever seen. It took up the equivalent of two city blocks. When there was extra food from the harvests, my grandmother would open the front door and see a basket for my family. My mother grew up playing with their children. They were kind, generous, and great neighbors. One day the government arrested them, confiscated their lands, removed them to a concentration camp and built on the fine dust from years of tending, military housing for during and after WWII. That was what I saw, and played in the fine dust into which I could sink my entire foot. One day, old enough to understand, I heard that that had all been the home of American citizens of Japanese descent. That our government stole it, put them in desert prisons, and never intended to return it. I stopped playing there. We went to France in 1955 and returned in 1958. In those few years, the US built its first interstate highways, and the land across from my grandparents house had been sold to developers and was now the homes of upper middle class white people. When I went to Manzanar, I remembered two things: in that stockage had lived my family's neighbors and playmates. And secondly, as a gay man, I remember in the early 1980s the voices calling for me and all gay men to to be branded and put into concentration camps. It is all still very close.