‘I wish all America felt as euphoric as we do.’ : Victory in U.S. Congress Brightens Trek to Wartime Internment Camp

Despite a fierce sandstorm and somber ceremonies, there were celebratory undertones Saturday at the 19th annual pilgrimage honoring the 110,000 Japanese Americans forced from their homes and into detention camps during World War II.

About 300 people--including many survivors of the internment and their families--journeyed to this isolated spot in the eastern Sierra that was the site of the Manzanar Relocation Center, the first detention camp built.

It was the first pilgrimage since the U.S. Senate passed legislation to make payments and an apology to the 60,000 surviving Japanese Americans placed in 10 detention camps during the war. If signed by President Reagan, the bill would provide payments of $20,000 to surviving internees.

“After so many years of working quietly for recognition of the wrong done to us, we are elated that these things are coming to fruition,” said Hideo Shimizu, 68, who met and married his wife, Masaye, 66, at the camp in late 1942.

The pilgrims came in cars and buses from as far away as Los Angeles and San Francisco, making their way to the heavily vandalized camp site of 600 acres on a dirt road off U.S. 395.

“I wish all America felt as euphoric as we do,” said Toshiko Yoshida, 67, of Los Angeles, who spent six weeks in an assembly center near San Francisco. “Things are brightening up.”

Source of New Energy

Sue Kunitomi Embrey, 65, a survivor of Manzanar and leader of the Manzanar Committee, which has worked to preserve the site for future generations, agreed.

“We really did not expect the Senate Bill to pass,” said Embrey, who was honored here Saturday for her efforts. “The fact that it did has given people new energy, but there is more work to do.”

Indeed, organizers of the event handed out printed letters urging Reagan to sign the bill, and asked participants to sign them and send them to the White House. The U.S. Justice Department has recommended that the President veto the legislation.

The pilgrims also expressed concern about efforts to preserve the camp site. Owned by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the Manzanar site already is registered as a state and national historic landmark. The National Park Service has proposed three alternatives for making the camp a national historic park.

Decision Years Away

The alternatives range from a plan to preserve a 4.3-acre section to one that would set aside 550 acres, establish a visitor center and restore eroded rock gardens and ponds at a cost of nearly $2 million, National Park Service officials said. A final decision on the proposal is not expected for several years.

The internment program began in February, 1942--two months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor--when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which gave military commanders the power to evacuate, relocate and intern “any and all persons” from certain areas to protect against sabotage and espionage. The order was used to round up thousands of U.S. citizens of Japanese descent without evidence of their involvement in efforts to hamper the war effort.

Manzanar, which means “apple orchard” in Spanish, was the first of the 10 internment camps set up in the interior regions of the United States.

Opened in the spring of 1942, it quickly grew to a population of 10,000 mostly American citizens from Southern California who were forced to sell or lease their personal property at substantial losses.

Amid rows of crowded, tar paper barracks, the internees at Manzanar planted fruit trees and vegetables, and built rock gardens and 17 ornamental pools to make their time here more tolerable.

Today, the only reminders of what happened on this high desert plain more than 40 years ago are an auditorium--currently used to house Inyo County maintenance equipment--graffiti-covered guard shacks, a cemetery, scattered foundations, the rock gardens and a bronze state plaque, which refers to Manzanar as a “concentration camp.”

‘Never Emerge Again’

The plaque reads in part: “May the injustices and humiliations suffered here as a result of hysteria, racism and economic exploitation never emerge again.”

Saturday’s sandstorm swept through a Buddhist prayer ceremony in front of a white obelisk at the cemetery and also blew across a huge pit filled with broken dishes, which had been bulldozed and covered with earth when the camp was dismantled in 1945.

Among those who walked through the pit were four UCLA students who made the trip.

“Is this amazing or what?” Gann Matsuda, 25, said to a friend as he surveyed the shattered pieces. “Each piece represents someone’s life.”