Bid to Make Manzanar a Historic Site Wins Support

A proposal to establish a national historic site at Manzanar, Calif., home of one of the first World War II internment camps for Japanese-Americans, was endorsed Tuesday by the Department of the Interior and the National Park Service.

“The internment of Japanese-Americans was a grave injustice,” Jerry L. Rogers, Park Service associate director for cultural affairs, told members of a House subcommittee considering the legislation. “We believe this unfortunate aspect of American history should be properly interpreted for the benefit of the public.”

Under a proposal by two members of the California House delegation, Reps. Mel Levine (D-Santa Monica) and Norman Y. Mineta (D-San Jose), the 500-acre Manzanar tract would be acquired from its present owner, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, and preserved in its deserted state.

Now mostly barren scrubland, the tract was ringed with barbed wire and secured by guard towers from 1942 through 1945. Thousands of Japanese-Americans were housed in 36 blocks of 16 wooden barracks each inside the compound.

Mineta, who was interned there as a child, said upgrading Manzanar from its current status as a national landmark to a national historic site would “educate all Americans to this injustice and ensure that no other Americans suffer the injustice of internment.”

Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez) said national monuments honoring the more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans interned during the war are needed to help “ensure that this will never happen again” and to expand “our shrinking sense of history.”

Miller is sponsoring a companion measure that would direct the Interior Department to seek other national landmarks as part of a proposed survey of internment campsites, temporary detention facilities and military installations where Japanese-American units were trained.

Rogers said that of 10 Japanese-American internment camps throughout the Western states, Manzanar “retains the most integrity and it offers the best opportunity for interpretation of the World War II relocation camps.”