CALIFORNIA ALBUM : Plans to Honor Manzanar Create Divided Camps : The National Park Service plans to make a memorial of the Inyo County compound where 10,000 Japanese-Americans were interned during World War II. But some locals would rather not remember.

When Sue Embrey walks through the remnants of Manzanar these days, she feels sorrow mixed with relief.

“I feel that it should not have happened, that it could have been prevented,” she says. “But I’m relieved that something is going to be done to protect the site, because so many people are concerned about making sure that their history is there, that the story is told and the public knows about it.”

Embrey was among more than 10,000 Japanese-Americans confined at the Manzanar internment camp in the high desert of Inyo County during World War II. Altogether, more than 110,000 residents of Japanese descent, more than two-thirds of them U.S. citizens, were forced to leave behind their possessions, jobs and businesses and go into confinement at internment camps, solely because they were viewed as a threat to national security because of their ancestry.

Recognizing it as an ignominious chapter in American history, Congress in 1992 passed legislation to declare Manzanar a national historic site, to be administered by the National Park Service.

Plans are still being developed, but the park service said it intends to preserve the historic items of the internment camp, near Independence, and provide facilities for visitors to learn its background.

But here in the Owens Valley, not everyone is happy to hear of the site’s status.

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Embrey is chairwoman of the Manzanar Committee, which has worked for years to gain recognition for the camp area, which covers more than 500 acres amid a sea of sagebrush along U.S. 395.

“‘I think having Manzanar named a national historic site is important for the whole nation, not just for those who were interned there,” she said. “It’s part of American history, and it gives the public an idea of what can happen if people don’t care.”

The site probably will not be fully restored, but is likely to include a museum or interpretive center housed in the camp’s auditorium-gymnasium, one of the few original structures still standing. The building has been used as a county road maintenance facility in recent years, and is being purchased by the federal government for $1.1 million.

After the war, several camp barracks were moved--one now houses a Boy Scout troop in Bishop and another the VFW post in nearby Lone Pine. Park service officials said they may acquire some of those buildings and move them back to Manzanar, or construct replicas of the barracks.

Also under discussion is whether to erect replicas of guard towers that ringed the camp. Some residents of the area insist that the towers did not exist, or that they were fire watchtowers.

The elaborate rock gardens created by internees during their imprisonment may also be restored. Eight noted Japanese-American landscape architects, all interned during the war, volunteered their time to help design the project.

Because the National Park Service estimates that 250,000 to 500,000 people might visit annually, officials are considering setting up a walking tour with specially designed exhibits or a shuttle bus system so that people can tour the site without damaging it. A draft management plan will be available for public comment before work begins.

Those involved with the project agreed that it should include representation of the troubled history of the location before it became an internment camp. Owens Valley Paiutes, whose ancestors may have occupied the area as far back as 600 BC, according to park service archeologists, were removed to Ft. Tejon in Southern California in 1863 after a series of attacks on settlers.

In the mid-1920s, residents of a planned agricultural town that had planted thousands of fruit trees at Manzanar were forced out when the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power acquired the land for its water rights.

Manzanar still carries a high emotional charge among Japanese-Americans, as well as among some local residents and others who resent federal recognition of the site. “There are a lot of veterans and other people here who still have very strong feelings about World War II,” said Bill Michael, administrator of the Eastern California Museum in Independence who is representing Inyo County in discussions about the historic site.

“For some of these people, it’s very hard to separate the soldiers in the Japanese Imperial Army from Japanese-Americans. . . . They don’t think any big deal should be made over the internment camp.”

In the 1980s, the local VFW post reportedly passed a resolution, overturned at the state level, opposing a previously proposed historic area at Manzanar. Asked recently about the issue, a spokesman said no one at the post would discuss Manzanar.

When Manzanar’s designation as a historic site was before Congress, a flurry of letters published in the Inyo Register denounced plans to recognize the internment camp.

More recently, a federal official was confronted on the site and warned that any buildings constructed there would be burned down.

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Embrey acknowledged hearing the dissenting views about preserving Manzanar, but said her committee has not been swayed. She is more concerned, she said, about hastening the land transfer between the DWP, which still owns the Manzanar acreage, and the federal government.

The transfer must be completed before the National Park Service can take possession, but the deal has bogged down over what land the city agency will acquire in return for the site. Some involved with the project believe work could be stalled for years while the land trade is worked out.

In the meantime, Embrey said, she is worried about incidental damage to unprotected historic artifacts at Manzanar. A brush fire was accidentally started on the site by a visitor last summer, and the DWP recently issued a permit to a company filming the movie “Maverick” to use Manzanar as a location.

“They had covered wagons, horses and cattle running all over the place,” Embrey said. “They really messed up the joint.”

A county official confirmed that the film crew had damaged some of the artifacts in the section where the internment camp’s hospital and orphanage had been.

“Our concern is that the park service just get themselves in there--put a trailer with a ranger there--so that they can protect the site,” Embrey said.