PHOTOVALET (tm)
Enter search term

Manzanar War Relocation Center, California, Images by Wernher Krutein and PHOTOVAULT®

This page contains samples from our picture files on the Manzanar War Relocation Center.

These photographs are available for licensing in any media. For Pricing, General Guidelines, and Delivery information click here. You may contact us thru email or by phone for more information on the use of these images, and any others in our files not shown here. You may also use our search engine PHOTOVALET(tm) to find other images not found on this page. Please do not ask us for free use of these images! Our Cities and Towns in: Southern California images can be linked to as follows:

Cities in: Southern California Volume 1, Cities in: Southern California Volume 2, Cities in: Southern California Volume 3, Cities in: Southern California Volume 4

See also: Baker, Bakersfield, Big Bear, Calico Ghost Town, Cambria, Catalina Island, Cayucos, Coalinga, Fresno, Hearst Castle, Independence, Lake Elsinore, Lake San Marcos, Manzanar Concentration Camp, Maricopa, Mission San Antonio de Padua, Mission San Miguel, Morro Bay, Mount Pinos, Nipomo, Ojai, Oxnard, Palm Springs, Parkfield, Pismo Beach, San Juan Capistrano, San Luis Obispo, San Simeon, Santa Barbara, Santa Maria, Taft, Ventura, Victorville, Visalia, Wasco

Santa Barbara Airport, Castaic Lake, Antelope Valley, Hemet, Salton Sea,, Earthquakes, San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles International Airport, Burbank International Airport, Orange County International Airport, Nature Southern California, Cities: San Francisco Bay Area, CITIES, Sacramento, Nature: Nevada, Fishing Boats, Redwood Trees, Oak Trees

Los Angels Area Links: Los Angeles, Anaheim, Beverly Hills, Burbank, Century City, Griffith Observatory, Hollywood, Walk of Fame, Hollywood Bowl, Hollywood Mann's Chineese Theater, Irvine Spectrum, Irvine, Laguna Woods, Long Beach, Los Angeles Harbor, Malibu, Manhattan Beach, Mission Viejo, Newport Beach, Newport Beach Pavillion, Ontario, Pacific Palisades, Palos Verdes, Pan Pacific Design Center, Pasadena, Santa Monica, Venice, Watts Towers, San Pablo, San Fernanado Valley, Beaches, Freeways, Smog, Brown Derby Restaurant, Will Rogers Home, Walt Disney Concert Hall

Click on any of the thumbnail images below to view an enlarged photo . . . . .
Back to Category listings
...................

As unbeleivable as it may sound, inside the borders of the United States, a systematic rounding up of one group of ethnic americans took place. In the early part of World War II, 110,000 persons of Japanese ancestry were interned in relocation centers by the shameful Executive Order No. 9066, issued on February 19, 1942. Later this was augmented by Executive Order 9102. While some questioned the constitutionality of wholesale deportations, California Governor Culbert Olson demanded action. So did the ambitious state attorney general, who would someday become Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Earl Warren. Said DeWitt: "A Jap is a Jap." This racist order empowered Dewitt and federal agents to round up 70,000 U.S. citizens of Japanese descent and 42,000 Japanese resident aliens with little more than the clothes on their back --farmers and fishermen, old women, children, a kaleidoscope of the "subversive." They were shipped off to 10 bleak concentration camps in remote areas like Manzanar, west of Death Valley.

Manzanar, the first of these concentration camps, was bounded by barbed wire and guard towers, imprisoning 10,000 persons, the majority being american citizens. Manzanar was laid out in an efficient and austere manner. The barracks measured 120 x 20 feet and were divided into six one-room apartments, ranging in size from 320 to 480 square feet. Each block of 15 barracks shared bath, latrine, and mess buildings. The stark beauty of the the Eastern Sierra Mountains contrasted sharply with the stupidity of this unbelievable situation.

Dust storms were common at Manzanar. In this arid climate, the barracks offered little shelter from the summer heat or winter storms. At the Army "reception center," nine miles beyond Lone Pine, internees piled out. In the unfinished, tar-papered dormitories where they were to live until the end of the war, they made their beds on mattress's filled with straw.

"I was 10 years old and wearing my Cub Scout uniform when we were packed onto a train in San Jose," recalls former California Congressman Norman Mineta. "People had to just padlock and walk away from their businesses -- they lost millions. After six months in a barracks at the Santa Anita Racetrack, we were sent to Heart Mountain, Wyoming. We arrived in the middle of a blinding snowstorm, five of us children in our California clothes. When we got to our tar-paper barracks, we found sand coming in through the walls, around the windows, up through the floor."

"The camp was surrounded by barbed wire. Guards with machine guns were posted at watchtowers, with orders to shoot anyone who tried to escape. Our own government put a yoke of disloyalty around our shoulders. But throughout our ordeal, we cooperated with the government because we felt that in the long run, we could prove our citizenship."

May the injustices and humiliation suffered here as a result of hysteria, racism and economic exploitation never emerge again. Not in the United States, or anywhere else in the world. We must forever be vigilant, lest the vitriolic hatred of extremism rear its ugly head. It has happened before, and it can happen again. We must never forget.

Congress established the Manzanar National Historic Site, containing 550 acres, on March 3, 1992. It is being administered by the National Park Service, under the U.S. Department of Interior. On the last Saturday of April each year, there is an annual pilgramage to the site of Manzanar which honors those who were imprisoned there and the nine other concentration camps. It is organized by the Manzanar Committee, c/o Sue Kunitomi Embrey, 1566 Curran Street, Los Angeles, California 90026-2036 (213) 662-5102.

Back to Category listings.
PHOTOVAULT® is a division of Wernher Krutein Productions Inc. and is based in San Francisco.

707-775-2562

Please do not ask us for free use of these images!

All images represented and created and displayed on these pages by PHOTOVAULT® are protected by US Copyright Law and the Berne Convention. No use, reuse, copying or reproduction is allowed without PHOTOVAULT'S specific agreement and permission, not even on the internet. Please respect the usage of these images.