PowerPoint Show by Andrew ♫ Turn on Speakers

We had about one week to dispose of what we owned, except what we could pack and carry for our departure by bus…for Manzanar.Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor Dec. 7, 1941, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, empowering the Secretary of War to designate parts of the country as military zones and exclude people from them as he saw fit.

The result: Approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans living on the west coast were rounded up and relocated, forced to abandon their homes, businesses and possessions. Two-thirds were natural born American citizens.

They were “evacuated” to “relocation centers” (polite euphemisms for concentration camps), 10 of which were built across seven western states. The most notorious camp was Manzanar, built at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountain range 230 miles northeast of Los Angeles.

The entrance to Manzanar.

The terrain surrounding the relocation camp.

Internees harvest crops.

Kiyo Yoshida, Lillian Wakatsuki and Yoshiko Yamasaki attend high school.

"There were no crimes committed, no trials, and no convictions: the Japanese Americans were political Incarcerees."

An internee's mementos and keepsakes.

Service ribbons and badge on the uniform of Corporal Jimmie Shohara.

Women in a dress making class.

The camp orphanage.

Children in a Sunday school class.

High-Schoolers attend a science lecture.

Winters at the camp were harsh and cold.

"One of the hardest things to endure was the communal toilets, with no partitions; and showers with no stalls."

A service at the Buddhist temple.

A Japanese pleasure garden built by internees.

Mrs. Yaeko Nakamura and her daughters Joyce Yukiko and Louise Tamiko.

" Nothing is more permanent about Manzanar than the dust which has lodged on its tar-papered barracks, except the indelible impression incised on the lives of thousands of its inhabitants. "

Harry Sumida, a veteran of the Spanish-American war, receives an X-ray from nurse Aiko Hamaguchi and technician Michael Yonemetsu.

Girls perform calisthenics.

Aiko Hamaguchi, nurse.

Roy Takeno (left), reads the newspaper with Yuichi Hirata and Nabou Samamura in front of the Office of Reports Free Press.

Yonehisa Yamagami, electrician.

Benji Iguchi with locally grown squash.

Richard Kobayashi, farmer.

Mrs. Dennis Shimizu.

Roy Takeno, right, and the mayor of the camp at a town hall meeting.

Hidimi Tayenaka, woodworker.

Mori Nakashima feeds chickens.

A choir group practices singing.

Girls walk to school in the camp.

C.T. Hibino, artist.

" The broad concepts of American citizenship, and of liberal, democratic life the world over, must be protected in the prosecution of the war, and sustained in the building of the peace to come."

A girl's volleyball team at the camp.

An Internee baseball game.

Internees play soccer in a dusty field.

Manzanar was finally closed and its inhabitants released in November 1945. One hundred and forty-six internees died while at the camp.

In the 1960s, a movement began among Japanese Americans petitioning the government for redress. In 1988, Congress passed legislation apologizing for the "race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership" which caused the internments, and called for the disbursement of reparations to the victims.

The survivors and heirs of survivors ultimately received $1.6 billion as redress for their unconstitutional internment.

A cemetery monument built by internee stonemason Ryozo Kado. The inscription reads "Monument for the Pacification of Spirits."