May 10, 2022
When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the U.S. entered World War II. This attack worsened prejudice against Japanese Americans and led President Franklin D. Roosevelt to sign Executive Order 9066 in February 1942. The Order authorized the Secretary of War to create Military Areas and remove anyone who may threaten the war effort from those areas. Anyone of Japanese ancestry was then given days to settle their lives. They had to dispose of their houses, businesses, and belongings, often selling them at a loss or leaving them with friends and religious groups.
They were not told where they were going, and each family was given an identification number before they were transported to one of 17 centers before being moved to one of 10 relocation centers, which included Manzanar. All told, approximately 120,000 were sent to the internment camps. Manzanar itself housed 10,000, and about two-thirds of them were born in America. Manzanar itself was located on 500 acres in the middle of the high desert in California’s Eastern Sierra region.
Ansel Adams And Dorothea Lange Photographed The Internment Camp
In 1943, the photographer Ansel Adams, who was friends with the director of Manzanar, was invited to the camp, where he documented daily life. Adams hated the idea of the camps, and he hoped to create sympathy for the internees in his depictions. Dorothea Lange also tried to capture the realities of Manzanar. Where Adams struggled to photograph the difficult living situations in Manzanar because the internees tried to show the positives of their lives, Lange was able to more accurately document the reality of their lives. The internees were not allowed to use cameras in Manzanar, but Tōyō Miyatake made a homemade camera using a lens that was smuggled in and managed to take around 1,500 photos, becoming the official photographer.
Life At Manzanar Was Difficult
The pictures help to create a window into the world at Manzanar. The internees dwelled in a spartan living situation. The camp was divided into 36 blocks, each of which had separate men’s and women’s bathrooms and showers, as well as the mess hall and laundry. The communal latrines lacked partitions, and the showers did not have stalls. They also did not have cooking facilities within the barracks, so they had to line up three times a day to eat in the block mess hall. The barracks themselves were divided into rooms, and each barracks had four rooms. Up to eight people lived in each of the rooms, which were 20 x 25 feet and included an oil stove, one hanging light bulb, and cots. The internees also had to contend with the desert environment: temperatures in the summers were excruciating, and strong winds blew all year long, coating everything with dust and sand. In December 1942, a riot broke out; two were killed and 10 were wounded. Then, in 1943, the government required that each internee fill out a “loyalty questionnaire,” asking whether they would swear allegiance to the United States and whether they would serve; this led tensions to increase.
They Tried To Make The Best Of Their Situation
They did, however, try to make the best of their tragic situation. The adults worked, as the internees had to operate and maintain the camp, while the children and many adults attended school. With the support of the WRA (War Relocation Authority), they established churches and temples. They also created boys and girls clubs, as well as recreational programs, which included music, dance, and sports. They organized baseball leagues that had multiple teams, but this was not the only sport, as some blocks built basketball courts, and nine-hole golf courses. They also learned crafts, including sewing, and made objects like paper flowers, puppetry, and calligraphy, all of which not only helped to pass the time but also made their bleak environment more attractive. In an attempt to beautify the internment camp, they created gardens and ponds. They also published The Manzanar Free Press.
Eventually, once the war shifted in America’s favor, the internees were allowed to leave. As they were leaving with nothing, some organizations and camp administrators worked to find them sponsors and jobs in the Midwest and East. By 1944, the numbers shrunk to 6,000, down from 10,042. In November 1945, three months after the end of the war, the last internees left; after three-and-a-half years in Manzanar, some had no home to go back to.