• V-J i'. • • • • • • •.. • An Annotated I' I1ibliograplty • for • LMANZANAR • NATIONAL '. HISTORIC • SITE ;.•• I Ie I An Annotated Bibliography I fOT MANZANAR NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE I II Prepared by: Arthur A. Hansen, Debra Gold Hansen I Sue Kunitomi Embrey, Jane C. Wehrey II Garnette Long, Kathleen Frazee II Ie I I Prepared for: National Park ServIce, Denver Service Center Manzanar National Historic Sile, #537000.094 I Subcoflsullaflt agreement with II Jones & Jones, A Professional Service Corporation I II Oral History Program I California State University, Fullerton ;Ie February 1995 B&WScans I G,-Z-2.CJ<J> • ••• • • • • • • •• • • • • • • ••• • II I. I I II TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction I Manzanar War Relocation Center I I Japanese American~ in Callfomia and Beyond 25 War Relocation Authority 49 II, United Slates Army 59 Owens Valley 64 Los Angeles Department of Water and Power 83 , I • ••• • • • • • • •• • • • • • • ••• • I Introduction TillS introduction to the ManZlillilr ,Vmionol [j1.'loric Sire Bibliography consists of four I pans, The opening section provides a historical overview of the Manzanar War Relocation Center. Although tillS sIte-centered bibhography encompasses the three lncamalions of Manzanar as historical settlement space-Paiute communities, through 1850; Euro-American I agricultural colony, 1910-1935; and Japane:.e American relocation center, 1942·1945-1tS pnmary emphasis (consistent with the legislation eSL1blishing Man7..anar as a national hl~torical site) is the World War II period. The second section will present a hrief re"iew of the literature I treating the relocation center at Mallzanar. Th~ third section wlil describe the background and goals of this bibhugraphical proJ eet. The founll and tinal ~~ction oi the i ntrod uction ",ill discus, I the bibliography's salient featur~s. Historical Overview I Man7.anar was the first of ten War Relocallon Authority (WRA)-admini:.tered detention c~nters created for "national !>eclirity" by the United Slates government in 1942, following Japan's bombing ofPe.a.rl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and thc Unl(ed Srat~,', entrance into I. World War II. Incarcerated in these camps were more than 120,000 U.S. re,ident Japanese Americans, appro,.imately one-thIrd of whum were law·abldlllg Japanese aliens (Issei) denied U.S. citizenship and two-thIrds U.S. citizens (preponderantly second-generation NiseI, but also I some third-generation Sanse1 and even a few fourth-generation Yonsel). Located outside West Coast military zones in eastern California's lnyo COllnty, 212 miles nortl1 of Lo:. Angeles and nearly equidistant between the Owens Valley towns of Lone Pine and Independence on U.S. I Highway 395, the Manzanar site had been utilized by Paiute-Shoshone Indians for centuries before 1900 and then, roughly spanmng 1910-1935, was a hny Euro-American fwit-growing settlement named Manzanar (Spanish for "'apple orchard"). I The camp was eSl<lblisned initially by the U,S. Army as an assembly center and manag~d by the wanime CIvil Control Administration (WCCA) as the O",ens Valley Reception Center I from March 21 through May 31. 1942. On June 1, 1942, Manzanar was reconstituted as a WRA center, the only on~ of fifteen assembly centers to be so transformed, and renamed the Manzanar War Relocation Center. A:. a wec" unll, Manzanar had one project director I (Clayton Triggs) and two acting dlr~ctors (So[on Kimball and Harvey CoverJey). In its relocation center phase, extending to its shutdown on Novemb~r 21,1945, Manzanar's two director~ were Roy Nash (untli November 24, 1942) and Ralph P. Merritt. The ovcrv.. helming I majority of the camp's pcak population of 10,121 [nearly equally divided between male and female with one-quarter of them school-age children) were drawn from prewar Japanese American communities in Los Angd~s County, particularly the City of Los Angdes. Situated in the rain shadow of the imposing Sierra Nevada range at the base of 14,375- I. foot Mount Williamson on some 6,000 acres of land leased from the Los Angeles Depanment I I I • ot Water and Pow~r, Ma~lanar aperie~e~u a har,h <:limate of extreme temperatures, high winds. and ;~vere dust storms. The ~amp prop~r consisted of a rectangle of about 550 acres dominated by th,rty-<;'x block:. of 504 tar-paper re<;identull barracks for the interned population. •• most of whom hved withi~ 20 by 25 foot famdy apartme~lS. This area encompassed communal mess halls, laundry ra~ililles. and latrines for each internee blo~k, as well as conSIderably • upgraded living facilitles for tbe appointed personnel. Additionally, it contained a modem 150- b~d hospital, ScllOOls, cllurclle.l. recreational and ~ultural facihties, ~oopnativ~ stores, and most other amenities found In a "nurmal" American cny of comparable size. Also in this central area • were "ar-related industnes (e.g .• a ~amOl,nage net factory), an experimenllli plantation for prodll~mg natural rubber from [h~ guayulc plant, and the Childr~n's Village orphanage. Immediately outside this main camp were 1,500 acre~ of agricultural land, whIch made • Man.canar ,elf-~uftki~nt In crops, meat, and poultry, augmented the other WRA camps' food supplies, and generated revenlle for the Mamamr center in open-market saks. The ~amp's core was surrounded by barbed wire and overlooked by eight sentry towers and manned by armcd • military police, a ba1!alion of whom were quartcred a half-mile ~Olnh of the Manlanar center and, in 1942, was equipp~d with twenty·one nile>, eightY-nine ~hO!guns ..Ii" machine guns. and twenty-one ~ubmachme guns. • Although relatlve peace and harmony gcnerally pr~va,led within the centcr, intern~e resistance to unpopular administrative pOilCles-mamfested a'> work slov,.dov,.ns and ~trikes as well as through cultural politics and non·compliance with regulatIOns-was not uncummon. The • most dramatic incident of re'l'>t.ance occurred on Decemb~r 6, 1942. Sparked by the Jailing of the M~,~ Hall Workers' Union's popular head (Harry Ueno) for beatmg an unpopular internee (Fred Tayama) prominent m the Japanese American Cnifen~ Leagu~ (JACL), whose leader~ • were widely as>umed by internees to be collaborators and informers, the "Manzanar Riot'" climaxcd In the death of two inmates and the wounding uf nine other~ by MP-fired bullets. Its •• aftermath involved the roundup and ultimate impri~onment (Without formal charges or hearings) of Ueno and other suspected "pro-Japanese"' advocates and camp "troublemakers"' in cltiren i~olation centers in Moab, Ut.ah, and Leupp, Arizona. and the "protective custody" consignm~nt to an abandoned Civil Conservation Corps camp in nearby Death Valley National Monument of • JACL and allied "pro·American"' ~poke~persons and their families. A more pervasi"e and protracted show of resislan~e was set in motIon two months later, in February 1943, when the Army and the WRA imposed a mandatory registration on the adult population of Manzanar and • the other centers for the J Olllt pUl1'0~e of estab lishlllg eligibil ity for leave clearance and securing volunteers for a speCIal Japane;e American combat team. At Manzanar, only forty-two penons • (2 percent of the eligible citizen males) volunteered for miliLary <;ervice, wilde approximately 50 percent of all male ciuzens and 45 p~rc~nt of all female citizcns eIther answered "'no'" to the so-called loyalty questions on the registration questionnaire or r<dused to answer thc questions. • The latter situation led to \,322 Manzanarians and theIr families (a grand total of 2, 165) bemg transferred in late 19 .. 3 III the WRA's newly-established Tule Lake Segregation Center in nonhern California. • With the departure of its "disloyals" to Tule Lake (along with expatnates and repatriates to Japan) and an increasing number of Its "Ioyal$" entering tile military (following the reinstltut;on of sde~tlve service for Japanese American~ in 1944) and rcseuling throughout the • U.S. as war workers and college student" Manzanar became a community largely of elderly and ••• • I youthful reSldeot~. Notwithstanding limIted ,elf-government and an improved physical I. appeMaJlCe and social ambience, Manzanar retained constant reminders that It was a concentration camp: its residents were not free to leave, its new~paper (M"n~al1ar Free Press) I was censured, and its confines patrolled by soldiers with loaded weapons. After its closure, the Manzanar site reverted [0 !ts prewar "natural" state, save for four survi\'ing internee-built struCture5 (t"'o 1942 pagoda-like ~tone security posts at the camp's I eastern entrance; a 1943 memorial obelisk, "Soul Consoling Tower," ju>t outside the western bounJary; and a 1944 auditorium on the Ilonhcast penmeter) plus scattered remnants of the constructed and botanical environment B~ginning in 1969, annual pllgnmages to the site have I been held under the sponsorship of the Maolanar Committee, a Lo~ Angeles-based eommumty activist group. Manzanar was declared a state hislOncal landmark in 1972 and a national hIstorical landmark in 1985. On March 3, 1992, President George Bush SIgned into law the I Congress-established Manzanar National Historic Sitc providing government purchase of the site and National Park Service adnunistration, under thc Department of the Interior, for preservallon I and hi;torica.l interpretation. Literature Review I Notwithsta.nding that in the mind of the general public Manzanar has become a metaphor for the World War Il incarccratlOn experience of people of Japane:.e ancestry, to date no scholarly work on this former War Relocauon Authority center has been published. Nor has I there been even a doctoral diss.ertation focused on this camp. In 1947 a Univers'lty of California, Berkeley, graduate student, Richard Brewer Rice, complcted a ma:.ter's thesis entitled '"The Manzanar War Relocation Center, '" bUlthe author for the most part restricted his attention I.