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Manzanar - first impressions

To view video, Click Here. Paul B. discusses his first impressions of Manzanar and the struggle to remain positive in a bleak situation.

"When I went there my folks were already there. And these barracks -- I think there were four rooms, and we had one of them. Our whole family was in that one room. I remember the meals. We were in a, lined up and got our little meal in the mess hall there. I remember that we had to go take a shower and clean up in a common bathroom. All these things were things that I don't think any of us was ever used to. And although when I went there, I was given a very good job and had an office to go to and things, it was still the mere fact that I was confined. I couldn't go out to anywhere, couldn't do what I wanted to do. And it was taken away, the rights that I felt that I, as an American citizen I should have. But I remember though, that because of the camp and the people saying, "Well, we're going to be here, let's make the best of it," that there was activities such as sports activities, social gatherings. I never went to any dances or anything like that, but I know that they had those things set up, and to, you might say, keep the morale of the population in camp up, which was good. You had to do that, otherwise it was a very depressing situation."

Paul B. Interview - Copyright © 2000 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

Manzanar was located at 3,900 feet of elevation in the desert of the southern Owens Valley in east-central California, 220 miles north of Los Angeles, 250 miles south of Reno, between the towns Lone Pine and Independence. The 6,000 acres are framed by the Sierra Nevada mountains to the west and the White-Inyo range to the east. Summers are hot, winters cold; annual rainfall is under 6 inches, although the area has rivers fed from mountain runoff. Vegetation is mostly sagebrush.

Population Description: Over 90 percent of the people held here were from the Los Angeles, California, area; others were from Stockton, California, and Bainbridge Island, Washington.

To view facts and photos of Manzanar, Click Here to view Densho's interactive Sites of Shame map. Then click on the red dot corresponding to Manzanar. Courtesy of Densho: The Japanese American Legacy Project