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LA Daily News - Associated Press Report
Memories shared at Manzanar site

MANZANAR NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE, Calif. -- Like many Japanese-Americans interned in the wind-swept Owens Valley during World War II, Towru Nagano remembered the harsh desert sun, swirling dust and the glare of searchlights that kept internees awake at night in cramped barracks behind barbed wire.

Mostly, though, Nagano recalls the painful realization that his country didn't want him.

"The worst part of camp was the psychological effect of being rejected by the public as an American citizen, as an equal," he said Saturday while visiting his former internment camp under much happier circumstances.

Nagano, now 78 and living in Simi Valley, was among hundreds of former detainees and their descendants who traveled to the Manzanar National Historic Site for the official opening of a National Park Service museum that preserves a bitter memory for many Japanese-Americans.

Manzanar is the best preserved of the camps where thousands of Japanese-Americans and citizens of Japan were held during World War II.

The center features a collection of photos, films and documents that record the roundup of men, women and children amid racial prejudice and fears of sabotage and espionage following the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The $5.1 million museum is set amid the dramatic backdrop of the towering peaks of the eastern High Sierra about 220 miles northeast of Los Angeles. Its entrance features a wall-size photo of the Manzanar prison camp, an American flag whipping in the desert wind.

The exhibits take visitors through the background behind the government order to detain about 110,000 people. It details life at the detention centers and tells of the gradual release and the official apology signed by President Reagan in 1988.

Saturday's opening coincided with the 35th annual pilgrimage to the site by Manzanar inmates and their families. Many visitors searched for their names and those of their parents and grandparents on a list of internees that stretches nearly to the 17-foot high ceiling of the museum -- or interpretive center, as the National Park Service prefers to call it.

Louis Watanabe, a business instructor at a community college in Bellevue, Wash., found the name of his grandfather, who worked as a stonemason and general handyman while detained in Manzanar.

"I think it's important to talk about history so maybe we don't repeat mistakes of the past," Watanabe, 47, said as visitors milled about before a grand opening ceremony that sought to blend patriotism and an embrace of Japanese culture. Featured were a Taiko drum group and the presentation of the colors by the Veterans of Foreign Wars from the nearby town of Lone Pine.

"For years to come, Manzanar will stand as a constant reminder of the grave hardships many of you so bravely endured," Rose Ochi, a Los Angeles lawyer who was interned at a camp in Arkansas, said at the dedication ceremony. She helped organize efforts to develop the museum

At its peak, Manzanar, a Spanish word meaning apple orchard, held more than 10,000 people. About two-thirds of all those interned there from 1942 to 1945 were American citizens by birth.

The camp had many aspects of a city, with schools, churches, temples and even a newspaper. Many younger detainees have fonder memories than their elders.

"We used to sneak under the fence and go out to the hills as far as we could go," said Itsu Iwasaki, 70, of Orange. "We used to rabble-rouse, see what we could get away with."

Toshiko Tanner of Lakeland, Fla., was 8 when she arrived at Manzanar. Her sister, Sekiko Kawasaki, was 13. Saturday, they ticked off a laundry list of unpleasant memories, including bad food, lack of privacy, a straw mattress and scorpions that would crawl into their cramped barracks. Neither expressed bitterness.

"It was a good experience. Because of that, we can stand anything," said Kawasaki, who lives in Los Angeles.

Nagano also said he has no ill will toward the United States, even though he was pulled from his high school and lost his chance to become captain of the football team. He went on to attend the University of Minnesota and to become vice president of an electronics company in Minneapolis.

"We went through a period of history and we were involved in a war, and it was just our tough luck," he said.

On the Internet: www.nps.gov/manz/home.htm