Press - San Gabriel Valley Tribune

San Gabriel Valley Tribune
Return to Manzanar
By Karen Rubin, Staff Writer

Today, Jack Kunitomi will walk the grounds of the Manzanar Relocation Center, where he was forced to live during World War II because he was Japanese.

He recalls the military-style barracks, the lines at the mess hall and the communal latrines where men, women and children showered.

Kunitomi, 88, remembers how on May 9, 1942, he and his wife, Masa, took a six-hour train ride to a desolate spot 200 miles north of Los Angeles.

The couple had three suitcases when they walked past armed sentry guards, were issued numbers and sent to a barracks in a camp behind barbed wire.

"I was a gung-ho American,' Kunitomi, a Monterey Park resident, said. "I grew up in L.A., I graduated from high school and L.A. City College. Why would our government do this to its citizens?'

Today, Kunitomi will join some 2,000 other Japanese Americans who will visit the newly opened Interpretive Center on the Manzanar National Historic Site. The center operates like a museum with 8,000-square-feet of exhibits, two movie theaters and a bookstore.

"It tells the story of all the camps,' said Alisa Lynch of the Manzanar Historic Site. "We are trying to emphasize it as American history because it's relevant to everyone's history.'

The theme of the exhibits is "One Camp 10,000 Lives, One Camp 10,000 stories.'

Kunitomi will step into his past as a 20-year-old internee who made camouflage netting for the U.S. military, played shortstop on the "Has Beens' softball team and stood in lines for meals of wieners and rice.

"Each person who lived here has their own stories,' said Kacy Guill, a ranger with the National Park Service. "It's important to remember Manzanar.'

Some 10,000 people of Japanese descent were given six days to pack their bags before the government shipped them to Manzanar in 1942.

Opened in March 1942, Manzanar War Relocation Center was the first of 10 relocation camps where Japanese-American citizens and immigrants were forced to live during World War II.

On Feb. 19, 1942, the government issued an executive order authorizing the relocation and internment of anyone of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast.

Without due process, the government rounded up 120,000 men, women and children from their homes and corralled them into camps in California, Arizona, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado and Arkansas.

Manzanar closed in November 1945. The last internment camp, Tula Lake in Northern California, closed in 1946.

Manzanar, which means "apple orchard' in Spanish, is the best preserved of the camps and in 1972 was designated a California Registered Historical Landmark. The National Park Service began chronicling life at Manzanar through photographs, artifacts of dishes and furniture, and interviews with former internees.

Back when Kunitomi and his wife arrived, they were assigned to barracks divided into four rooms. Up to eight people were assigned to each room.

Officials forced the couple to bunk with a family of five. When he protested, they ended up in a barracks with bachelors. This was their honeymoon.

"It was rough. The living conditions were not what we were used to,' Kunitomi said. "We went through all kinds of hardship.'

The floors were planks of wood. A Coleman stove kept them warm. Dust storms plagued the camp. His wife, Masa, had problems adjusting. She was a city girl who grew up in Hollywood and moved around in many social circles.

"She was depressed and would cry,' Kunitomi said. "She believed in the Constitution and civil rights. It was a sad time for everyone.'

Karen Rubin can be reached at (626) 962-8811, Ext. 2109, or by e-mail at karen.rubin@sgvn.com.