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San Jose Mercury News
Museum's goal: Keep alive memories of internment
MANZANAR VISITORS CENTER TO OPEN TODAY
By Paul Rogers

LONE PINE - Sue Kunitomi Embrey was 19 in the spring of 1942, four months after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, when federal agents ordered her family to leave their home in Los Angeles for Manzanar, a Japanese-American internment camp surrounded by barbed wire on the windswept California-Nevada border.

``They said to us, take only what you can carry,'' said Embrey, 80. ``We left our furniture. My brother was 12. He couldn't take his toys. I remember how he cried when the junk dealer hauled them away.''

Today, 62 years later, Embrey and hundreds of other former camp residents are returning to Manzanar as the U.S. government unveils its most extensive effort yet to ensure that what they suffered is never forgotten.

The National Park Service is set to open a $5.1 million visitor center at Manzanar, with murals, news clippings, a replica of the camp's guard towers, home movies, oral histories and artifacts to tell the story of the 120,000 people of Japanese descent -- two-thirds of them born in the United States -- who were forcibly relocated during World War II to 10 camps around the West.

The most comprehensive World War II internment museum ever built, the new interpretive center represents more than 30 years of quiet, yet persistent, advocacy by Japanese-Americans.

For many, the opening also demonstrates that Manzanar, an 814-acre expanse of sagebrush along Highway 395 in Owens Valley between Lone Pine and Bishop, finally has won respect as a bona fide unit of the national park system after decades of neglect.

``The promise of our nation is freedom for all, equal justice and the Bill of Rights,'' said Fran Mainella, national parks director, who will speak today at the ceremony. ``This is a painful story, but it has to be told so we can learn from it.''

Manzanar was named part of the park system in 1992 by President George H.W. Bush.

But by 1997, it still had no restrooms, rangers or exhibits, and was littered with broken glass, its archaeological sites trampled by cattle.

``People used to drive by and say `Gee, it just looks like a big empty lot,' '' Embrey said. ``Now it looks like the country cares about it.''

Where seven years ago there was one park ranger, today there are 12. There are glossy maps and a driving tour. The park's annual budget has quadrupled over the past seven years, to $1 million. The litter and cattle are gone.

Although only the camp auditorium and two stone sentry buildings remain, parks officials have put the barbed-wire fence back up. A mess hall that had been moved to the Bishop Airport was returned last year.

Plans are afoot to rebuild two barracks and a guard tower, like the eight once occupied by soldiers who pointed their guns at the families below struggling to continue their normal lives. Camp residents formed Boy Scout troops, recited the Pledge of Allegiance and even danced the jitterbug to a camp band, the Jive Bombers, that played every popular song except the No. 1 hit ``Don't Fence Me In.''

``History has a tendency to repeat itself,'' said Frank Hays, Manzanar's superintendent. ``Our society decided this was an important part of history we shouldn't forget.''

Fearing sabotage on the West Coast after the Pearl Harbor attack, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order No. 9066 on Feb. 19, 1942. It began the largest forced relocation in American history. Several thousand German- and Italian-Americans also were ordered away from the West Coast, and some were forcibly held in Texas and other areas.

Manzanar's new visitor center, built in the restored auditorium, reflects the disruption and trauma of the time.

The first image visitors see is a huge photograph from a World War II-era street, showing a sign ``Japs keep moving. This is a white man's neighborhood.''

There are newspapers with screaming headlines, a scale model of the camp's 850 wooden buildings, original furniture, letters and toys. A giant banner names all 11,070 people who lived at the camp until it closed in November 1945.

Everywhere are photographs: of people lined up, children in classes, old men in wrinkled suits trying to retain their dignity despite the ID tags hanging from their coat buttons.

Even in the restrooms, there are photographs showing the camp's latrines: lines of grimy toilets with no stalls.

``Some of us would take big cardboard cartons into the restrooms to make partitions,'' said Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, 69, of Santa Cruz, who lived at Manzanar from age 7 to 11. ``There was no privacy. It was just humiliating.''

Houston, who wrote the book ``Farewell to Manzanar'' in 1973 with her husband, James Houston, said some camp residents have avoided visiting or talking about the experience.

``For many people, it's almost like being raped,'' she said. ``You don't want to be a victim. You have shame. But it's almost like our duty to say, `Remember Manzanar so it can't happen again.' I think it is a tribute to our country that we are doing this.''

There were 62,000 visitors to Manzanar last year. The park service predicts there will be 250,000 next year.

Most Owens Valley residents welcome the tourism. Some grumble that Manzanar represents a black mark on World War II, ``the good war,'' that they feel must be seen in the context of the fear of the times.

``Twenty years ago there was a tremendous amount of anti-Manzanar sentiment here. But those people are passing away. Eventually it will be accepted. Time heals everything,'' said James Bilyeu, commander of the Lone Pine American Legion Post.

Visitors are shown a poignant 21-minute movie, told through photographs and the narrative of former camp residents. Right after Pearl Harbor, says one man, ``We were cursed at and spit on and told to go back to the country where we came from. But this is where I came from.''

Footage shows Japanese-American children dressed like George Washington and holding American flags as part of a school production behind barbed wire. A broadcaster in a newsreel clip from 1942 intones ``They are not prisoners, they are not internees. They are merely dislocated people; the unwounded casualties of war.''

Also included are scenes from 1988, when President Ronald Reagan apologized and offered each internee $20,000 in compensation. The film ends with former internee Frank Kikuchi observing: ``I still think this is the best country in the world, hands down. It's just up to everybody to see that it stays that way.''