Manzanar - Symbol Of Dislocation

In preparation for a Natural Weekend in the Owens Valley and Yosemite, here is a brief history of the town of Manzanar, California.

Manzanar is located in the Owens Valley, just down the valley from Bishop, California.  As you can see from the picture in Bishop below, it has incredible natural beauty with the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the west and the Inyo Mountains to the east.  It is the high desert - Manzanar itself is 3,700 feet above sea level but the mountains on either side rise to over 14,000 feet. So the valley itself is quite deep even though way above sea level.

But Manzanar's history is a story of displacement. It was originally settled by the Mono Indians in late prehistoric times. They were eventually displaced from Manzanar by miners in the 1840's as part of the California Gold Rush, although they still remained in Owens Valley. But competition from farmers and cattlemen that had moved into the area to sustain the mining towns eventually ended in war, with the most of Mono being moved to the San Sebastian Reservation in 1863 and the remaining fighters finally defeated in 1867. The first displacement was over.

By the early 1900s, the growing city of Los Angeles and its investors, desperate for water, began buying the water rights of Owens Valley, mostly through deceitful and underhanded methods, and began diverting water from the Owens Valley to LA.  This is part of the story told in the movie "Chinatown".  By the 1920s, the local farming and mining community was sabotaging the aqueduct, dynamiting sections of it numerous times. But the diversion of water eventually devastated the Owens Lake ecosystem - the lake itself ran dry in by the end of the decade.  Without water, the mining, farming, and cattle industries all died and the town of Manzanar was essentially abandoned. This was the second displacement.

When the US entered World War II and Roosevelt ordered the internment of Japanese Americans, Manzanar was selected as one of the first 10 "relocation centers" as they were euphemistically called, primarily because of its remoteness. By July, 1942, over 10,000 Japanese were held captive there, in less than ideal conditions. When the war ended in 1945, the camp was closed and the internees were free to go. They were given $25 to send them on their way but no transportation - they had to take care of that themselves. But many had nowhere to go having been uprooted from their prior lives. These remaining internees were then forcibly removed from the camp. Over the course of the 2 plus years of the camp, 146 internees lost their lives. An interesting side note is the story of Ralph Lazo, an American of Mexican and Irish dissent, who was so incensed by the immorality of internment that he himself voluntarily joined his Japanese American friends when they were rounded up and sent to Manzanar. No one ever questioned his nationality or why he was interned and he remained there for over 2 years. This was then the final strange double dislocation - once into Manzanar and then out again.

Today, Manzanar is National Historic Site - a deserted reminder of the internment of Japanese Americans but also a symbol of the displacement of all who lived there.

I had never heard of Manzanar until we actually drove by there and saw the guard tower of the camp. It is incredible story of how institutional power can destroy so much and yet the natural beauty of the place still remarkably remains.