Manzanar National Historic Site
California

There's a 3.2 mile auto tour around the site where you can experience the Manzanar landscape.  Stop often along the tour route.  Get out of the car and explore, on foot, the various rock gardens, foundations, historic orchards, and other remains.

Old Orchard

Pet Cemetery

The town of Manzanar—the Spanish word for “apple orchard”—developed as an agricultural settlement beginning in 1910. Farmers grew apples, pears, peaches, potatoes, and alfalfa on several thousand acres surrounding the town.

Eight guard towers were built around the perimeter of the camp. They were staffed by Military Police with submachine guns. In 2005 the National Park Service rebuilt one of the guard towers.

Relocations recur throughout the history of Manzanar and the Owens Valley. The Paiute and early settlers as well as Japanese Americans all were uprooted from their homes.

American Indians began utilizing the valley almost 10,000 years ago. About 1,500 years ago the Owens Valley Paiute established settlements here. They hunted, fished, collected pine nuts, and practiced a form of irrigated agriculture.

Miners and ranchers moved into the valley in the early 1860s and homesteaded Paiute lands raising cattle, sheep, fruit, wheat, and other crops. The military was called in and forcibly relocated nearly 1,000 Owens Valley Paiute to Fort Tejon in 1863. Many Paiute returned to the Owens valley and worked on local ranches.

In 1942 the U.S. Army leased 6,200 acres at Manzanar from the city of Los Angeles to establish a center to hold Japanese Americans during World War II. Though some valley residents opposed the construction of the internment camp, others helped build it and worked here. Among these were a few Owens Valley Paiute whose own families had been exiled earlier from these lands.

The Manzanar cemetery site is marked by the above monument that was built by internee stone mason Ryozo Kado in 1943.  An inscription in Japanese on the front of the monument reads, 慰靈塔 (Soul Consoling Tower).  The inscription on the back (shown in the above photo) reads "Erected by the Manzanar Japanese" on the left and "August 1943" on the right.

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Copyright © 1995 - 2007 Steve Schmorleitz. All rights reserved.
Revised: September 22, 2008.
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