Official Web site of the Los Angeles-based Manzanar Committee, sponsor of the annual Manzanar Pilgrimage since 1969.
by James To This past Saturday, I welcomed forty students and their teachers from Thomas Starr King Middle School in Los Angeles to the 42nd Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage. Seventy years ago, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which established an exclusion zone and allowed the forced evacuation and incarceration of over 120,000 Americans... Continue Reading →
Editor’s Note: The following is a personal reflection by Jason Honeycutt, who visited the Manzanar National Historic Site in May, 2010. CANOGA PARK, CA — On the almost five-hour drive north on US Highway 395 to Mammoth Mountain, I had driven by it over twenty times, always curious what it was. It looked like a... Continue Reading →
by Bruce Embrey The paper, Concentration Camps, Not Relocation Centers, written by Sue Kunitomi Embrey, grew out of a panel discussion held at California State University, Fullerton, on March 25, 1976. It represents one of the earliest efforts of the Manzanar Committee to educate the broader public about the incarceration of 120,000 Americans of Japanese... Continue Reading →
Another voice in the debate on the use of euphemistic terms to describe the Japanese American Internment experience is that of playwright Soji Kashiwagi, Executive Producer of the Grateful Crane Ensemble. Responding to Rafu Shimpo columnist George Yoshinaga, who has, for many years, argued that concentration camp is not an appropriate term to describe the... Continue Reading →
On September 8, 2010, Rafu Shimpo columnist George Yoshinaga once again railed against the use of concentration camp to describe the camps that Americans of Japanese ancestry and their immigrant parents were imprisoned in during World War II.In Yoshinaga’s column, “Horse’s Mouth: Raku, A Japanese Restaurant” (Yoshinaga’s comments were also included in a separate column,... Continue Reading →
On August 31, 2010, Rafu Shimpo columnist George Yoshinaga, who has for many years railed against the use of “concentration camp” to describe the camps where Americans of Japanese ancestry and their immigrant parents were imprisoned during World War II, published the text of a letter written by Eunice Sato, former Mayor of the City... Continue Reading →
LOS ANGELES — On May 15, 2010, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) awarded honorary degrees to former Japanese American students who were forced to leave the University due to their forced removal and unjust imprisonment in American concentration camps during World War II. Approximately 200 students were forced to leave the campus not... Continue Reading →
by James To From my perspective, the 41st Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage on April 24, 2010, had a different impact on the mood of the people this year. I am not sure if it was the weather or the people, it certainly had a different feel for the day. I am grateful that draft resisters Takashi... Continue Reading →
by LiAnn Ishizuka When I looked out the car window as we approached the barren landscape of dust and tumbleweeds, I couldn’t help but notice the majesty of the Sierra Nevada backdrop. Snow was sprinkled atop the rocky foundation as if perfectly layering the mountains in a picturesque way—something that could have been taken straight... Continue Reading →
Manzanar Committee 